The Velvet Widow
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story may include references to physical and domestic harm, sexual violence, psychological trauma, moral corruption, and death by poisoning.
Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter One: A Feather in the Fog
The impenetrable fog rolled through Chartres Street like a memory, soft, patient, uninvited. It curled around the cold, unfriendly wrought-iron balconies. It shuttered windows, pressing its icy breath against the dusty glass panes of Belle Morte, Marina Voss’s curious boutique of silks, secrets, and curated sorrow.
Inside, she moved elegantly, like a specter through dusk-drenched aisles of vintage gowns and widow’s lace. Each item had been chosen with a lover’s precision, nothing bright, nothing eager. Only desolate shadows of sorrow stitched into seams, with the past clinging to every hem like a ghost's last breath. Above her, the faint subdued rustle of wings - the great black raven, Poe - echoed quietly through the chandeliers; the chill of an unspoken omen.
She paused at a dusty, cracked full-length mirror, brushing her fingers on the collar of a wrinkled, high-necked 1940s mourning dress. Her reflection was pale, luminous, deliberate: a woman sculpted from discipline and despair. Her lips, wine-dark; her gaze, a quiet, steady storm. A feather, jet-black, was pinned into her braid like a warning to the world.
“Do you remember him, Poe?” Marina asked softly.
The bird twistedly cocked its head.
“He was the first. The landlord. His breath smelled of sour wine and shattered dreams. He said he could raise my rent, and no one would stop him...”
Her right hand drifted to the antique hairpin at her waist, a silver twist, delicate and deceptive, deadly as scripture. She had carefully crafted it herself. Hollowed and wicked, its tip laced with the neurotoxin she brewed like absinthe in a copper still beneath the boutique.
She hadn’t meant to kill him. Not the first time, but he had pushed. Oh! How he had pushed; and when he fell to the floor, convulsing, lips foaming like ocean tide, Marina had felt a godless incinerating heat bloom deep inside her ribcage.
Not lust. Not pleasure. Power. Something colder. Cleaner.
Her cell phone buzzed distractingly. A text.
Unknown Number: He’s speaking tonight. The judge. The one who let her killer go free. St. Louis Cathedral. 8 p.m.
She smiled, without showing teeth, just dreadfully cold, dull breath. The past had always come crawling back in lace gloves.
Outside her shop, the gas streetlamps flickered to life. Marina moved hauntingly toward the register; her long, flowing coat, the color of deepest midnight, swirling majestically around her feet. Poe followed, swooping silently to rest on the bony shoulder she offered.
Tonight would be delicate, a performance. There would be watchers, cameras, admirers of justice and law. Marina Voss, however, was a ghost in her own city. She moved through its bones and crevasses, unseen.
Before she left the boutique, she lit a stick of myrrh incense, smoke rising like the remorseful sins she could never confess.
As she locked the door behind her, she whispered, “He let the monster walk. Now I’ll give the monster something to fear.”
The dim-lit streets welcomed her like an old affair - uneasy, dangerous, and pulsing with haunting memory.
Chapter Two: The Judge and the Jury of One
The gentle, icy rain had begun somewhere between Canal Street and the looming cathedral. Not a storm, at least not yet, but that soft, persistent drizzle particular to New Orleans. It was as if the city were weeping softly in its sleep.
Marina Voss did not run from it. She walked softly and confidently as though she belonged adoringly to the rain, her long black coat clinging to her silhouette, her dainty boots echoing softly across the slick stone sidewalk. Poe, tucked gently beneath the folds of her umbrella like a priest in mourning, was silent. He always was before a kill.
Outside St. Louis Cathedral, a crowd gathered beneath pointy umbrellas and dilapidated awnings, murmuring excitedly with anticipation. Inside, the baroque glow of chandeliers lit the pews like jarring, hungry teeth. Judge Calvin Druitt was scheduled to speak, a man whose face had once graced the cover of The Times-Picayune for his ‘commitment to judicial reform’.
A man who, twenty or so years ago, had dismissed the trial of Desmond Holt, citing insufficient evidence, despite the dried blood gathered beneath his grimy, jagged fingernails and the broken, twisted body of Marina’s mother pulled from the old ruins of the Ninth Ward.
Marina quickly entered the cathedral just as the blaring music of the organ fell silent. Moving effortlessly like smoke, she slipped through the cathedral doors, pulled down her hood, and revealed raven-dark hair flowing to her waist, and nearly flawless, translucent porcelain skin. A few heads turned - men, mostly. Drawn not by beauty, but by presence. The kind that makes your instincts itch and goosepimples form on the arms. She chose a seat in an empty pew halfway back, placed her gloved hands together neatly in her lap, and waited.
“Injustice,” the judge began, his voice bellowing into the vaulted ceiling, “is not always loud. Sometimes it’s a whisper. A missed form. A shadow over evidence. But as long as we acknowledge our mistakes…”
“Do you?” Marina murmured mockingly to herself.
The woman near her glanced over, startled. Marina turned slightly and smiled with the warmth of dying candlelight.
“Sorry,” she said. “My mind wandered. He has a soothing voice, doesn’t he?”
“I suppose…” the woman replied. “Though I don’t usually come to these things. I lost someone once. Katrina.”
“So did I.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t be,” Marina whispered, smile never faltering. “We all carry ghosts. Some of us just dress them better.”
