Chapter 1 - The Cat Knew
A Cat’s Tale sat between a café and an old record store, a narrow pocket of warm light in the wet Chicago afternoon. Fresh coffee drifted in whenever the door opened, then settled into the older scents of paper, vanilla, and the faint floral note from the vase beside the register. Rain traced the front windows and softened the traffic beyond them.
Charlotte Winslow leaned against the counter and ran her thumb along the deckled edge of a clothbound reprint of Pride and Prejudice. The gilt lettering had dulled at the corners, but the spine had survived decades without cracking. She had bought it during the shop’s first week, when owning one beautiful thing had felt like proof that the rest of her life might belong to her again.
The counter was scarred oak, worn smooth beneath years of receipts and stacked hardcovers. A brass desk lamp warmed the grain. Beside it, a chipped ceramic dish held paperclips and loose change, and fresh flowers leaned toward the bell in a small glass vase. Charlotte replaced them every few days with whatever the florist down the block had left near closing. Her faded mug waited near the lamp, the Persuasion quote worn pale along its side, and she wrapped her hands around it and sipped the Earl Grey gone half-cold.
The shop had been slow since lunch. A few customers had come in to escape the rain, bought a book or warmed their hands around tea, and gone back out when the weather eased. Charlotte preferred afternoons like this. Here, she was the woman who knew every shelf and remembered what people had read last. Nothing more was required of her.
A deep purr rolled across the counter. Artemis lay stretched beside the register, her gray coat silvered by the lamp. Charlotte scratched behind one velvet ear. “Rough day?” she murmured.
Artemis lifted the tip of her tail and let it fall once.
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “Same.”
The cat had ridden beside her when Charlotte packed the last of her old life into a car and drove until the city behind her no longer felt close enough to reach. Artemis had watched from the passenger seat while Charlotte built a quieter existence out of brick, paper, and a lease she could barely afford. Only Artemis and Dani had ever been granted trust without conditions.
The bell above the door rang, and Mrs. Ramirez stepped inside with rain shining on her coat and gray hair pressed damp against her forehead. The smell of wet pavement and exhaust followed her in. The door closed, and the shop took back the air.
“Afternoon, mija,” she said, shrugging out of her coat. Her attention had already moved toward the historical fiction shelves. “Please tell me you haven’t let all the good books go home with other people.”
“Never,” Charlotte said. “Your stack’s safe.”
She came around the counter, her skirt brushing her calves. Artemis followed her with a steady turn of the head but did not leave the counter. On her way past the window, Charlotte straightened the small “Help Wanted” sign. She had enough staff for most days, but the Saturday position had a habit of emptying itself.
Mrs. Ramirez walked with her toward the back wall. They passed the table by the window, where a teapot waited beneath a quilted cozy, and the vintage record player turning through a low instrumental album.
Mrs. Ramirez stopped at the historical fiction shelf and held her hand above a gap. “What happened to the one about the Tudor queen? The one with the red cover.”
“Sold yesterday,” Charlotte said. “But I pulled something better for you.” She reached past Mrs. Ramirez and drew a hardcover from the second shelf. “New release. Same era, better ending.”
Mrs. Ramirez turned the book over. “Better ending, meaning what?”
“Meaning she keeps her head.”
Mrs. Ramirez laughed and tucked the book beneath her arm. “You always know.”
She continued along the shelf, then stopped in front of a line of matching spines. “Some of these writers don’t know when to quit,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “Eight books! Who needs eight books in one series?”
“Depends on the series.”
“It does not.”
Charlotte pulled a new thriller from the middle shelf and placed it in her hands. “Try this one. Standalone. No sequel.”
As Mrs. Ramirez headed for the register, a college-age kid came through the door shaking rain from his jacket. He held up his phone like evidence. “Do you have this?”
Charlotte took in the cover on the screen. “Third aisle, bottom shelf. There’s a used copy in better shape than the new ones.”
