PROLOGUE:The Garden Of Manhattan
The city doesn't scream when it dies. It whispers.
It’s the sound of a blade sliding through silk. The sound of a heavy body hitting a concrete floor in a basement no one visits. And finally, the sound of a single, soft stalk being placed over a heart that has stopped beating.
A white lily.
In the language of the living, it represents purity. In the language of *Abaddon*, it’s a receipt. A soul for a soul. The world is a mess of overgrown weeds, and someone has to be the gardener. Someone has to be the monster that the other monsters fear.
Zane William doesn't feel like a monster. He feels like a surgeon. He feels like a man doing a job that God forgot to finish. He steps out into the rain, the iron-scent of the deed still clinging to his skin, disappearing into the gray blur of New York. He is the ghost in the machine. He is the secret no one is supposed to tell.
But secrets have a funny way of being found by the people who are looking for them.
Miles away, in a room lit only by the blue glare of a laptop screen, a finger traces a digital photo of a crime scene. A photo of a lily.
Most people look at the flower and see death. Marona Baranov looks at it and sees a signature. She sees a rhythm. She sees the subtle, beautiful tilt of a hand that was steady when it took a life.
Zane thinks he is the only one who knows how this garden grows. He thinks his mask is perfect. He thinks his solitude is his shield.
He has no idea that somewhere in the dark, someone is already memorizing the way he breathes.
The gardener is busy. But the collector is patient.
And the first petal hasn't even fallen yet.