The judge’s speech dragged on. Words like reform, integrity, and legacy floated in circles, never landing. Marina’s fingers moved subtly, unscrewing the spiked silver head of her hairpin beneath her glove. She felt the cool glass vial inside, barely a drop of toxin, suspended in almond oil. A caress of death. She didn’t need to touch him. Not tonight. She only needed access.
In the vestry after the lecture, a small reception would be held. Wine. Laughter. The old guard patting itself on the back while the city sank deeper into festering rot. As the judge’s proceedings had ended, and the crowd began to clap, she rose.
“Pardon me,” Marina said to the woman beside her. “I think I’ll say hello. He once judged a case that mattered deeply to me.”
The large room smelled of old, stale cigars and inherited sins. Gilded portraits glowered from the walls like bitter, criticizing ancestors. Marina drifted gently toward the refreshment table. She slowly poured herself a glass of red wine and then moved intently, like a moth to flame, to him. Judge Druitt stood near the far wall, cackling too loudly, surrounded by sycophants. His striped, grey suit was immaculate, his polished gold watch gleaming like guilt.
“Judge Druitt?” she said, her voice soft and sweet as lilac perfume.
He turned, smiling boldly before he even saw her face. The smile faltered just slightly when their eyes met.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to thank you for your words tonight,” she said. “I found them… devastatingly honest.”
Marina held her glass of wine up to him and politely clinked the edge of his champagne flute.
“Ah. Well, I try. And you are?”
“Mireille Dubois,” Marina said, borrowing the name of a long-gone neighbor. “I own a vintage boutique near the Quarter. Belle Morte.”
“Ah. Lovely name.”
“It means ‘beautiful death.’” She let the words hang, gently sipping her wine.
“That so?” he chuckled, a little nervously. “Well, let’s hope it’s just an aesthetic.”
“Everything is aesthetic,” she said. “Even judgment.”
He squinted to look at her more closely, something itching behind his eyes. Recognition? No. His memory, like his conscience, had holes. That much was clear.
“You’ve been on the bench a long time,” she said, tracing a fingertip along the rim of her glass. “Ever feel haunted by old verdicts?”
“I sleep well, Miss Dubois.”
“That’s a shame,” she murmured. “Ghosts prefer the awake.”
She slipped away before he could respond, the toxin-laced pin now held empty in her glove. She had smeared a trace on the edge of his wineglass while they spoke. A poetic mercy. He would feel nothing until tomorrow, first a tremor, then a hush, then the descent.
As she stepped back into the shrouded shelter of the cathedral's shadows, a storm inside her stirred. Beneath the resolve to avenge her mother lay Marina's own fear—that her life had become as hollow as the men she marked, that the ghosts she carried would one day turn adversarial.
She hoped, as the judge lifted that fatal sip, that there might be a momentary peace for her within this war. For every feather left behind, a part of her felt stripped bare, a whisper closer to the truth she couldn't escape.
She would leave the feather somewhere fitting, somewhere poetic.
Back at the boutique that night, Poe hovered near the rafters, then croaked once before landing firmly on Marina’s writing desk as she pulled out the scrap of black satin she used for notes. Always handwritten, always burned around the edges.
Target: Judge Calvin Druitt
Method: Contact poison (Neurotoxin 7)
Timeline: 24–48 hours
Signature: Feather on gavel
She leaned back in her creaky wooden chair, exhaling slowly. Then, for just a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of grief. The real kind. Not rage dressed as justice.
“Mama,” she whispered, “He’ll never judge another woman again. Not with those filthy hands.”
Poe cocked his ruffled head and blinked. Silent. Eternal. Marina closed the notebook, arose, and walked to the mirror. Her worried face, caught in the flicker of gaslight, was not triumphant, merely resigned. A woman at the mercy of her own ghost story.
Chapter Three: The Boutique of Beautiful Deaths
The morning in New Orleans came hauntingly slow and gray, dragging itself across the rooftops like a drunkard late to confession. Inside Belle Morte, Marina adjusted a mannequin’s lace collar with the delicacy of a mortician dressing the dead.
Her boutique was immaculate, as always. Polished walnut floors, lively flickering oil lamps, and racks of mourning gowns from eras when grief was stitched into sleeves. There were no dressing mirrors, except for the one by the register, which was deliberately cracked down the middle. Her customers said it gave the place ‘character’. They never knew it was the only thing in the store that told the truth.
With each passing day and each secret laid to rest, the crack seemed to deepen imperceptibly, as if reflecting Marina's own fractured soul. The splintered glass served as a silent witness to her deeds, echoing the growing fissures in her psyche, a reminder of the cost of vengeance.
Marina stared into the mirror as the bell above the door chimed. A woman in her early thirties entered, wearing a denim jacket, with the kind of purposeful stride that whispered 'former police officer'. Or someone pretending to be one.
“Can I help you?” Marina asked, already smiling.
“I hope so.” The woman said this as she removed her sunglasses. “I’m looking for something black. Classic. Dramatic. For a memorial.”
Her eyes were sharp, curious. Too curious.
“I specialize in grief,” Marina replied smoothly. “You’ve come to the right place.”
The woman’s gaze lingered past her. “Is that a raven?”
“Poe,” Marina said without turning. “He’s harmless unless you’re superstitious. Or guilty.”
“Cute.”
“Not really,” she replied dryly, summoning the woman toward a display rack. “He’s a terrible gossip.”
They moved together as Marina guided the woman through the hushed reverence of silk and shadow, and something in the air thickened.
