Chapter 1: The Body in the Freezer

  The blood was still warm.

  Victor stared at the crimson pool spreading across the club’s tiled kitchen floor, his reflection distorted in the liquid. His gloves were already on. No hesitation. Just work.

  The Iron Hounds had called him in under a fake name, like always. They never used “Cleaner.” Too risky. This time, he was "the plumber."

  The club’s back room smelled of iron, bleach, and bass. Music thumped on the other side of the wall. Nobody out there had any idea a man had been killed in the freezer just ten feet away.

  The victim lay curled up in a freezer box, naked except for a gold chain and bruises along his ribs. His face was swollen. His throat slit from ear to ear. Standard overkill. Meant to send a message.

  Victor didn’t ask who he was. Didn’t need to.

  Instead, he knelt beside the freezer and began his work—first with the bleach, then with the plastic wrap. Silence. Precision. His breath calm. Hands steady.

  He wasn’t new to this.

  But this one was different.

  There was something… off.

  Victor noticed it while wiping blood from the man’s forearm. There, barely visible under the smears, were letters. Tiny, carved into the skin with something sharp.

  He leaned closer.

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  "V=I+X. Clean this and you're next."

  It wasn’t a gang code. Not one he recognized. But it meant something.

  Victor didn't react. Not visibly. Just memorized it.

  Then he pulled out his burner phone and snapped a single photo, uploading it to a dead server only he could access. No trail.

  Within minutes, the message was gone. Scrubbed from the body like it never existed.

  He wrapped the corpse in plastic, cleaned the blood, disassembled the freezer coils to slow rot, and bleached every surface twice. By the time he left, it was like no one had ever died there.

  The Iron Hounds’ lieutenant—a greasy man with rings on every finger—met him in the alley out back.

  “No questions, right?”

  Victor didn’t answer.

  The man tossed him an envelope. It landed in Victor’s gloved hand like a dead pigeon.

  “Don’t come around again. Boss says you’re too quiet.”

  Victor gave a small nod, turned, and walked into the rain.

  ---

  The envelope held a few thousand in used bills. Standard. But Victor wasn’t thinking about the cash. He was thinking about that message. The formula. The threat.

  "V = I + X."

  It was math. Physics. Maybe personal.

  He returned to his warehouse apartment, a single dim bulb swinging above a table covered in notes, phones, SIM cards, and a wall full of strings and photographs. He pinned a new photo to the center.

  File No. 1073: Freezer Man.

  He began to write.

  > “Victim killed to send a message. Possibly internal betrayal. Message carved: ‘V = I + X.’ Decoding pending. Chain worn: Iron Hounds symbol, but out of date—could be a plant or personal.

  No cleanup attempt. Too messy. Sloppy or deliberate?”

  Victor stared at the wall for a moment, then circled a photo of a man in a white suit at a gala event. One of the Five Families.

  Salvi.

  Victor didn't know if Salvi had anything to do with this one.

  Yet.

  But he always circled the name anyway. Just to remind himself: all blood leads to the top.

  He sat back in his chair. Thought.

  Somewhere, someone had sent that message knowing Victor would find it.

  Not the Hounds. They didn’t know who he really was.

  But someone else did.

  And now the clock was ticking.

  ---

  By morning, the freezer victim was forgotten.

  The club was open.

  The music played.

  And Victor, the quiet cleaner with no name, had begun a new file.

  A black file.

  The kind you never show to anyone.

  Because once it's opened—

  there’s no going back.