The call came in just after dawn.
A floater in the river — standard report, nothing fancy. But Rhodes's voice on the line was different. Flat, deliberate.
"Pierce," he said. "South Branch, under the Canal Street bridge. Bring gloves and an open mind."
By the time Alice got there, the place was crawling with uniforms. The smell hit first — brine, rot, and gasoline mixed into something that clung to your teeth. She ducked under the tape, flashing her badge more out of habit than necessity.
Detective Navarro, young, sharp, and still too clean, met her at the scene. "You're Pierce, right? Captain said this one's for you."
"Lucky me," she said, squatting beside the tarp-covered shape. "What've we got?"
Navarro pulled it back. The body was male, mid-thirties, swollen from the river. The eyes were open — glassy, fixed on nothing. The left hand was missing three fingers, cleanly severed.
Alice frowned. "Ritual?"
"Maybe," Navarro said. "Or someone sending a message."
"Any ID?"
He held up a wallet in a plastic bag. "Driver's license says Jonas Reed."
The name hit her like a punch to the gut.
Jonas — the dock worker from Pier 21. The one she'd promised wouldn't go to jail. The one who'd told her about the Broker.
She forced her face to be neutral. "Witnesses?"
"A homeless guy found him floating around 5 a.m. Didn't see who dumped him. Said he heard a van around three."
Alice nodded, eyes scanning the body again. The cut on his fingers wasn't random — surgical precision, deliberate spacing. Not torture. Punishment.
"Anything on him besides the wallet?"
Navarro hesitated. "Yeah. This." He handed her a small object in an evidence bag.
It was a pendant. A circle with three slashes. The same as the one sitting in her apartment.
Alice's jaw tightened. "Where'd you find this?"
"Hooked on his jacket zipper."
She slipped the bag into her pocket before anyone noticed. "Catalogue everything and send me the report when you've got it. I'll handle the follow-up."
Navarro nodded, relieved to pass the weight upward.
By the time she straightened up, Rhodes was there — hands in pockets, eyes sharp despite the morning haze.
"Pierce," he said. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Just another night in paradise," she replied.
He looked past her to the corpse. "Missing fingers. You thinking cartel, or something more homegrown?"
"Hard to say. Could be a debt marker. Could be a warning."
He studied her for a moment — the way she avoided his gaze, the twitch in her jaw. "You knew this guy?"
"I've met him. Informant, maybe."
"Maybe?"
She exhaled, the lie forming slowly and cleanly. "He worked the docks. Said he'd heard chatter about some smuggling routes. Nothing solid."
Rhodes didn't buy it, not entirely. "You keep bringing me bodies from the river, Pierce. You sure you're not fishing with dynamite?"
She almost smiled. "Whatever gets results."
He grunted, then looked toward the water. "You ever notice how the river always gives back what it's owed? Doesn't matter how deep you throw it."
There was something in his tone — not a threat, but a warning dressed as wisdom.
Alice followed his gaze. The current was slow, dark, and patient.
"Take a break," he said finally. "You're running on fumes. Go home, rest. Let Navarro and the others process this one."
"I'm fine."
"That wasn't a request."
Their eyes met — hers sharp, his tired but steady.
"You're a good cop," Rhodes said quietly. "But lately, you're not looking at the crime, you're looking for something in it. And I don't like what that does to my detectives."
He turned before she could answer, leaving her with the smell of rot and gasoline and a truth she couldn't argue.
When he was gone, Alice crouched again beside the tarp. Her hand slipped into her pocket, fingers brushing the plastic bag that held the pendant.
Jonas Reed hadn't lied. The Broker was real. And now, so was the price of getting close.
-----
Alice didn't know what a "break" was supposed to look like.
She lasted half a day before the walls started closing in — the silence too heavy, the air too still.