“I’m Aria Locke,” the woman said, brushing her fingers along a velvet sleeve. “Private investigator. Semi-retired.”
“So, you’re not shopping.”
“I am. But I’m also curious. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Curiosity,” Marina said, pausing, “is just another form of grief. I welcome both.”
Aria carefully lifted a hanger. The dress was late Victorian, featuring jet-black beading on crepe silk, the color of spilled ink at dusk.
“Tell me.” She said, “Did you know Judge Druitt?”
Marina’s fingers didn’t flinch. But her breath caught in her chest, just for a beat. She turned with measured grace, head tilted slightly.
“Only from a distance. Why?”
“He died this morning,” Aria said, watching her closely. “Natural causes, they’re saying. Cardiac arrest.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Marina said softly. “He seemed... well-fed.”
“You were seen speaking with him after the cathedral lecture.”
Now the smile returned, quieter this time, like quicksand beneath fresh snow. Aria’s gaze paused at Marina’s gloved hands, noting the way they flexed slightly, an almost imperceptible gesture, as if shielding secrets of their own.
“Many people were. He was very popular.”
“But you stood out.”
“Well,” Marina said, stepping closer, her voice barely more than a whisper of breath. “I tend to.”
For a moment, the silence stretched taut. Poe cawed once from his perch, the sound slicing the air like a gavel.
“You’re not accusing me of anything, are you?” Marina asked. Her tone wasn’t defensive. Simply curious. Like a cat watching a wounded bird struggle.
“Should I be?”
“Only if you’re bored.”
Aria smiled, “New Orleans is never boring.”
“Then I’m safe.”
They met eyes and both stared for a moment. Two women, dressed quite differently, in distinct kinds of armor, regarded one another.
“You should buy the dress,” Marina said, breaking the moment. “It suits you. Holds secrets well.”
Aria hesitated, looked back at the dress, then nodded.
“Box it. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Marina replied.
As Aria pulled the door closed behind her, Marina exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to her ribcage. She was steadying a wound that had not yet begun to bleed.
Later that night, she descended into the cellar beneath Belle Morte, a reliquary of vengeance. Copper alembics gleamed in candlelight, herbs hung in brittle silence, and handwritten recipes lined the walls like scripture. She unlocked a drawer and withdrew her satin-bound journal. She began to scrawl along a blank page with jet black ink.
Subject: Aria Locke
Occupation: Private Investigator, Former NOPD Potential Threat
Note: Eyes like flint. Smile like interrogation.
Poe watched silently as a statue from the rafters, still as a final judgment.
“I may have underestimated her,” Marina whispered. “She doesn’t just smell blood. She tracks it.”
She stared at the candle flickering beside her journal. The flame danced as if it never feared the dark.
“But I have work to do,” she said aloud. “I can’t pause for suspicion.”
She turned back the page. A name awaited in looping ink:
Gregory Vallon – Defense Attorney
History: Defender of predators. Ties to Desmond Holt.
Reputation: Silences victims before they can even speak.
She tapped the page with a flawlessly lacquered nail.
“You’re next.”
Then, to Poe, without turning her gaze from the page:
“She’ll come back. I know her kind. But let her. Let her sniff around.”
She smiled, a slow, dangerous smirk.
“I’ll even leave the door unlocked.”
Chapter Four: Like Poison in Silk
Evening settled across the French Quarter like a bruise, purple, quiet, slow to fade. In the back of Belle Morte, Marina stirred a small copper pot, steam rising in fragrant coils around her face. Candlelight flickered across the room, gilding her skin in amber. She wore an ivory slip that clung to her body like a hushed secret, her hair pinned high, her lips dark with plum-colored balm.
On the table beside her, a glass ampoule glinted - the shade of tea-stained bone - her newest elixir. The poison inside wouldn’t kill quickly. That wasn’t the point.
“Gregory Vallon,” she murmured, the name slipping precariously from her tongue like a curse. “Three acquittals. All monsters.”
She gently trickled a drop of the fluid onto parchment. It hissed faintly before vanishing.
“This one won’t suffer,” she said, glancing at Poe. “He’ll decay.”
The raven blinked slowly, unmoved. His wings folded neatly like sealed letters against his plumed chest. Marina retrieved a velvet box from her desk. Inside, the final instrument. A hairpin of black onyx and silver trim. Hollow, exact, deadly, a weapon masquerading as vanity.
“He’s hosting a charity gala,” she said, lifting an invitation she’d slyly obtained from the coat pocket of an unsuspecting socialite. “Friday. At the Gallier House.”
She smirked, eyes widening.
“Perfect. A room full of pearls and crocodiles. A toast to justice, no doubt.”
The night of the gala arrived with the distant rumble of thunder at the sky's edge, hinting at an approaching storm. Marina wore a gown of antique lilac silk, the back plunging, sleeves flowing like whispered threats. The onyx pin nestled in her braided hair at the nape of her neck, sharp and unseen, while the heels of her boots created a symphony of footsteps upon the cobblestones like an invitation to sin.
Inside the Gallier House, chandeliers glowed luminously over polished marble floors. The crowd shimmered in champagne and the practiced laughter of high society, with no hint of the darkness beneath their gilded exteriors. Marina glided through the sea of guests like a shadow; each step measured, every glance controlled, present and striking memory before she was noticed.
She found Vallon near the piano. A broad man, smug, surrounded by predators disguised in cufflinks and cheap veneers.
