Valeria had always been a stickler for details. It wasn’t just a habit—it was the backbone of her entire life. Her job depended on it. In a city where stories tangled and truth slipped through cracks, details were the only thing that didn’t lie. Every smudge, every misplaced cigarette butt, every odd pause in a witness’s sentence—those were the breadcrumbs that led her to what really happened.

Growing up in Serbia had carved that precision into her bones. Her father, a police chief, carried the scent of gun oil and tobacco, and the kind of authority that filled every room he entered. Her mother stayed home, caring for her and her two younger brothers, always with soft hands and tired eyes. But Valeria had been her father’s shadow—clinging to his leg as a child, tugging at his uniform sleeve, asking about his cases and how he always caught “the bad guys.”

He was her world. The blueprint for who she wanted to become.

But the world has a cruel way of tearing blueprints apart.

She still remembered that day—the sight of boxes stacked against the wall, her mother’s trembling hands shoving clothes into bags, the tension that made the air itself heavy. Her father’s unit had gone up against a dangerous gang. One of their men was dead, and now the gang wanted blood.

Within hours, her family was gone—on a plane headed for New York. Twelve years old, clutching her brothers on either side, she watched her homeland vanish beneath the clouds.

The adjustment was brutal. A new language. A new country. A new way of being invisible. But Valeria never faltered. She had seen what fear did to people, how it hollowed them out. She wouldn’t let that happen to her.

The day she graduated from the police academy, her smile had been unshakable. It was the first time her family had seen her truly happy since Serbia. Her mother cried, her brothers teased her, and she just stood there—uniform pressed, chin up, pride swelling in her chest. She was one step closer to the life she’d dreamed of.

Years later, she’d seen it all—crime scenes painted in chaos, lies wrapped in tears, and the kind of violence that left scars you couldn’t see. But she never turned away. She’d already run once, and she’d sworn to herself she’d never do it again.

When she finally made detective, her fingers brushed over the dark wooden desk in her new office, the metal badge gleaming beneath the soft light. For the first time in years, she exhaled. She belonged here. This—this was home. Not a house, not a city, but purpose.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock at the door.