The Veil Collector

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Chapter 4 The Prisoner’s Smile

The penitentiary stood on the city’s edge like a mausoleum. Rows of steel fences crowned with barbed wire shimmered under floodlights. Even in daylight, Blackwater Penitentiary felt like a place cut off from the living.

Detective Elena Ward parked at the outer gate, badge already in hand. She hadn’t planned on coming here this soon. She’d wanted more time to think, to breathe. But Ruiz’s warning gnawed at her, and the crime scene images kept replaying every time she closed her eyes. The veil. The name. The crucifixion.

And now Daniel Fraser, a man tied to the old Skull Artist case.

It left her with only one option. She had to see Vincent Greaves.

The guard at reception barely blinked as she signed the forms. He looked bored, but his hand trembled ever so slightly when he slid her visitor badge across the counter.

“Interview room six,” he muttered.

The walk down the corridor felt endless, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, her footsteps echoing off the concrete walls. With each step, Elena’s pulse quickened. The memories came rushing back uninvited—the smell of decay at Greaves’s last crime scene, the way he’d watched her in the courtroom, calm as a man waiting for a train.

Interview room six was small and sterile, nothing but a metal table bolted to the floor and two chairs on either side. A single camera blinked red in the corner.

She sat, folding her hands to still their shaking.

The door opened.

Two guards ushered him in. Vincent Greaves. The Skull Artist.

He looked almost ordinary—silver hair neatly combed, plain prison jumpsuit, eyes like polished glass. If not for the chains on his wrists and ankles, he could have been mistaken for a weary professor called in for questioning.

And then he smiled.

The same smile she remembered from the trial. Not wide, not grotesque. Just… knowing.

“Detective Ward,” he said smoothly, settling into the chair. His voice carried the faintest lilt, as if savoring every syllable. “It’s been a long time.”

Elena forced her jaw to stay firm. “Seven years.”

“Ah. You counted.” His green eyes sparkled, amused. “I didn’t expect you to visit. Certainly not after how… conclusive our story seemed last time.”

Elena placed the folder on the table, sliding a crime scene photo toward him. The victim draped in the veil stared back from the glossy paper.

Greaves leaned forward, studying it with scholarly fascination. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t gasp. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, as if admiring brushstrokes on canvas.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. “The folds, the symmetry, the tension between concealment and revelation. But not my work.”

Elena’s grip tightened on the table edge. “It has your signature.”

Greaves looked up at her, expression almost tender. “No, Detective. It has their signature. Someone inspired. Someone who understands my language.”

Her chest constricted. “You’re saying you had help.”

“I’m saying…” He sat back, chains clinking softly, “art does not end with the artist. It continues. It evolves. Do you think the Renaissance lived and died with Michelangelo? No. Others carried it forward. And so it is here.”

Elena swallowed. “Why Daniel Fraser?”

Greaves tapped the photo lightly with one chained finger. “Every piece needs a beginning. Every canvas needs a frame. Perhaps your new artist wanted to remind you where your story started.”

“My story?”

His smile widened ever so slightly. “Don’t be coy. You know you’re the subject, Elena. You were always the subject.”

A chill spread across her spine.

She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “If you know who did this, tell me now.”

Greaves’s gaze softened, almost fatherly. “Oh, I don’t know. I only… sense. Letters, whispers, fragments hidden in the margins. They called themselves ‘Ares.’ Bold choice, don’t you think? A god of war guiding my disciples.”

Elena’s pulse hammered. Ares.

Greaves’s smile flickered. “But you won’t stop them, Detective. You’ll chase shadows, accuse friends, doubt yourself. And when the curtain finally falls, you’ll see—”

He leaned forward, chains scraping the table, voice a whisper now. “—you were never the hunter. You were always the art.”

Elena shot to her feet, chair screeching back. For a second, the urge to drive her fist into his face nearly overwhelmed her. But she held steady, even as his laughter—low and satisfied—followed her out of the room.

---

Outside, the sky had darkened, clouds rolling in heavy over Blackwater City. Elena walked fast across the lot, her badge heavy around her neck, her mind heavier still.

Ares.

It wasn’t just a copycat. It was a movement. A network.

And Greaves had just confirmed it.

---

Back at the precinct, Juno Reyes was waiting in the records room, hunched over her laptop, neon headphones blaring faint EDM beats. She looked up as Elena entered.

“Well?” Juno asked. “Did the boogeyman give you a bedtime story?”

Elena ignored the jab and dropped into the chair beside her. “He gave us a name. Ares.”

Juno’s gum popped. “Greek god of war. Not exactly subtle.”

“Check prison correspondence,” Elena ordered. “Letters in, letters out. Look for that alias.”

Juno’s fingers were already flying across the keys. “On it.”

Elena leaned back, exhaustion pressing into her bones. But beneath the fatigue, fire flickered. She could feel the noose tightening—not around Greaves, but around her.

Someone out there was building a gallery. Piece by piece.

And Elena Ward was the centerpiece.

---

That night, as she left the precinct, the rain came down in sheets. Elena pulled her coat tight, footsteps echoing along the slick pavement.

Halfway to her car, she stopped.

Across the lot, under the streetlamp’s halo, a figure stood. Tall. Still. Watching.

Her hand went to her gun. “Hey!” she shouted, voice slicing through the storm.

The figure didn’t move.

Elena started forward, rain soaking through her clothes. But as she drew closer, the lamp flickered, dimmed, and when it flared again—

The figure was gone.

Only the rain r

emained.

And Elena realized she was shaking—not from the cold, but from the certainty that the game had already begun.

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