“Good evening,” she whispered, the words escaping her lips barely audible above the pervasive murmur of conversation.
As she observed him, she felt the weight of her mission keenly, and she was patient. Timing mattered now more than ever; each calculated step was a dance of precision and risk. Earlier than planned, she decided to delay her actions, realizing that the heightened anticipation would make her final move even more impactful.
A waiter passed with a flute of champagne. She took one, sipping slowly, her eyes tracing Vallon’s movements eagerly. Another waiter passed, bearing hors d'oeuvres. A fig stuffed with blue cheese.
Vallon always ate the figs.
Marina adjusted her hairpin gently as she turned and hovered her hand over the plate of hors d’oeuvres. One discreet, invisible droplet fell onto the plate; the poison bloomed.
“I’m sorry, I'd better not. I’ll ruin my dinner”, Marina said with a shy smile, pulling her hand away.
Vallon peeked over Marina’s shoulder and reached over her, taking the entire tray of stuffed figs.
Marina stared at him for a brief moment, a grotesque scene of gluttony.
“Excuse me,” came a voice behind her.
Marina turned. It was Aria. No uniform, in heels…and red lipstick. She blended into the dim ambiance, but her eyes pierced through the façade.
“I hope this isn’t awkward,” Aria said, lifting a flute from a nearby tray. “You said I should buy the dress. I figured I would wear it somewhere decadent.”
“You look stunning,” Marina replied, her voice like silk dipped in wine. “Though I pictured you more noir than Victorian.”
“Sometimes you have to play the part.”
They sipped their champagne in perfect sync.
“Still investigating?” Marina asked, smoothly as ever.
“Always. But tonight, I’m just watching people lie over shrimp cocktails.”
Marina let her gaze drift over to Vallon, who was mid-laugh, a fig in hand rising to his mouth.
“And him?” she asked. “What do you see?”
“A man who’s gotten away with too much for too long.”
Marina gave Aria a sidelong glance, a flicker of something sharp - respect, maybe, playing at the corner of her mouth. The exchange carried an electric undercurrent, a dialogue founded in unspoken understanding. They both knew that risks were increasing, stakes were multiplying—yet timing guided them.
“You don’t drink much,” Aria observed, gesturing to Marina’s barely touched champagne glass.
“Only when I trust the company.”
“Smart.”
Then silence. Not awkward. Something else. A pause, quiet, weighted. Recognition. Like two predators circling the same wounded prey.
“He’ll choke on his sins eventually,” Aria said, finishing her glass.
“Perhaps sooner than we think,” Marina replied softly, her voice barely audible.
Vallon took a bite of the last stuffed fig. The effect was subtle, as always. He laughed again, mouth full, shifted his weight, blinked twice, too slow. A tremor began in his jaw. His fingers twitched against the stem of his glass.
His laughter curdled into a cough, champagne spilling over the glass across his cufflinks. Guests turned, confused at first, then horrified as Vallon’s lips foamed faintly, his jaw locking in unnatural angles. The half-eaten fig tumbled from his hand and onto the floor, crushed beneath his heel as he staggered. Marina watched the veins in his temple pulse frantically before he collapsed against the piano in a discordant crash of keys, the music punctuating his downfall with brutal finality.
Marina turned away before anyone noticed. Her part was over. She passed Aria at the edge of the ballroom near the exit.
“You’re leaving already?” Aria asked.
“I don’t like watching men fall,” Marina said softly. “I only like knowing they do.”
Outside, the air thickened with intense heat as a thunderstorm approached. Poe posed in thought on a wrought-iron railing nearby, silent, his silhouette barely visible.
“One less devil in a silk tie,” Marina said, vanishing into the night, the thunder rolling behind her like applause.
She returned to Belle Morte, she removed her hairpin and placed it gently in its velvet box, letting her long braid gently unravel. She curiously faced her reflection in the cracked mirror. There was no glee. No pride. Only the quiet presence of necessity.
“Three down,” she whispered. “How many more to balance the scale?”
She said to Poe, “And what of her? Aria. Curious little blade.”
Poe blinked and shook his plumage. A single long black feather drifted from the rafters. Marina placed the feather in a glass trinket box, which was labeled not with a name, but with a date.
“Soon,” she said to herself.
Chapter Five: Echoes in the Floodwater
The storm never truly leaves New Orleans. Even on calm, sunny days, Marina could hear it - the crackle of downed power lines, the moan of wind in hollow attics, the slow, insidious lapping of water where none should be. It wasn’t the weather. It was a memory. She exhaled. Silence.
That morning, she awoke to the sound of rain drumming against her skylight, a heavy, rhythmic thud. The dream still clung to her like damp silk: floodwater rising, her mother’s voice calling through the dark, a single black feather spinning toward the drain inside a half-filled sink.
She sat up slowly, her hair frizzy and tangled, the silk of her nightgown twisted around her thighs. Poe croaked from his perch near the ceiling, watching her with the grim patience of an old god.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
She didn’t open Belle Morte that day. Instead, she poured a glass of absinthe and sat quietly at her bedroom vanity, the one she’d salvaged from the wreckage of her childhood home. The wood was warped, the mirror was foxed and flaking with age. But in the drawer beneath the powder tins, the scent of her mother’s perfume still lived, as delicate as a ghost.
“Elodie Voss,” she said aloud. “You were too beautiful for this city. Too kind for the flood.”
