StoriesBlog 
Tristan Valentine was no stranger to the macabre; at thirty-four, death was less of a mystery and more of a familiar, unwelcome colleague. Having spent the last eight years working as a paramedic on the gritty streets of Chicago’s South Side, he had mastered the art of compartmentalization. He locked away the horrors of the job—the gunshot wounds, the tragic overdoses, the mangle of steel and flesh from car accidents—behind a mental wall. He treated every patient with steady hands and a mind as clear as distilled water.
Yet, nothing in his extensive medical training or his years on the pavement could have steeled him for what awaited him on a suffocatingly humid Tuesday evening in August. The day had begun with the deceptive normalcy of any other. In the hallway of their Lincoln Park townhouse, Tristan had kissed his wife, Colette, goodbye.
Her blonde hair was still damp from her morning shower, clinging slightly to her neck, and her smile was bright, practiced, and devastatingly lovely. They had been married for five years and a couple for seven. Colette worked in event consulting, a somewhat nebulous career path that seemed to demand irregular hours and necessitated frequent overnight trips.
She earned excellent money—perhaps too much money, Tristan sometimes mused privately, for someone who appeared to conduct the majority of her business simply by scrolling through her phone. On a previous late night, watching her apply lipstick with surgical precision in the vanity mirror, he had asked about her schedule.
“Client dinner,” she had replied, her voice light. “Probably won’t be home until eleven.” She had kissed his cheek, leaving a faint burgundy smudge on his skin.
“Don’t wait up,” she added. It was a refrain he had heard countless times. Over the past two years, these late nights had increased in frequency, becoming the new rhythm of their marriage.
Tristan had aggressively suppressed his rising suspicions, chalking them up to his own insecurity or paranoia. Colette was ambitious, driven. That hunger for success was exactly what had drawn him to her when they first met at a hospital fundraiser. Her confidence was magnetic.
However, his distraction was palpable. His ambulance partner, Devin Davies, picked up on it immediately during their shift. They were restocking the rig at the station when Devin tossed a protein bar in Tristan’s direction.
“You’re somewhere else today, man,” Devin said. At forty-two, with fifteen years on the job, he had mentored Tristan through his rookie years and seen him through the worst calls. “Everything okay at home?”
Tristan forced a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yeah, just tired. Colette still burning the midnight oil?”
“Always,” Tristan replied.
Devin’s expression shifted into a complex mixture of concern and hesitation. “Listen, I probably shouldn’t say this, but… My buddy Moshe works security at the Whitmore Hotel. Said he’s seen someone who looks like Colette there pretty regularly.”
“Weekday afternoons?” Tristan asked, the air leaving his lungs. The Whitmore was a Gold Coast luxury establishment known for its discretion and exorbitant prices.
Tristan’s stomach clenched into a tight, cold knot. “Probably work meetings,” he said, his voice sounding hollow and unconvincing. Devin nodded, but the silence between them was heavy with a shared, uncomfortable truth they were both agreeing to ignore.
The call came in at 6:47 PM. Dispatch reported a potential cardiac episode at the Whitmore Hotel, room 1842. Guests in neighboring rooms had complained of hearing distress. Tristan and Devin grabbed their gear and mobilized immediately, weaving the heavy ambulance through the snarled rush-hour traffic with sirens wailing and lights flashing.
Neither man spoke of the coincidence, though it hung in the cab like heavy smoke.
The lobby of the Whitmore was a spectacle of brass and marble, gleaming under the light of massive crystal chandeliers. A visibly nervous concierge ushered them toward the elevators, directing them to the eighteenth floor.
In the elevator, Tristan’s pulse began to hammer—not from the adrenaline of the job, but from a cold, creeping dread that settled deep in his bones. Room 1842 was located at the very end of a plush, silent hallway.
Devin knocked firmly. “Chicago Fire Department. We got a call about chest pains.”
The door cracked open, revealing a man in his fifties. His expensive suit was rumpled, his face flushed with a mixture of exertion and panic. “Aye, I think it was just anxiety,” he stammered, peering out.
“I’m fine now,” the man insisted.
“Sir, we need to check you out,” Devin said firmly, stepping forward. “Chest pain is serious.”
The man, whom Tristan would later identify as Sebastian Base—a real estate developer with a wife and three kids in Winnetka—reluctantly opened the door wider. And there, sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed in a silk robe, clutching her phone like a weapon, was Colette Valentine.
Time seemed to fracture and slow down. Tristan could hear his own breathing, ragged and too loud in his ears. Colette’s face drained of color, turning stark white before flushing a deep, guilty red.
Her mouth opened to speak, but no sound emerged. “I’m fine,” she finally managed, her voice shaking uncontrollably. “This is… we were just…”
Tristan set his heavy medical bag down with deliberate, careful control. His hands did not shake. His voice remained terrifyingly level. “Ma’am, we’re here for Mr…”
“Base,” the man supplied weakly. “Sebastian Base. But really, I feel much better. My wife… She worries, you know she probably called.”
“Your wife didn’t call,” Devin said quietly, his eyes darting between Colette and Tristan. “Hotel staff did. You collapsed in the hallway.”
