Blood Roses and Bullet Holes

 Isabella's POV

Isabella had seen dead bodies before.

She had spent five years at the DEA staring at crime scene photos. Bodies in rivers. Bodies in car trunks. Bodies left in the street as warnings.

She had trained herself not to feel anything.

But not this body.

Not Sofia.

She pressed her fingers against her sister's cold hand and felt something inside her chest snap clean in half.

Ms. Moreno. The medical examiner, a tired-looking man with ink-stained fingers, cleared his throat. I understand this is difficult. But I need you to confirm the identity.

Isabella looked at her sister's face.

Same dark hair. Same amber eyes, now staring at nothing. Same small nose they used to argue about when they were little. You got the cuter one. No, YOU did. They used to laugh about that.

She would never laugh about it again.

It's her, Isabella said. Her voice came out flat and steady. A DEA voice. A professional voice.

Inside, she was screaming.

Sofia Moreno. Twenty-eight years old. The examiner checked his clipboard like he was reading a grocery list. Pulled from the River Rojo two days ago. Three gunshot wounds to the chest. Based on entry angles and the location the body was recovered from, we're classifying this as—

Gang violence, Isabella finished.

He blinked. Yes. Exactly.

Wrong place. Wrong time. Case closed.

The police

The police closed it in forty-eight hours. She finally looked up at him. My sister was a trauma nurse. She worked twelve-hour shifts and volunteered at a church clinic on her days off. She didn't do drugs. She didn't run with gangs. She didn't owe anyone money. Isabella stepped closer to the table, her voice dropping low. So tell me. What innocent woman gets shot three times with this kind of precision— she pointed to the wounds, perfectly grouped near the heart, and it's wrong place, wrong time?

The examiner opened his mouth. Closed it.

Because he knew. He had to know.

These weren't wild cartel bullets. These were placed. Clean. Professional.

Someone had paid good money to put those holes in her sister's chest.

Ms. Moreno, I'm sorry for your loss. But the investigation is

Over. Isabella looked at the wounds one more time, burning every detail into her memory. I know.

She turned to the small plastic bag on the counter. Sofia's personal effects. The examiner slid it toward her without meeting her eyes.

Inside: a cracked phone. A silver cross necklace, their mother had given them matching ones when they were ten. And Sofia's engagement ring, the small diamond still catching the light like nothing had changed.

Isabella's hands shook. Just slightly. She pressed them flat on the counter until they stopped.

Not here. She could fall apart later. She could fall apart alone, in some dark room where nobody could see. But not here.

She picked up Sofia's phone. The screen was cracked badly, but it still lit up when she pressed the side button. Low battery. She would need to charge it. But the notifications were visible on the lock screen—missed calls, messages, all of it.

She scrolled up. Scanning. Her DEA brain filing things automatically even while her heart was bleeding out.

Restaurant texts. A reminder about a hospital shift. Two missed calls from Marcus, Sofia's fiancé.

Then her thumb stopped.

At the very top of the call log. The last call Sofia ever made.

11:47 PM. The night she died.

The name on the screen hit Isabella like a fist.

IZZY — MISSED.

Izzy.

Sofia's name for her. The only person in the world who called her that.

Her sister had called her. The night she was murdered. At 11:47 PM—and Isabella's phone had been on silent. She had been at the office, buried in case files, too busy to notice a vibration. Too important, too focused, too stupid—

She had missed it.

Sofia had called her in the last hours of her life, and Isabella had not answered.

The plastic bag crinkled in her grip. She realized she was crushing it.

What did you want to tell me? Were you scared? Did you know something was wrong?

Did you call me because you needed me and I wasn't there?

The examiner said something. She didn't hear it. The room had gone very quiet, the way it goes when something inside a person breaks too deeply for sound.

Isabella carefully placed Sofia's phone in the bag. She picked up the necklace and fastened it around her own neck without thinking. She just needed to feel something that had touched Sofia's skin.

She gathered herself. Breathed in slowly.

Find who did this. Make them pay.

That was the only thing left now.

She turned toward the door. Her legs felt like concrete, but she moved anyway—one step, two, head down, walking toward the exit, toward cold night air, toward the promise she had just made her sister

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

She almost ignored it. She was barely holding together and whoever it was could wait.

But it buzzed again. Then again. Insistent.

Isabella pulled it out.

Her blood turned to ice water.

The screen glowed in her hand.

INCOMING CALL: SOFIA

Not a saved contact. Not a glitch.

Sofia's phone, still sitting in that plastic bag on the examiner's counter behind her—was calling her.

Someone had it.

Someone was calling her from her murdered sister's phone.

Right now.

The phone kept ringing, her sister's name pulsing on the screen like a heartbeat.

Isabella stood completely still.

And she answered.