She lit a candle of beeswax and retrieved an old, torn photograph tucked behind the mirror’s frame. Her mother - honey-eyed, elegant, her laughter frozen mid-breath - stood beside a small, young Marina in a fitted daffodil-yellow dress. The photo had been taken a week before Hurricane Katrina struck, before the levees broke. Before the waters rose and swallowed their home. Before Desmond Holt cornered Elodie during the blackout and left her crumpled, lifeless body on the kitchen floor, her blood seeping into broken, buckled tiles.
“They said it was looters,” Marina murmured. “Said the evidence was circumstantial. That trauma blurred the details.”
But Marina remembered. The knife had been her mother’s. The broken wristwatch left behind belonged to Holt. And the voice, his voice, rasping her name through the darkness as she hid beneath the bedroom floorboards, trembling and silent.
“You found her, Poe,” she said, her voice thick. “You remember, don’t you?”
The raven let out a mournful, low, echoing “caw.”
Poe had appeared the day after the flood. Soaked, disheveled, glass-eyed, perched on the remains of a wrought-iron balcony hanging onto the wrecked house. He had stared through the shattered window like a sentinel from the underworld. Marina had taken it as a sign. A guardian. A curse. A survivor, like her.
“I never wanted to be this,” she whispered. “But justice won’t crawl out of the mud by itself.”
She opened her journal and turned past the pages of names crossed through with feathers and blood. On the next blank page, she wrote with purpose.
Target: Desmond Holt
Status: Alive
Location: Unknown
Last confirmed sighting: Six months ago, Baton Rouge
Note: New alias suspected
She stared at the name, the dark ink slowly drying. Her pulse was steady. Her jaw was clenched. Her teeth ached from the pressure of her own long-held silence.
“He has to be next,” she said aloud. “He’s the beginning. The rot beneath everything.”
Marina held herself confidently, yet even as she printed his name, a chill slid across her spine. Whispers had reached her, rumors in hushed corners of the Quarter. A red-haired woman. A blade instead of poison. A figure who left bodies, not as whispers, but as warnings. Marina had dismissed them at first, but now, staring at Holt’s name inked in black, the rumors seemed less like gossip and more like prophecy.
A startling knock at the door made Marina shudder. Two short taps. Then another. She peered through the peephole.
“It’s me,” came Aria Locke’s muffled voice from behind the heavy bolted door. “I brought pastries.”
They sat at a small kitchen table, rain still ticking against the window like soft spider’s legs. The space felt smaller with Aria in it, too intimate. Marina had left her gloves off. Her hair was unpinned. Vulnerability was a dangerous indulgence, but she allowed herself to indulge in it for now.
“You didn’t open the shop,” Aria said, sipping her coffee. “I got worried.”
“You’re unusually invested in my wellness.”
“I’m unusually suspicious of coincidences.”
Marina raised an eyebrow. “And you thought pastries might make me confess?”
“They’ve worked on worse criminals.”
“Am I a criminal now?”
Aria didn’t answer. She just reached for a croissant, covering it in butter with surgical ease.
“Do you believe in justice?” Marina asked softly. “I mean real justice. Not courtroom pageantry?”
“I used to. Then I worked in homicide.”
“So, you stopped?”
“No,” Aria said, locking eyes with hers. “I just started redefining it.”
Marina leaned back in her chair; one leg arranged over the other like a blade sheathed in delicate drapery.
“There are names I wake up thinking about,” she said. “Men who got away with things no one even whispers about anymore. I think about how quiet their victims became.”
“And what do you do with those names?” Aria asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I write them down.”
“Just write them?”
“For now,” Marina said with a grin.
The rain pressed harder against the windows. The silence between them sharpened, no longer empty, but filled with something almost electric. A moment suspended between intimacy and threat. Not friendly. Not hostile. Something... else.
“If I were any other person,” Marina said, her voice low, “I’d wonder if you were circling me. Assessing the perimeter.”
“And if I were someone else,” Aria replied, standing, “I’d admit I already breached the gate.”
They held each other’s gaze. Then Aria nodded toward the empty dishes.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Anytime,” Marina said, rising too. “I enjoy our little chess game.”
“It’s not chess,” Aria replied as she opened the door. “It’s Russian roulette.”
And then she was gone. Marina stood at the window long after Aria had vanished into the pouring rain. The city seemed to shift, like it was sinking again, just out of sight. Deep inside her, beneath the silk, ritual, and poisons, something stirred. A feeling she hadn’t allowed in years. Was it fear? Not fear of being caught. But fear of being understood.
Chapter Six: The Man Who Lived Too Long
A note arrived tucked gently into a bouquet of funeral lilies. There was no card, just a slip of parchment nestled among white petals, its edges scorched and curled like it had barely survived a fire.
He’s in Lafayette. Room 313. Saint Germaine Inn. Two nights only.
—A Friend
Marina stared at the handwriting. It was angular and efficient. Precise. Not hers. Not Aria’s. Someone else she knew. Someone close enough to Desmond Holt to track him, to know where he’d be, close enough to Marina to understand why.
Poe croaked sharply from atop the wardrobe, ruffling his feathers with unease.
“Yes, I know,” Marina whispered. “Too convenient.”
But still. Desmond Holt. The name tasted like burned rust in her mouth.
She hadn’t spoken it aloud in years. She hadn’t needed to. It lived inside her like fleshy, rotten roots. The boutique, the hairpins, the poisons, the rituals - every thread traced back to that night in the flood. If it was a trap, it was an artful one, and Marina Voss appreciated craftsmanship.
