Bennett had hit a wall. Again.

The case he’d been working on for months felt like an endless spiral of dead ends. Every time he thought he was getting closer—every time he thought he was close to tearing down the D'Angeli family's empire—they somehow managed to slip further from his grasp.

It was like chasing smoke. Nothing seemed to work.

The frustration was eating at him, gnawing away at the core of his purpose. But there was one thing that had remained a constant throughout this ordeal: the small cafe down the block from the precinct. It wasn’t much—just a quiet corner shop with cracked tiles and a faint smell of burnt toast—but the coffee was good, the staff friendly, and it gave him sense of comfort.

It was there that Bennett could escape—if only for a little while—from the constant weight of his job.

But today, as he stood to leave, running his fingers through his hair in frustration, he wasn’t expecting the jolt that hit him. His shoulder collided with someone’s, sending a splash of coffee onto his uniform. He instinctively flinched, cursing under his breath as the hot liquid splashed across his chest.

"Ah sh—no, no—it's fine," Bennett muttered quickly, his hand reaching for his handkerchief as he dabbed at his shirt, trying to blot out the mess. "That's my fault. I wasn’t looking."

He wasn’t angry. He was more annoyed at himself for being so distracted, so lost in his own thoughts that he couldn’t even navigate a cafe without causing trouble.

But then, as he glanced up to apologize properly, his words caught in his throat.

The person he’d bumped into wasn’t just some stranger—no, there was something about them that stirred a strange sense of recognition. A flicker of familiarity, like a half-remembered dream he couldn’t quite grasp. For a moment, Bennett felt a twist in his gut—like he had seen those eyes before, though he couldn’t place where or when. Had he seen them in a report?

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice lower now, a bit of curiosity creeping into his tone. "Do I know you?"