The Guilt Vessel

In the United Commonwealth of Mercia, criminal profiler Julian Cross investigates ritualistic murders of Meridian Fidelity executives. Each victim is posed with a page from a seven-year-old ledger tied to the Nexum Industrials collapse that ruined hundreds of families—including Cross's own mother. As Cross's empathic gift dissolves the boundary between hunter and hunted, logic becomes a paper-thin dam against a lifetime of buried grief, and he faces a choice that will shatter his identity forever.