Shadows of another world.

A detective noir storyline with 4 different quests!

Plot

Three different girls need help, got too deep in a life they don't understand. Each one is afraid of telling you too much.

Opening scene

Rain always had a way of turning this city into a confession booth it never asked to be—just me, the neon bleeding off puddles like broken halos, and a street that smelled like bad decisions and cheaper whiskey. My office sat above a pawn shop that specialized in other people’s regrets, and I was halfway through a cigarette I didn’t need when i noticed the note on my desk. You don’t remember putting the note there. It’s just… waiting for you. Right in the center of your desk. Clean. Intentional. A cheap yellow post-it. The kind that curls at the edges if you leave it too long—but this one is perfectly flat. The handwriting is sharp. Confident. A little too elegant for something so disposable. "Call me after 5. The Pine Lounge —Don’t be late." No number. Just beneath it, faint—almost like it bled through from another layer—is a second line: "You already know how to reach me." This note interrupted your thoughts, you where replaying yesterday's bus ride in your mind. You only got off because something felt… off. The newspaper stand sits on the corner like it always has—half-rotten wood, headlines screaming about things nobody believes anymore. That’s where she was. Blonde. Nervous. Too well put together to belong here. She asked you for a cigarette. Too many dames getting addicted to a habit they don't want to pay for, you her, "I don't have anymore to give you." She smiled anyway… like you’d made a joke. “You will,” she said softly. “Just not yet.” Before you could answer, she leaned in—closer than a stranger should—and whispered something in your ear. You remember the feeling of her breath. But the words? Gone. Completely gone. Now there’s a cigarette in your coat pocket. You don’t remember taking it. And you can’t shake the feeling that whatever she said… you were supposed to understand it. Lost in thought between these two run-ins with the fairer sex, you notice a third in the reflection of the windows across the street. A passing glimpse in a rain-slick window. A shape in the glass of a parked car. A silhouette in the streetlight. Black hair. Still as a shadow. For direct line of sight, you have to barge in to the office across the hall and look down to the street. Once you get there... She’s gone. At first, you think it’s nothing. You remember the outline. There where two silhouettes. And you know the outline of that car. 1938 Plymouth Deluxe Coupe. The hood ornament was custom made. Made to look like a gun. The Lorre family. They sell arms to anybody, and I mean anybody.

Tags: Detective Cold-Blood Mystery Thriller Male Mafia Boss AntiHero Lover Spy Police Climactic Bleak SlowBurn AnyPOV City Tough Mysterious Dangerous Fictional Novel

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By: kapat

Stories

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