He lowered the phone and stared at her. “How do you just—know that?”
“It’s a small shop.” She smiled. “I know where everything lives.”
Artemis tracked him from the counter. When he passed too close, she drew her tail against her body and kept her ears pointed toward him until he moved away. He never saw it. Charlotte did.
Normal settled over the shop, one customer at a time. Charlotte wrapped Mrs. Ramirez’s books in brown paper, found a missing title beneath a stack of returns, and made tea for a student who looked close to tears over a reading list. Peace had been harder to hold lately. Dani would have called that overthinking, right up until it wasn’t.
A few weeks earlier, Dani had arrived for their Tuesday coffee after a hospital shift and taken over Charlotte’s couch with her shoes off and her phone already in hand. She had scrolled with the fierce concentration of a surgeon reviewing scans, then thrust the screen toward Charlotte. Her nails clicked against the glass.
“Look! Tell me that isn’t scary hot.”
Charlotte leaned away until the image came into focus. A man stood on courthouse steps in a grainy photograph, his face turned half from the camera as though he had known exactly where it was. Dark hair, a close beard, a strong jaw. Even through the poor image, the tailored coat sat across shoulders that made the crowd around him look temporary.
His warm brown skin made his pale eyes more striking, though the photograph had flattened their color. He held himself like a man Charlotte had learned to recognize before they spoke. Men who never needed volume to make a room obey, and who treated another person’s limits as a courtesy rather than a boundary.
She studied the picture for too long. “Who is that?”
Then she set the phone facedown on the cushion.
Dani caught the motion. “Oh no. No. That is not a ‘he seems interesting’ face. That is a ‘I’m about to make a terrible decision’ face.”
“I wasn’t making any face,” Charlotte said.
“Char, I have known you for years. You were making a face.”
Dani retrieved the phone and kept going, delighted with her own evidence. “Okay, but also… listen to me. This is Chicago, and men like that don’t just… disappear. If you ever see him in real life, you run. You hear me? You do not ‘I can handle it’ your way into being murdered.”
Charlotte produced a laugh that fooled neither of them. “I am never going to run into him.”
Dani pointed at her. “That’s what people say in documentaries.”
Now rain ticked against the bookshop windows, and Dani’s voice supplied the rest from memory. Babe, paranoia isn’t a personality trait. No matter how nicely you dress it up.
The evening brought college students searching for required reading, an older man collecting mysteries for rainy nights, and a young couple who stayed in the poetry section long enough to forget anyone else existed.
The girl pulled a Neruda collection from the shelf and held it toward her boyfriend. “This one. Read page twelve.”
He opened it, read several lines, and color climbed into his ears. “In public?”
“It’s poetry,” she said. “It’s supposed to be felt.”
Charlotte passed behind them with a stack of returns. She did not smile until the shelf hid her. Artemis had moved to the reading nook windowsill and followed the couple before turning back to the glass.
The wall clock chimed after the last customer left. Six p.m. Rain had thinned to mist, and the streetlights lay pale reflections across the pavement.
Charlotte flipped the sign to CLOSED, and the chain clicked against the glass. She checked the front lock, turned the deadbolt, and switched off the lights in the same sequence she used every night.
Artemis rose from the windowsill and stretched until her back formed a long gray arch. Charlotte picked up the empty teacups. “Must be exhausting, judging customers all day.”
The cat jumped down and walked toward the rear of the shop with her tail held high.
“Yes, go ahead,” Charlotte murmured. “Inspect the premises.”
Artemis stopped at the end of the fiction aisle and looked back at her. After Charlotte followed, she continued toward the stairs.
Charlotte moved through the aisles. Her fingertips passed over familiar spines, and she straightened a display that had not needed help. A romance abandoned among the mysteries went back into its proper row.
At the base of the narrow wooden staircase, she switched off the overhead lights. The shop settled into the glow of the front lamps and the weak light from the windows. Shelves rose in shadow, and the dark glass reflected the room back at her.