She packed lightly. A floor-length black coat. A netted veil pinned to a vintage hat. A false identity card tucked into her clutch. Beneath the silk lining of her jacket, a single antique syringe of neurotoxin, thin as a sliver of moonlight. Enough to silence a man before he finished drawing breath to scream.
The drive to Lafayette was long and lonely, the sugarcane fields bowing in silent obedience on either side of the road. The radio was off. No music. Only the sounds of her own breath and the occasional rattle of Poe’s cage in the passenger seat.
“If he’s there,” she said softly, “it ends tonight.”
The Saint Germaine Inn sat at the edge of the historic district, a former convent transformed into a boutique hotel. Painted stark-white walls, foreboding wrought iron balconies, a place for quiet confessions and sins dressed in pressed linens.
She checked in under the name Genevieve Marchand. The clerk didn’t blink an eye.
“We’ll put you in room 311,” said the clerk. “Corner suite. Very private.”
“Perfect,” she murmured. “I prefer to keep to myself.”
She ascended the narrow stairs, heels muffled by worn carpet. Her room was just across the hall from his.
313. The number hummed in her chest like a second heartbeat. For over an hour, she watched from her window, carefully veiled behind a sturdy curtain. No lights, no sound, no movement. Room 313 remained still - too still. A place where something was waiting. It felt as if the entire old building was holding its breath.
At dusk, she finally moved. She was dressed in mourning again—a 1920s silhouette, Art Deco styled, with jet beading like obsidian tears, and sheer black sleeves. The syringe rested tightly in a garter at her thigh. Her face was flushed, but pale. Eyes rimmed in smoke. She looked like death’s most beautiful widow.
Poe shifted in his cage. Watching her with silent disapproval.
“If I don’t come back,” she told him, “You know who to scream at.”
She reached room 313 and knocked. Once. Silence. Twice. A lock clicked. Her pulse spiked. The door creaked open two inches, and an alluring shadow moved silently inside.
“Hello?” A voice rasped, male, familiar. Weathered like a cigarette left burning too long.
“Desmond Holt?” Her voice was low, lethal.
The door opened further. And there he was. Older. Thinner. But the same eyes. Predator eyes.
“Do I know you?”
“No,” she said. “But I know you.”
He stared, hands trembling slightly. A flicker of something, recognition, perhaps, but not remorse.
“You look like someone I once knew.”
“You killed someone I once loved.”
That made him smile. Just enough to ignite lightning through her spine.
“Then I suppose you’ve come for justice?”
“No,” she said, stepping inside. “I’ve come for the final page.”
The room wasn’t a villain’s lair. It was empty. A suitcase sat on the bed, still zipped. No glass on the table, the bed remained unturned. No scent, no presence.
“You’re not staying,” she observed.
“Never more than two days,” he replied. “You learn that after the first... incident. But I don’t mind dying,” he added. “The only question is,” He stepped closer. “Do you mind killing me?”
Marina’s grip tightened at her side.
“I’ve done it before.”
“Not like this,” he said. “Not me.”
He leaned in, breath acrid, voice almost tender. “But I think someone beat you to it.”
She froze and blinked slowly.
“What?”
He turned into a shiver of light casting through the open door and began to unbutton his shirt. His ribs were covered in bandages. The fabric was soaked in fresh crimson blood. Thick, nearly dripping.
“Someone stabbed me this morning. Didn’t finish the job.”
“Who?”
“Didn’t see. Just... red hair. Strong.”
Red hair. Not Aria. But maybe someone was watching her, someone who knew her.
“Why would anyone stop me?” she whispered.
“Because you’re predictable,” he said, smiling faintly, eyes twinkling with malice. “And you’re not the only one playing god.”
Marina’s pulse surged with molten rage. Every detail of that night - her mother’s broken body, the rising flood, the sound of his voice rasping through the dark - burned across her mind until she could no longer breathe. She moved before thought, the syringe sliding from her garter into her hand like a blade drawn from scripture.
Holt chuckled, his ribs pulsing breath through the bandages, but his smile faltered when he saw her eyes.
“Wait—” he began.
She plunged the needle into his throat with meticulous precision. The neurotoxin bloomed instantly, freezing Holt’s laughter into a grotesque rictus. His eyes bulged, veins knotting purple beneath his skin. His fingers clawed at her wrist but found no strength.
Marina leaned close, whispering through clenched teeth, “This is not vengeance. It’s a burial.”
His body spasmed once, twice, then stilled. The storm outside groaned like a requiem. She withdrew the syringe, watching his chest fall silent. No return. No escape. Marina exhaled slowly, her hands trembling, not from doubt, but from release. Seventeen years of rot ended in a single breath.
She left him there, still bleeding. He was gone, but she could still hear a faint echo of Holt’s laughter. Who was the real enemy? She wasn’t sure.
Back in her own room, she collapsed onto the bed, pulse skittering. Marina drifted off to sleep when the adrenaline finally wore off. She dreamed flashes of spilled blood and murmuring laughter.
Her phone chimed from the bedside table, and she sat up suddenly. No number. A single message.
Unknown Number: You’re not the only one writing names in the dark.
She stared at Poe.
“Someone’s hunting my ghosts,” she whispered. “And they’ve started without me.”
