The sky over New York City hung very low and grey, the kind of weather that will make the buildings look tired and the people beneath them even more so. Noah Anderson stepped off the curb, his sneakers was soaked through before he reached the crosswalk. His hoodie was pulled up over his head, his shoulders hunched against the rain. He looked like any other college kid just trying to get through another miserable day.But he wasn't just another college kid. Not exactly.

Clutched against his chest was a weathered folder his final presentation, wrapped in hope, fear, and three nights of less sleep. If he could just survive the next hour, he could go back to pretending everything was fine. That the late night headaches, the flashbacks, the shadows in the corners of his mind were not clawing back into his life again.Noah didn't talk about the nightmares. He didn't talk about the fire.Or the blood.Or how his parents were killed when he was seventeen, leaving him with nothing but half truths and lies written on police reports. "Wrong place, wrong time," they said. "A robbery gone bad." He never believed that.

He saw the man. Or maybe just a glimpse of him. A figure, tall and cold, standing in the flames, he was walking away while his home burned down. His face had blurred over the years, but the chill hadn't. And now six years later that feeling was back.

Across the city, in a glass walled office on the top floor of an elite high rise, Viktor Mikhailov stood staring out into the rain soaked skyline. He didn't blink. Didn't sip the untouched vodka in his hand. His mind was somewhere far much colder.

"Vitaly's dead," his second-in-command said quietly from behind him.

Viktor didn't react.

"No message. Just a slit throat and a missing shipment," the man added.

Still, Viktor didn't say anything

He didn't have to.

Everyone in the city knew what happened when you crossed Viktor Mikhailov the head of the Bratva's American empire. The kind of man whose name lived in whispers and whose enemies vanished without a single trace.

But tonight, his thoughts weren't on retaliation.

They were on the message he'd received like an hour ago.

The boy is back. Noah Anderson.

That name hadn't passed through his ears in years. But it lived in the back of his mind, buried under smoke, blood, and a choice he could not undo.

Noah's parents had gotten too close. They knew things they were not supposed to and they tried to run. So Viktor did what he always did he cleaned the mess. Efficient. Precise. With No second thoughts.

Until he saw the boy.

Seventeen, frozen in the hallway, eyes wide as the fire lit up behind him. Noah didn't scream. Didn't run. He just looked.

And Viktor had let him live.

Now the past was back. And it had a name.

Noah's presentation was a disaster. His slides glitched. His voice cracked. His professor barely even looked interested. By the time he stepped outside, he didn't even care anymore. The rain hit his face like ice, soaking through his hoodie, but he just kept walking.

New York had never felt like home.

There was just something about it the noise, the strangers, the pressure that made him feel like he was constantly being watched. Maybe it was just paranoia. Maybe it was the trauma. Or maybe someone was actually watching him.

He crossed the street without even looking.

Inside a sleek black car parked just across the road, Viktor watched him.

No bodyguards. No tinted glass. Just him, alone. He had not planned to come in person. He didn't do this anymore the surveillance, the tailing. That's what his men were for. But this is different.

Noah is different.

He was not a child anymore.

He was taller, leaner, shoulders tense like he'd learned to defend himself. But his face still carried that same guarded softness, the kind that made Viktor's chest feel strangely tight. It was the kind of face that didn't belong in Viktor's world too human, too untouched by the rot he lived in.

Viktor hated that he was here. Watching. Feeling.

You should've finished it years ago, he told himself.

But he hadn't.

And now, he could not look away.

Later that night, Noah sat in the dark, the blue light from his laptop casting shadows on his tired face. He was supposed to be finishing a research paper, but his mind was elsewhere. His dorm room was quiet, too quiet. The kind of quiet that let thoughts in.

He reached under his bed and pulled out the box. It was old, taped on the edges, labeled in black marker: TRUTH.

Inside are all the things the cops never cared about photos, newspaper clippings, police statements with missing names. He flipped through them like always. There was nothing new.

Until there was.

A white envelope. No markings. No stamp.

Noah frowned.

He did not put that there. How did it get there?

He opened it slowly, heart thudding. Inside was a photograph grainy, probably from a security feed. But the face was clear.

A man in a black coat. Standing outside the remains of his childhood home. Watching it burn.

Noah's hands trembled. His breath caught in his throat. His throat tightened.

It was him. The man from that night.

The man from his nightmares.

The man who walked out of the fire and never looked back.

Across the city, Viktor Mikhailov leaned back in his leather chair, eyes closed, glass of vodka finally in his hand. The photo had been planted successfully.

He actually wanted to see what the boy would do. How far he'd go.

Because this wasn't over.

Not by a long shot.

And if Noah came looking for the truth?

He'd find Viktor waiting.