Chapter 1

My butcher shop smelled of iron and chilled meat, a clean, sharp scent I' d known my whole life.

The cleaver felt heavy and perfect in my hand. I brought it down with a clean thud, separating bone and sinew with a single, practiced motion. My name is Lisa, and most people in this small town know me as the butcher with the pretty face and the strange eyes. They whisper. I don't care.

Whispers don't pay the bills.

"That' ll be twenty-two fifty, Mrs. Gable," I said, wrapping the pork chops in thick brown paper.

Mrs. Gable clutched her purse, her eyes darting around my shop, lingering on the stainless-steel hooks and the pristine white tile. She always looked like she expected to find a ghost hiding behind the meat grinder.

"Thank you, dear," she said, her voice a little too loud. "It' s just so... unusual. A young woman like you, in a place like this."

I gave her the same smile I gave everyone. "Someone' s got to do it."

"Yes, but... well, people talk. They say you' re a bit of a bad luck charm. All those funerals you go to."

I slid her change across the counter. The metal clinked.

"I just pay my respects," I said flatly.

She snatched the coins and the package, scurrying out the door as if the smell of raw meat might cling to her soul. I watched her go, the smile dropping from my face.

They didn' t get it. They saw a butcher who was too pretty for her job and too comfortable with death. They saw an oddball.

They didn' t see the truth.

The butchering is a cover. It' s a good one, respectable in its own blue-collar way, and it explains the calluses on my hands and my tolerance for the macabre. But my real work starts after the sun goes down.

My grandmother calls it the "family business." I call it being an Underworld Matchmaker.

It's not as romantic as it sounds. I don't deal with ghosts looking for eternal love. I deal with the loose ends of the dead. Sometimes, it' s a message that needs delivering. Sometimes, it' s finding a lost object so a spirit can rest.

And sometimes, it' s a high-stakes, high-paying job like securing a lineage. For the wealthy, a direct heir is everything, even when the only son is six feet under. My job is to perform a ritual, a symbolic union that ensures the family' s spiritual line continues, appeasing the ancestors and securing the family' s fortune in the here and now. It's a tradition as old as the hills, a service for those who believe that death isn't the final word on family duty.

That night, after I' d scrubbed the last of the blood from the tiles and locked the front door, the rain started. It beat against the windows of my small apartment above the shop. I was counting the day's earnings when the old, brass bell tied to the back alley door jangled.

It was almost midnight. No one used that door except for me.

I grabbed the heaviest skillet from my stove and crept down the narrow staircase. Through the reinforced glass peephole, I saw a small, elderly woman huddled under a large black umbrella. She was soaked, her face pale and lined with worry. She looked harmless, but in my line of work, harmless is often the most dangerous disguise.

I opened the door a crack, leaving the chain on. "We' re closed."

"Please," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I was told you could help. I need the Matchmaker."

The name sent a familiar chill through me. She wasn' t here for a pound of ground chuck.

"You have the wrong person," I said, my hand tightening on the skillet.

She pushed a damp, thick envelope through the crack in the door. It fell to the floor with a heavy thud.

"There' s twenty thousand dollars in there," she said, her eyes pleading. "It' s just the deposit. I' ll pay you two hundred thousand more when the job is done."

I stared at the envelope. Two hundred thousand dollars. That was more than the shop made in three years. It was enough to fix the leaky roof, buy a new freezer, and maybe, just maybe, take a vacation somewhere warm where no one knew my name.

My resolve crumbled. Pragmatism won, as it always did.

I sighed, undid the chain, and pulled the woman inside, out of the rain. "Get in. And don' t drip on the floor."

I led her upstairs to my small living room. She called herself Mrs. Dubois. She sat on the edge of my worn-out sofa, clutching her handbag like a lifeline.

"My son... he' s passed away," she began, her voice cracking. "He was my only child. The heir to our family' s fortune. He died... before he could secure the line. Before he could have a child of his own."

I nodded, all business now. The skillet was back in the kitchen. "I understand. The fee is high. This sort of work carries risks. You understand that, right?"

"I do," she said, her gaze firming up. The initial frailty was fading, replaced by a cold determination. "The situation is... delicate. His death was an accident, a terrible car crash. It was very public. We need this handled quietly and quickly. The future of our entire family enterprise depends on it."

She was feeding me a line, but a good one. Rich people always had delicate situations. It' s what kept them rich.

"I' ll need his full name, date of birth, and date of death," I said, pulling a notepad and pen from a drawer. "And a recent photograph. The likeness has to be strong for the ritual to have any focus."

Mrs. Dubois opened her expensive handbag and pulled out a small, leather-bound folder. She handed it to me. "Everything you need is in there."

I opened it. The documents were crisp, official-looking. A death certificate, a birth certificate. And a photograph.

I looked at the picture, and the air left my lungs.

The man in the photo smiled back at me, his eyes full of the same charming light I remembered, the same crooked grin that once made my world turn.

It was Alex.

My Alex. The one who had disappeared from my life five years ago without a word. The one I thought was a poor, struggling artist.

But the name on the certificate wasn' t Alex Chen. It was Alexander Dubois. And the date of birth was off by two years.

My mind raced, connecting dots that shouldn' t exist. The lies, the sudden disappearance, and now this. An old woman offering me a fortune to perform a death ritual for my ex-boyfriend, who she claimed was her son.

I looked up from the photo, my expression carefully blank.

"There' s a problem with these documents," I said, my voice steady, betraying none of the chaos erupting inside me. "If the details aren' t precise, the ritual won' t just fail. It could backfire. Horribly."

Mrs. Dubois' s eyes narrowed. "What kind of problem?"

"I' ll need to see him," I said. "Before I agree to anything."

I wasn' t just a matchmaker anymore. I was walking into a trap, and the bait was the ghost of the man I once loved.

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