Chapter Seven: Names in the Dark
Marina hadn’t slept through the night in nearly three days. She sat barefoot on the parlor floor of Belle Morte, wrapped in a black silk robe, open just enough to reveal the scars of memory. Her collarbone bore a faint mark, barely visible. Another, across the inside of her wrist. Some were hers, others weren’t, but she wore them all with honor.
The boutique was closed. The lights were dim. Poe watched from the banister above, tilting his head to the sound as Marina tore pages from her old notebooks, arranging them in a semi-circle across the rug like tarot cards. Each page contained a handwritten name.
“They were all mine,” she whispered hoarsely. “Every one of them. Until now.”
At the center of the arrangement, she placed the photo of Desmond Holt, the one who nearly lived, who almost survived her reach.
He had been wounded before she arrived. That wasn’t a coincidence. That wasn’t luck. That was orchestration. That was a strategy. Someone wanted her to know. The anonymous note. The fresh wound. The mysterious message.
You are not the only one writing names in the dark.
Not a warning. A challenge - or worse, a mirror.
She opened her laptop and searched for signs and patterns: vigilante deaths, unsolved poisons, red-haired phantoms in alleys. Her style had always been precise, small, and clean. But this new operator? Messier. Hungrier. A news article caught her eye.
BODY FOUND IN BATON ROUGE HOTEL. VIGILANTE ANGLE SUSPECTED.
Male victim. Known abuser. Stabbed. A note pinned to his chest: “She won’t save them all.”
Marina’s pulse quickened. Not her kill, but it spoke to her like a sister.
She gathered a few items from the floor, and she retreated down to the basement, her sanctum, where she lit three candles - one for each of her successful deaths. Then a fourth candle was placed unlit between them.
"You want to be me,” she murmured, staring into the candle flames. “But you’re reckless. And theatrical."
Unknown Operator
Alias: The Other Widow
Traits: Female. Red hair. Knife preference. Expressive. Knows of Marina’s list.
Motivation: Parallel mission? Rivalry? Copycat? Interference? Sabotage?
Status: Unconfirmed. Escalating.
She tapped the end of her pen rapidly against her teeth.
“If she’s watching me,” she whispered, “she knows I’ll chase her. That means she wants to be found.”
That evening, Marina walked into the Black Marigny - an underground speakeasy built on velvet and vengeance. It was where victims sometimes came to celebrate verdicts that never should’ve been granted, where predators lurked in suits purchased with blood money.
Marina wasn’t there to kill tonight. She was there to draw the spider out. She wore a silver satin, floor-length dress with gloves that resembled sheer smoke and a choker of onyx beads. Her eyes seemed like those of a mourning goddess. She walked through the crowd like rumor incarnate. She didn’t hunt. She lured.
And there she was. At the bar, red hair tied low, black leather jacket. She had a smirk made of broken glass that didn’t quite match her drink of choice, neat bourbon, no garnish. She wasn’t Aria, but she also wasn’t a stranger. Marina sat beside her.
“You’ve been watching me.”
The woman didn’t flinch; she just sipped her glass of dark liquor.
“I watch a lot of women. Especially the ones who make death look elegant.”
“That’s flattering. But you’re careless, a bit sloppy.”
“Am I?”
“Stabbing was impulsive and childish. Leaving notes on a corpse? Desperate.”
The redhead leaned in. Her voice was low, and her breath smelled like mesquite smoke and blood oranges.
“You’ve made it art. I want to make it war.”
“Why?”
“Because they keep winning,” the woman said softly. “And no one’s afraid of whispers anymore.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lucine.”
“That’s not your name.”
“Neither is Marina.”
They both smiled, but only one was sincere. Marina’s smile didn’t touch her eyes.
“You’re putting attention on me, you’ll stop,” Marina said quietly. “Or I’ll stop you.”
Lucine swirled her drink with her little finger and then gulped the last bit down.
“Then catch me before I finish your list.”
And just like that, the red-headed vixen was gone. A flame swallowed by the crowd before Marina could get out of her seat.
When Marina returned to Belle Morte, an envelope waited on the step beneath the door. Inside was a photograph. A man, possibly in his sixties, in a worn leather jacket. Scarred, but alive. She flipped the photograph over. On the back, that same angular handwriting.
You missed one.
Marina stared at it for a long time. This wasn’t a rivalry anymore. It was a race.
Chapter Eight: The Devil in the Details
The rain had stopped, but the city still brightly glistened with wet promises and dark secrets. Inside Belle Morte, Marina stood near the window, her silhouette a frosted shadow outlined by the soft glow of the streetlamps. In the cracked mirror behind her, a fractured woman stared back - elegant, poised, and burning beneath the surface. The bell above the door jingled lightly. She didn’t flinch.
“Marina.”
The voice was soft, but certain. Aria Locke stepped inside, her coat dripping softly, her eyes as sharp as daggers.
“You’re a hard woman to find.”
“Some say the same about you.”
Marina finally turned around, a half-smile curling her lips. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I don’t expect much these days,” Aria said, pulling off her gloves. “But I do expect answers.”
“From me?”
“About the bodies piling up.”
“Bodies?” Marina lifted a brow, feigning innocence, curling at the edges. “I’ve only ever had three.”
“Three you admit to,” Aria replied coolly. “Now there’s a fourth.”
Marina’s eyes flickered and then darkened.
“You think I’m careless?”
“I think someone is careless. Someone who wants you caught.”
A pause. Aria’s gaze hardened.