Her apartment waited above the shop exactly as she had left it. Books stood in uncertain towers against the walls. Blankets buried half the worn leather couch, and framed photographs caught brief flashes of lamplight as she passed. Cinnamon and vanilla had worked into the curtains, the paint, and the sweater she pulled over her head once the door locked behind her.
Artemis jumped onto the windowsill and curled into her usual place, facing the street. Charlotte lined her boots beside the door and twisted her hair into a loose knot. The record player answered the brush of her thumb with a crackle, then an old jazz track spread through the room.
Dinner was cold pasta eaten from the container at the kitchen counter. The wine in her other hand gave her fingers something to do. Dani would have knocked the fork away, delivered a lecture on proper meals and “respecting carbs,” then ordered enough cheese to offend a cardiologist.
“You’d have a fit,” she said under her breath, hearing Dani’s answer anyway. Babe, that’s not dinner. That is a cry for help.
The room went quiet around the music. The refrigerator hummed. A radiator hissed near the wall, and traffic rolled somewhere below. Charlotte rinsed the fork and wiped the counter, then moved the cloth over a surface she had already cleaned.
She set it down.
Artemis had not shifted from the windowsill. Her paws were tucked beneath her, but the rest of her body held a rigid line, and her attention stayed fixed on the street. She had been there since they came upstairs.
“What are you looking at?” Charlotte asked.
The cat’s ears turned toward Charlotte, then returned to the window.
Charlotte went to the glass. Wet pavement shone below her, parked cars lined the curb, and the café sign glowed two doors down. No pedestrians crossed the street, no car idled at the curb, and no face lifted toward the apartment. She returned to the couch, but Artemis kept watch.
Charlotte opened a book beneath her favorite blanket and read the same paragraph twice. On the third attempt, the words still refused to hold. She closed the cover around her thumb and listened to the record fill the room where concentration should have been.
A walk usually cleared her head. She took the same loop a few nights each week, past the café, around the next block, and back along the quieter side street. The routine gave her body enough work that sleep came easier afterward.
She pulled on her boots and coat, put her phone in her pocket, and took her keys from the dish beside the door. Artemis’s tail rose from the sill.
“I won’t be long,” Charlotte said, checking the lock. “Guard the place.”
The cat narrowed her eyes.
A low chirp followed Charlotte to the door. It held no panic, only refusal.
“I know,” Charlotte said, and closed the door behind her. She could not spend the rest of her life indoors because the cat disliked an empty street.
The stairwell smelled of dust and old brick. Charlotte descended to the side exit, separate from the bookstore entrance, and stepped into the shallow alcove. The alley opened beside it, a narrow seam of darkness she had trained herself not to study.
Cool, damp air pressed against her face. Coffee from the café carried farther after closing, and her boots struck a clean rhythm against the pavement. A siren rose several blocks away, moved east, and faded.
She followed her regular route without hurrying. The café’s neon sign burned red in the glass. The record store held a low amber glow, and jazz drifted from an open window somewhere above the street. Charlotte kept her hands in her pockets and let the blocks pass beneath her feet.
By the time she returned, the record store had gone dark. It had to be after nine. Her keys were already warm in her palm, and the street outside the shop stood empty.
A low groan came from the alley.
Artemis had known.
Charlotte stopped. Copper reached her before the shape in the darkness did, sharp enough to dry her mouth. A sensible person would keep walking, call 911 from the next corner, and let someone else approach the space between the buildings.
Her feet turned toward the alley. Dani’s voice came with her, stripped of every joke. You moved toward it, Char. You always move toward it.
“Hello?” The word came out quieter than she intended.
A shape moved near the brick wall. For a second, Charlotte expected a stray cat. A man staggered into the streetlight instead, one hand clamped over his side while blood worked between his fingers and struck the pavement in slow drops.
