Prologue

"One night I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat until it bleeds."- Daniel Plainview.

Officer Jacob Black stood in the doorway and contemplated the huge pool of thick blood on the floor where Martin Langer was found. He turned and could see a similar pool where Tiffany Langer had lain. He pondered the extensive blood loss. It was a lot more than he was used to finding at shootings.

Jacob Black was twenty-seven, one of the youngest officers on the squad and had completed the Academy in little to no time due to his extensive determination and superior training. He was tall, dark skinned, muscular, menacing, skilled; the perfect candidate. His ranking had moved up quickly in a short amount of time, making him a favorite and a fully fledged detective at an early age.

Over the past six years in the Chicago Police Department, he had been a part of shootouts, bank robberies, drug busts and half a dozen high powered cases that had gained him glowing praise among the brass sitting in City Hall. He wasn't afraid of a fight and had honed his skills to the point of near perfection.

He could find anyone, defeat anyone and crack any case. It was child's play for him and he would surely be in the head position before he was forty. The top people were already talking about it.

The clicking of a crime scene camera caused him to focus harder on the case at hand. It was the Labor Day weekend; his girlfriend Leah and he had planned a nice trip out to Lake Michigan ... if he got off on time.

The blood was splattered on the furniture, on the carpet, on the white bed sheets, everywhere. The two pools had coagulated into a black and rusty-brown mass, which covered so much of the floor that the ambulance personnel had to walk through it, leaving tracks of footprints behind as they went around the house gathering evidence.

Black was wearing tennis shoes with pale blue booties over them. He let out a deep breath and the real crime scene investigation began.

There were only three people in the room, one was alive and two were dead.

The Langer's faces were blown off, making them unrecognizable and the whole room was a grave site, filled with a chilling air. Two technicians came into the bedroom, snapping photos and explaining scientific evidence like 'splatter distribution areas' and 'droplet velocity' but Black wasn't listening.

The facts would be compiled in a detailed report on where the killer had stood in relation to the victims, at what distance the shots were fired from, in which order the shots were fired, fingerprints that were left, anything that would help.

Black knelt near the thick pool of dark brown liquid that was dripping from the bed sheets onto the floor.

"The wife, what do we know about her?" Black asked one of his deputies named Seth Clearwater who was standing in the hallway.

"Nothing, she's clean. Not even a parking ticket." Clearwater replied.

"Uh huh." Black muttered. From personal experience, he knew that no one was clean, "What about the husband?"

"He's a very interesting character. French, studied abroad before he came here for business school. Forty-five, lots of money and two houses in the area. No kids..." Clearwater rattled off the important things.

"Any shady dealings?"

"Nothing much, but the surname Cullen appears in several of the documents about him. I have a team on them now."

"The Cullen's..." Black thought out loud.

"Yeah, you know them. Supposedly they're in organized crime, you know, mafia stuff, but nobody can ever pin things on them. It's like they're ghosts. Big Italian family that's so generous on the outside but all hell on the inside. They actually gave half a million in donations last year to the police department."

Of course Black knew the Cullen's.

They had attachments to over forty crime cases that were currently open but like Clearwater said, nothing could ever be held down in regards to evidence.

"Who heads the family up?" Black asked, just for clarification.

"Carlisle Cullen and he has three sons; Emmett, Jasper and Edward."

"A wife?"

"Esme, sir."

"We need to get in contact with the organized crime division. I want to know everything there is to know about them. I want to be in the know on this."

"But... why?"

"I think Martin Langer was their under-the-table accountant. That's what the signs point to at least and I haven't done any kind of serious investigating but I would bet that they had something to do with this."

Black stood up and began walking around the room, taking in the evidence around him. This was why he was the best. He could take the situation and turn it to find each hidden clue that had eluded previous detectives.

According to the evidence, Martin Langer and his wife Tiffany had been sharing a nice night at home. The white wine filled glasses were on the bedside table, the candles were flickering creating eerie shadows on the walls, and there was a thick smell of perfume in the air. The makings of a nice romantic night were everywhere. Unfortunately, the Langers never saw their night.

Anywhere from 8:00 p.m., when the neighbors heard the Langer's door close to midnight, the current time, someone had picked the outside lock, crept into the North Side Chicago apartment, and shot them. Point blank. No hesitation. No shaking hand. This was professional.

"I think we're looking in the wrong direction." Black rubbed the back of his neck, "We thought it was a burglary?"

"Yeah, a painting is gone from the hallway that was supposedly worth millions."

"And no one saw anything?"

"Nope."

Black knew he would re-canvas the area later and interview everyone again. No doubt about it.

"I don't like this." Clearwater walked behind Black, following his steps.

"There were only two bullet casings?"

"Well... there were no bullet casings found but only two shots that the ballistics staff have evidence for."

That made Black slightly mad. Was he working with amateurs? He took a deep breath to calm himself, "Two bullets, two bodies. Both dead on the first shot. This wasn't a robbery."

"But... the painting?" Clearwater pointed towards the hallway.

"It was a cover up. The perp could have given a fuck about the painting. This was a murder for a reason."

"This whole thing is a mess. Look at all this blood."

That did baffle Black. A trained assassin would have never left so much evidence around, meaning that this amount of blood was a message. It was taunting, saying 'Come and get me'.

This was Cullen work and Black vowed, this time, they weren't going to get away with it.

The blood on the walls, on the floor, on the carpet, on the mirror, it was all a sign that pointed right to the source but the only problem was, the Cullen's were smart.

Clearwater left the room on his phone and Black circled the crime scene one last time before heading to the door.

"There's a lot of blood on your hands Cullen." He sighed, "I'm coming for you all."

He closed the door on the worst shooting scene he had seen in his years on the force and straightened out his tie before walking back down the hall.