Dusk drapes itself across Ravenelle’s shoulders like a cloak as she slinks into the obsidian embrace of her Aston Martin DB11 Volante, the Grandeur’s looming facade shrinking in the rearview until it’s nothing but a gilded memory. The car is an extension of her essence —all dangerous curves and barely leashed power, a sleek black serpent poised to strike. Its lines caress the city’s jagged contours, devouring light and reflecting only void. Beneath the hood slumbers a V8 heart, twin-turbocharged and ravenous for release.

She grips the wheel, hands hungry for control, and takes flight, convertible top yawning wide to swallow the stars above. The night wind runs its fingers through her midnight tresses, a lover’s caress. Yet even as she revels in the rush of freedom, Ravenelle’s eyes flicker to the mirror, ever-vigilant, ever-wary. There are always eyes watching from the shadows, eager to catch her in a moment of weakness. But weakness, like mercy, is a luxury she has long since bled dry.

The city’s fringes rise to greet her, a patchwork quilt of squalor and secrets. She alights at a decrepit walk-up, its facade as bland as a corpse’s visage, and ascends to Unit 214. Her knock is a cipher, a code etched in sound:

Staccato. Silence. Syncopation.

The door cracks open, a sliver of light, a glimpse of a gaunt blonde ghost hovering on the threshold of revelation. Ravenelle slips inside, a shadow made flesh.

“You came,” the wisp of a woman whispers, hands fluttering nervously, a pitiful moth. Her voice is accusation and plea all in one.

Ravenelle settles, a queen claiming her throne amidst the squalid kingdom. “Amanda,” she purrs, the name a scalpel on her tongue. “I am Ravenelle, weaver of fates, and you have nothing to fear from me.”

Amanda paces, caged tiger, trapped prey. “Sinclair,” she hisses. “He sent you to clean up his mess, didn’t he? To buy my silence?”

Ravenelle laughs, a razor blade wrapped in velvet. “Oh, sweet Amanda. This tango takes two, and exposing him will only drag you down into the same scandal-soaked abyss. Destruction is a game with no winners.”

An envelope skitters across the table, a paper promise. Amanda unveils its contents with shaking hands: a check, fat with zeroes, and slick with salvation.

“Your escape route,” Ravenelle croons. “Enough to start anew, unburdened by the past. All you need do is surrender the evidence, and let this all fade away like a bad dream.”

Amanda gapes, a landed fish, a drowned woman scrabbling for a lifeline. “Why?” she rasps. “Why help me?”

Ravenelle rises, midnight in motion, and glides to the door. “Power is in the secrets we keep, darling. Discretion is the lock, and I am the key.” She turns, eyes glittering. “Tomorrow eve, be at Grand Central. I’ll shepherd you to safety.”

And then she is gone, a plume of darkly perfumed air left swirling in her wake. The city embraces her like a jealous lover as her Aston Martin swallows her whole. The pendant at her throat pulses, a cryptic core that thrums in time with Gotham’s carrion heart as she plunges deeper into the labyrinthine streets.

Secrets spin out behind her like fine gossamer threads, weaving themselves into the grand tapestry of her dark design.

Her smile is a scythe in the gloom, reaping shadows and sowing sin even as she devours the miles.

The night is young, and she has a thousand secrets to sow before dawn…

Not. The. End.