Sebastian’s lie evaporated in the stale air of the hotel room. He sank into a chair, and for a fleeting moment, Tristan felt his professional instinct kick in—patient in distress, possible cardiac event, follow protocol. But then Colette stood up, tightening her robe, and that was when he saw her reach for a clutch purse on the nightstand.
Her left hand extended, wrist turned upward in the late afternoon light streaming through the window. Devin saw it first. He had moved to check Sebastian’s vitals, but his gaze snagged on Colette’s wrist and froze.
His hand shot out, gripping Tristan’s arm with enough force to bruise. “Tris, don’t treat her,” he said, his voice urgent and low. “Call the police. Now.”
“What?” Tristan blinked, confused. “What?”
Devin’s jaw was clenched tight. He tilted his head toward Colette, who had gone unnaturally still. “Look at her wrist.”
Tristan looked. He really looked. The tattoo was small, barely an inch across—a crown situated above a scroll with numbers inscribed beneath it. Tristan recognized it instantly from a specialized training session six months prior regarding organized crime in Chicago.
It was the specific branding of the Crown Syndicate, a sophisticated criminal network known for high-end blackmail and extortion operations across the Midwest. The medical bag slipped from Tristan’s numb fingers, hitting the plush carpet with a dull thud. Vials of epinephrine, aspirin, and nitroglycerin scattered across the floor, but he didn’t move to retrieve them.
Colette’s eyes went wide with panic. She lunged for her phone, but Devin was faster, intercepting her and guiding her firmly back to the bed. “Don’t,” Devin warned. “You’re going to want to sit down and stay quiet.”
Sebastian Base had gone from flushed to a sickly gray. “What’s happening? What tattoo? Colette, what is this?”
Tristan finally found his voice. It came out cold, unfamiliar to his own ears. “Devin, call it in. I need air.”
He turned and walked out of the room, leaving behind the wreckage of his marriage and everything he thought he knew about the woman he had loved.
The Chicago Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Unit occupied the third floor of a district station. Tristan sat in a cramped interview room at midnight, nursing a cup of cold coffee, while Detective Kenan Mazza reviewed his statement for the third time.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Mazza said. He was a man in his late forties, with silver-threaded hair and the weary eyes of someone who had seen too much human depravity. “You responded to a call at the Whitmore, found your wife with another man, and discovered she has a Crown Syndicate tattoo. You never suspected her involvement in criminal activity?”
“No.” The word tasted bitter, like ash. “I thought… I thought maybe she was having an affair. That was the worst-case scenario in my head.”
Mazza exchanged a glance with his partner, Detective Marilyn Morales, a sharp-eyed woman in her thirties who had been silently taking notes.
“Mr. Valentine,” Morales said, her voice gentler than Mazza’s. “The Crown Syndicate doesn’t just recruit anyone. Members are typically involved in sophisticated operations—blackmail, extortion, identity theft. They target wealthy individuals, maneuver them into compromising positions, and then bleed them dry. Some victims have lost millions.”
“We’ve been trying to infiltrate this organization for two years,” Mazza added. “Your wife… she might be our way in.”
Tristan looked up sharply. “What are you saying?”
“We’re saying that if you’re willing to help us, we can potentially take down the entire operation. But it means you’ll have to maintain your relationship with Colette while we build our case.”
“You want me to spy on my own wife.”
“We want you to help us stop an organization that’s destroying lives,” Morales corrected. “Sebastian Base… he’s the third man we know of connected to your wife. The first one, Pablo Gates, shot himself six months ago after they drained his accounts and threatened to send videos to his family. The second, Arnaldo Short, is in bankruptcy and his wife divorced him. These people are predators, Mr. Valentine.”
The words hit Tristan like physical blows. He thought of all the money Colette had been bringing in, the designer clothes, the expensive dinners she insisted on—all of it blood money stolen from broken men.
“How long?” he asked quietly. “How long has she been doing this?”
Mazza pulled out a file, sliding several surveillance photos across the table. Colette at different hotels with different men over different months. The earliest photo was dated three years ago.
Three years. Almost their entire marriage had been a lie.
“We need time to build a case,” Mazza continued. “If you confront her now, if you file for divorce, she’ll disappear. These people have resources, connections. We need evidence. Financial records, communication logs, proof of the blackmail operations.”
“And you think I can get that?”
“You live with her. You have access to her computer, her phone, her schedule. We can provide you with equipment, training. You’ll be working directly with us.”
Tristan stood abruptly, pacing the small room. His entire world had inverted in the span of hours. This morning, he had been a paramedic with a troubled marriage. Now he was being recruited to take down a criminal organization—one that his wife was part of.
“I need to think about this.”
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Morales pressed. “Colette’s being processed right now. We had to arrest her and Sebastian Base based on the tattoo and evidence in the hotel room. But her lawyer—and she’s already lawyered up with one of the best in Chicago—is going to have her out on bail by morning. When she comes home, you need to have a story ready.”
“What kind of story?”
“That you’re standing by her. That you believe this is all a misunderstanding. That you love her and you’ll support her through this.”
The words made Tristan’s stomach turn. But as he looked at the photos spread across the table, at the men whose lives Colette had destroyed, he felt something cold and sharp take root in his chest. Not just anger. Strategy.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “But on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“When this is over, when you have enough evidence to put them all away… I want to be the one who tells her she’s finished. I want to see her face when she realizes she’s lost everything.”