He made it two steps. His legs folded, and Charlotte caught him before his head met the ground. His weight drove her backward, heavy and fever-warm, while blood soaked through her sleeve and spread against her skin.
He looked close to thirty. Dark hair clung to his forehead, and pain had pulled his features taut. A black dress shirt stuck to his side, glossy with blood.
The line of his nose and the shape of his face pressed at a memory she could not place. Her grip shifted beneath his arm, then steadied.
His hand caught her sleeve. The strength in his grip did not belong to a man collapsing in her arms.
“Hey,” Charlotte murmured, adjusting his weight against her, trying to keep them both from hitting the ground. Her hand went for her pocket, fingers closing around her phone. “You’re hurt. You need a hospital.”
“No.” His grip tightened on her arm. “No hospitals. You need to—” He stopped and turned toward the street behind her. “Go inside and lock the door.”
Charlotte’s tongue stuck briefly to the roof of her mouth. “You need help. It doesn’t seem like a good long-term plan staying here.”
Her thumb found 911. Before she could press it, a car door closed somewhere down the block. The sound was soft, solid, and expensive.
The man went rigid against her. He looked toward the sound, then back at Charlotte.
“Get inside,” he rasped. “Please go.” His hand shoved at her arm without enough strength to move her. His attention stayed on the far end of the street.
Charlotte looked once in the same direction. She did not know him. Blood did not run down a person’s side in measured drops without a reason, and the reason could be standing close enough to see her.
This man was dying in front of her.
She lowered him against the brick wall of her shop and pulled off her coat. Blood was already covered her sleeve. She folded the coat and pressed it hard against his wound.
Heat pushed through the wool and coated her hands. His body shook against the wall, but his grip remained fixed on her arm. Charlotte checked the storefronts, the parked cars, and the black windows above them.
His grip eased by a fraction. “I’m sorry.” His attention cut past her shoulder and fixed on something down the block.
Footsteps reached them from the far end of the street, unhurried and even. Three men emerged from the darkness and spread across the pavement without crowding one another.
The man in the center was tall and broad enough to make the two beside him look like extensions of his reach. His coat hung open despite the cold. Even at a distance, Charlotte recognized the economy in the way he moved, the expectation that space would clear before he reached it.
She had seen that silhouette on news sites and late-night television, attached to grainy photographs and careful words. Alleged organized crime, insufficient evidence.
Dani’s voice cut through her memory. Scary hot. Run if you ever see him.
The men flanking him did not carry themselves like friends. They watched the windows, the alley mouth, and Charlotte’s hands. They stopped several yards away, leaving the man in the center to take the next step alone.
His attention went first to the wounded man. His gaze moved over the blood trail, the soaked shirt, and the coat pressed against the wound in one pass. Then he took in Charlotte’s red hands and the phone lit in her grip.
His assessment moved through the scene the way hers moved through a shelf after closing, finding the one thing out of place. It stopped on her.
He entered the full reach of the streetlamp. His eyes were not gray, as the photograph had suggested, but blue-green against warm brown skin. A close beard followed the hard line of his jaw.
Acquitted. The article had used that word, not innocent. The man in front of her was Dominic Moretti.
Of course, he had appeared in the one alley Charlotte had chosen to enter. Mist darkened the wool at his shoulders as he came closer, and he did not take his eyes from her face.
The man to his left stood with his weight balanced and his hands clear of his coat. Close-cropped black hair, dark eyes, a thin scar through one brow. The other was broader and older, with gray at his temples and a salt-and-pepper beard. Leather gloves covered his hands, held flat at his sides, his body arranged around an order to wait.
The coat under her hands had grown heavy with blood, and the wounded man shook against the brick. Water fell from the fire escape above them in steady drops.
All she had wanted was air. Dani was never going to let her hear the end of this.
Now she knelt beside her own shop with blood to her wrists while Dominic Moretti considered her in silence.
