The killer was an artist. Not the kind who showed in galleries — the kind who worked in silence, on bodies, in basements. His father put a makeup brush in his hand at seven years old and his mother made sure he never forgot the shame of it. Twenty years and two continents later, he'd settled into a life in Philadelphia where he had a home and a name his neighbors trusted. He had two careers now. One paid the mortgage. The other left women posed like porcelain dolls. No one looked twice.

He was out of his mind, of course.

When the killings made headlines and the press started blaming the Marcuccio crime family, it landed on Michael Donatello's desk. Michael was no detective. He was the family's answer to problems that couldn't see a courtroom and couldn't go unanswered. When the head of a Dallas crime family showed up looking for whoever murdered her daughter, Michael's problem and her obsession became the same thing.

Now Michael had to do something no cop in the city had been able to — hunt a killer using the only tools available to a man on the wrong side of the law. No warrants. No badges. No code except the one he was raised on.