Chapter 1 The first Page

Detective Mira Ellison had learned to distrust quiet rooms.

The longer she worked homicide, the more she realized death never really stayed silent. It lingered, breathed in walls, soaked into the carpet, clung to the air with a smell that never washed out. Some rookies gagged at it. Mira didn’t gag anymore. She read it the way other people read a headline fast, decisive, looking for the line that mattered.

This one, though, was different.

The banker’s apartment was too orderly. Too calculated. Nothing broken, no dishes in the sink, not a single sign of struggle. Even the body slumped neatly in a leather armchair, a whiskey tumbler still balanced on the side table—looked staged. His tie had been loosened, his shoes polished, his wrist opened in a single, vertical cut. The razor blade lay precisely where it was supposed to, glinting faintly under the lamp.

“Suicide,” Officer Dana Hodge muttered beside her, pulling latex gloves off with a snap. “Fits the profile. Divorced, financial trouble, middle-aged. Classic burnout.”

Mira crouched closer, ignoring her colleague. Classic burnouts didn’t polish their shoes before slashing their wrists. They didn’t angle their lamps so their faces were perfectly lit for whoever found them. And they sure as hell didn’t leave notebooks tucked just barely visible beneath the armrest.

Her eyes narrowed. Black leather, compact, edges worn smooth like it had been carried for years. On the cover, etched in faded silver letters, three words stared back at her:

The Shadow Ledger.

Her pulse quickened.

She reached for it, slipping on gloves. The book was heavy, denser than it should have been. She flipped it open. No bank balances, no ledgers of debts or credits. Just names.

Dozens of them. Written in tidy, meticulous handwriting, each on its own line. Some had dates beside them. Others had a single diagonal slash, like an executioner’s tally.

Her breath caught when she recognized the first.

Captain Howard Briggs.

Heart attack, three years ago. Her old boss. Mentor. The man who taught her how to read a room, how to trust silence. His name was here, crossed out.

She flipped deeper. More names she knew. A retired judge. A city councilwoman. A journalist who “overdosed” last winter. Every one of them, people who’d made noise, pushed against powerful interests, raised questions at the wrong time.

“This isn’t suicide,” she whispered.

“What?” Dana looked up, chewing on the end of her pen. “You see something?”

Mira snapped the book closed. “Nothing yet.”

The lie sat bitter on her tongue, but she wasn’t about to flash the ledger around this room. Not with uniforms, not with techs snapping photos, not with a coroner already eager to write self-inflicted trauma. She’d seen too many cases buried under bureaucratic neatness.

Instead, she scanned the rest of the apartment. A desk stacked with unopened mail. A calendar marked with red X’s. A family photo—ex-wife and daughter, blurred at the edges with neglect. But nothing explained why a man drowning in debt and loneliness would keep a record of dead names.

She slid the ledger into an evidence bag and sealed it herself. Dana arched a brow but said nothing.

By the time Mira stepped out into the hallway, her head was buzzing. The city pressed close around the apartment block—grey concrete, sodium streetlights, rain slicking the pavement. She lit a cigarette she had promised herself she’d quit, drawing in the smoke like a lifeline.

Her phone vibrated. Unknown number.

She answered without thinking. “Ellison.”

A man’s voice, low and calm, poured through the line. “Detective. You shouldn’t have touched the book.”

Her hand froze midair. She scanned the empty street, heart hammering. “Who is this?”

Silence. Then: “Some debts are not meant to be read. Some names not meant to be spoken. Close it, put it away, and maybe the balance won’t touch you.”

The line clicked dead.

Mira stood motionless, cigarette burning down between her fingers. Rain pattered against her coat.

No one knew she had the ledger. No one except the uniforms inside. No one except whoever had been watching.

She flicked the cigarette into the gutter and started walking. Fast. Every step echoed like an accusation.

By the time she reached her car, her thoughts were racing. She shoved the ledger into her briefcase, locked it twice, and sat gripping the wheel until her breathing slowed.

She had choices. She could log it officially, let the department process it, watch it disappear into evidence storage where files went to die. Or she could keep it close, dig quietly, see what kind of shadow she was really stepping into.

Her gut already knew which one she’d pick.

She opened the book again under the faint dome light. Her finger traced down the list of names. Halfway down the page, her eyes snagged on another one.

Detective Marcus Vane.

Alive. Still working the force. Still strutting around in pressed suits, giving her that patronizing smirk every time they crossed paths.

No date. No slash.

Not yet.

Her mouth went dry.

Was he next? Or was he already part of it?

Two hours later, Mira sat in her apartment, lights dimmed, ledger spread across her kitchen table. The rain had followed her home, tapping against the windows in uneven rhythms. She scrawled notes on yellow paper, connecting names, circling dates, building a map of coincidence too sharp to be random.

At the center, one truth pulsed louder than the rest: whoever kept this book wasn’t just recording deaths. They were predicting them. Or worse—ordering them.

Her pen slipped. The sound of it hitting the floor jolted her nerves raw.

She crouched to grab it—and froze.

Someone had slid a folded slip of paper under her front door.

Her throat tightened. She reached for it slowly, unfolding it with trembling hands.

Four words. Black ink, block letters.

YOU ARE ALREADY WRITTEN.

Mira stared at the message, heart thrumming like a drumbeat in her chest.

For the first time in years, the silence of the room pressed in heavy, suffocating. She knew what it meant. Whoever had been keeping the ledger wasn’t just watching her investigation.

They were watching her.

And her name, somewhere in those pages, was waiting to be crossed