She made coffee, watched it go cold, then stared at the pendant sitting on her kitchen table like it might start talking. The plastic bag with Jonas's charm sat beside the one she'd taken from Pier 21. Both were identical — same crude etching, same faint scratch marks near the edge.
Symbols didn't repeat in this city by accident.
By noon, she was back on the move.
No badge, no radio, no patrol car — just her and her instincts. She traced the old contacts she'd flagged from Obed's notes, hitting bars and side alleys where men spoke in code and the liquor stung like confession. Most didn't know anything. Some pretended not to.
One name came up twice — Lydia Vale, a woman who used to run drop-offs for the Broker years ago before the docks went private. Alice found her at a laundromat on the South Side, counting change and pretending not to remember faces.
"Detective Pierce," Alice said, flipping her badge open just long enough to flash, then shut. "We need to talk."
"I'm retired," Lydia muttered, eyes narrowing.
"You ever know a man named Jonas Reed?"
Lydia hesitated a fraction too long. "No."
Alice leaned against the dryer beside her. "That's funny. He mentioned your name right before someone cut his fingers off and dumped him in the river."
Lydia's face twitched — fear, guilt, something too old to name. "You don't wanna get involved in this, sweetheart. The Broker cleans his own mess."
Alice's voice dropped. "Maybe I'm not here to clean."
Lydia looked at her — long, tired, measuring the kind of woman who didn't scare easily. Then she said quietly, "The Broker's not one man anymore. It's a title. The Martins own it now."
Alice's pulse kicked once. She kept her face still. "You sure about that?"
"Sure as I'm breathing. Your old man used to be their clean-up, back in the day. Marcus Pierce. That name still gets people whispering."
Alice's hand went cold.
She didn't remember leaving the laundromat.
By dusk, she was driving across the South Side, back toward the narrow house where her mother still lived. The place hadn't changed — peeling paint, overgrown yard, wind chimes clinking like old ghosts.
Her mother answered the door in a faded cardigan, eyes lighting up with surprise and something like relief. "Alice! You didn't call."
"Didn't plan to."
They stood there a moment before her mother stepped aside. "Come in, baby. I'll make tea."
The living room smelled of dust and old books. Pictures lined the mantel — Alice in uniform, Marcus smiling, all frozen lies in glass.
"You still keep his photo up," Alice said.
Her mother's hands paused on the teapot. "Of course. He was your father."
Alice's voice was low, sharp. "He was a lot more than that, wasn't he?"
Her mother turned. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the Martins. The Broker. About what Dad really did for a living."
The teacup rattled against the counter. For a long time, her mother didn't say a word. Then she sighed — a sound that seemed to deflate the room.
"I hoped you'd never ask me that," she whispered.
Alice's stomach twisted. "So it's true."
"He… he worked for them once," her mother said. "Back before you were born. He got out, or so he told me. Said we'd start over. But you don't just walk away from men like that."
"Did you know?" Alice demanded. "When I was growing up? Did you know what kind of life he lived?"
"I knew enough to be afraid," her mother said softly. "But I thought I could keep you out of it. I thought if I pretended hard enough, it'd all stay buried."
Alice stared at her — betrayed, furious, hollow. "You lied to me."
"I protected you!"
The words hit like a slap.
Alice stepped back, breathing shallow. "You call that protection? Keeping me blind while you buried the truth?"
Her mother's eyes glistened. "What would you have done, Alice? You were just a child. You think knowing would've made him less dead?"
Alice looked away. "It might've made me understand why."
Silence filled the kitchen — heavy, final.
Her mother's voice cracked. "He loved you. Whatever else he was, whatever he did — he loved you more than that life."
Alice's jaw trembled, but she didn't let it break. She grabbed her coat, ignoring the tea cooling between them. "Yeah," she said quietly. "He had a funny way of showing it."
She was almost to the door when her mother called out, voice small but urgent.
"There's a box in the attic," she said. "His old things. I never opened it. Maybe you should."
Alice froze, then left without answering.