“Lucine.”
The name was a sharp blade between them.
“You know.”
“I know she’s reckless and dangerous,” Aria said. “And that she’s playing a game you started.”
Marina’s smile vanished.
“Then why come here?”
“Because I need your help.”
That phrase landed like a bullet to the chest.
“Help,” Marina repeated, skeptical.
“To stop her. Before someone else dies.”
The silence between them was long and surgical. Marina folded her arms, calculating.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Good answer.”
They studied each other - predator and hunter, victim, and vigilante - and found a fragile truce in the tension. Hours later, the two women sat in Marina’s parlor, maps and photos spread across the table like battlefield blueprints. Aria pointed to a cluster of names and locations - men. Dead. Abusers. Known predators.
“She’s hitting your list,” Aria said. “She’s following your blueprint.”
“But less precise,” Marina murmured. “More... flamboyant.”
“She’s leaving messages. Notes. Symbols. She’s not cleaning up.”
“She wants attention,” Marina said. “And she’s drawing it toward me.”
“She’s not just sloppy,” Aria added. “She’s deliberate. Each of her kills points toward yours, like she’s signing them with your name.”
Marina’s lips pressed thin. “Then she isn’t a copycat. She’s staging a duel.”
Aria nodded grimly. “Exactly.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“We find her first.”
“Or she finds us.”
Marina reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a delicate hairpin, glossy black and tipped with toxin. It was the same weapon she’d used many times before.
“Then it’s time to sharpen the knives.”
As dawn approached, they sat in a moment of quiet calculation. Neither woman trusted the other. But the enemy of your copycat is sometimes your partner. As dawn filtered through the windows, the shadows seemed to move again. The game was no longer a matter of predator and prey. Now it was hunter versus wildfire; the fire burned brighter, and the shadows grew darker.
Chapter Nine: Velvet and Venom
A few days later, the city bled soft light through the clouds as a knock came at the door. Soft, measured, familiar, a rhythm she knew too well. Marina stood in the parlor of Belle Morte, cloaked in black lace tracing her bones like a second skin. The remnants of a night spent awake. Her presence was a relic - graceful, dangerous, untouched by time or law. The door creaked and opened before she could reach for it. Aria Locke stepped inside, eyes flashing with purpose, no longer the investigator, but the executioner.
“It’s over,” Aria said. “They know.”
Marina didn’t blink. She smiled slowly, deliberately, like a soft curtain falling gently onto a stage.
“Do they?”
“The press is outside. Cameras. Questions. ‘The Velvet Widow’ is no longer a myth.”
Marina’s hand drifted to the desk where a single black feather lay, silent and ominous, the signature of death’s quiet arrival.
“Then I suppose,” Marina said, “it’s time for the truth.”
The confession came like a lullaby, slow, intimate, chilling.
“I am the whisper in the courtroom,” she murmured. “The shadow behind the verdict. I take what justice cannot touch. I am silk, and poison, and mercy when no one else offers it.”
Aria listened, unblinking and still. “You think you saved them. You made a myth. And a monster of yourself.”
Marina’s gaze flickered, briefly unguarded, a hairline crack in the cold, hard marble.
“I was broken first,” she whispered.
“And now you’re breaking for others.”
Outside, the crowd swelled. Flashbulbs sparked like tiny, fiery explosions. Inside, the room was filled with a long, dead silence. Sacred. As if history were waiting. Marina opened a drawer and pulled out a velvet box. As she lifted the lid, the onyx hairpin gleamed like a secret weapon.
“This is not the end,” she said, pressing the pin between her fingers.
Aria stepped forward. “It’s your choice,” she said with a steady smile.
Marina looked at her with sad eyes.
“Instead of running,” Aria said, “you could do something far more daring. Confront them with the truth. I have evidence, records that could expose more than just your story.”
Marina shrugged, “It's dangerous, and it comes with a price.”
“But it could redeem more than just your past."
“This fight isn’t just for me.”
“The whole tangled web of corruption could unravel, toppling the predators who hide behind their positions.”
“It’s too much pressure, and I’m so tired,” Marina sighed.
Aria outstretched her hand, offering not just an escape but a chance at redemption.
“Come with me. Face it. Let them see the woman, not the myth.”
For a moment, Marina faltered. The killer and the woman inside her met and eyed each other like strangers. Then she laughed softly, a mix of sinister and beautiful.
“No.” She stepped back into the shadows. “I will disappear,” she said. “Like a sigh in a closed room. Like a secret never spoken.”
Her voice dropped like dark silk against a sharpened blade.
“Justice is not blind. It wears velvet. And it bites.”
Then there was a brief silence, and the parlor felt like it no longer belonged to Marina. Aria let herself out of the back door of the boutique and gently closed the door behind her. Hours later, when the press had scattered and the cameras dimmed, another shadow entered Belle Morte. Fiery crimson hair glowed faintly beneath the gaslight as Lucine stepped across the threshold, her boots echoing like a funeral march. On the front desk, she found what she was looking for; a single black feather beside a cracked leather journal, its pages filled with names - some crossed through, others waiting. Lucine’s smirk flickered into something darker. She brushed her fingers across the feather, then snapped the book shut with a decisive clap.
“You wanted a duel,” she murmured. “But I’ll take the throne.”
Marina Voss had vanished along with Poe, her faithful raven. But in her absence, another widow rose - hungrier, louder, merciless, and the list was waiting to be finished.
END
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