The air was thick with tension in the Zander Office. Uriel was seated at an ornate conference table, case files on David Morales stretched out before him. Around him, the team all sat in deep thought—Karen Foster scanning over witness statements, Leo Ramirez poring over financial records, and Jake Oliver looking through findings from his latest report.

They had worked the Morales case for weeks now, poring over and cross-referencing all evidence compiled by the DA: phone records, ballistics, and financial transactions. Yet something didn't quite add up in the case from the very beginning. The murders Morales was accused of committing were just too convenient, too neat. Days of investigation finally had brought a resolution into view.

Jake cleared his throat and pulled the attention of all in the room.

"I've found something," Jake said, the seriousness of his voice accompanying the file that he flung onto the table. "It's not what we expected, but it changes everything."

Uriel's eyes are sharpened, and he asked, "What did you find?"

Jake leaned forward, opening the file. "Morales wasn't the hitman responsible for the 11 murders the DA's office is pinning on him. But that's not the whole story. He's still connected to the deaths—just not in the way they think."

Karen frowned, her head rising from her notes. "What do you mean?"

"Morales was, at one time, employed as a hitman for the Torres Cartel," Jake said smoothly. "However, he wasn't on the street pulling the trigger for these concrete murders. He was promoted off the streets within his gang before these killings took place—he wasn't even an active hitman at the time of these murders. Instead, he held a more senior position, organizing things. He issued the contracts on behalf of the cartel."

Uriel leaned back in his chair as the weight of Jake's words filtered in. "So, he ordered the hits but didn't carry them out himself."

Jake nodded. "Exactly. Somebody else pulled the trigger, but the orders came from him."

The weight of silence filled the room as realization settled on them. Morales hadn't been entirely lying—at least not about being framed for these particular killings: But he wasn't innocent, either. He'd been in on the orchestration of the murders, even if he hadn't carried them out.

Uriel let out a slow breath as his mind whirred on. "That's enough to blow a hole in the DA's case. If we're able to prove Morales wasn't the shooter, we might be able to cast doubt on the whole narrative. But it also complicates things—he's still tied to the killings."

Leo, who had remained silent until now, raised an eyebrow from the financial documents. "That's not all. I have been going through the financial transactions that are linked with this cartel. There seems to be a source relationship between the money in flux within the Torres Cartel and the organization we dealt with in the Caden Spears case.

The eyes of Uriel narrowed on him to ask, "What kind of connection?"

Leo hauled a paper across the table. "Shell companies. Money laundering. It looks like the cartel's been running money through some of the same channels that the organization in the Spears case worked through. All the same players are—can be connected, at least financially."

Karen leaned forward, furrowing her eyebrows. "So, the cartel and the organization—they are connected somehow. To what degree?"

"That's what we need to find out," said Leo. "But one thing is for certain—the two groups are working in concert, or at a minimum, using the same financial infrastructure."

Uriel stood, pacing around as pieces of a much larger puzzle started falling into place. It was bigger than Morales; bigger than the Torres Cartel. The organization behind the Spears case hadn't disappeared after trial. They were out there, still pulling strings from behind the scenes, connected with the cartel in ways no one could have ever seen coming.

At Rikers, Uriel and Karen made their way through the prison to a meeting with David Morales. The new information had changed everything; they needed to get Morales—whom they suspected hadn't been entirely forthcoming about his involvement—to open up in a way they hadn't before.

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As they entered the small visitation room, Morales was already seated, his hands cuffed in front of him, his face as hard as ever. But when he saw Uriel's face, something inside the eyes shifted; he knew they had found something.

Across from him, Uriel spoke in a smooth, even tone, firm without being threatening. "We know you didn't pull the trigger on these 11 murders, Morales. You are not the hitman the DA is looking for.

Morales's jaw worked itself into a clenched position, but he said nothing.

"We also know that you were involved," Uriel returned, eyes level. "You weren't the shooter in any of those cases, but you ordered the hits. You have been lying to us."

Morales' eyes, hot with anger, flashed cold with fear. He looked away, fists clenched.

"I didn't kill them," Morales exclaimed in a low tone of voice. "Rather, I never said I wasn't involved—just that I didn't kill them."

Uriel nodded. "We know that now. But the DA's making his case based on you being the hitman. If we can show you didn't pull the trigger, we can create doubt—maybe even enough to shift the focus to the real shooter. We need to hear the truth from you—all of it."

Morales looked up at him, his face wrenched. After a long moment, he finally spoke.

"I didn't want to be involved," he uttered in a voice that was barely a whisper. "I didn't want to give the orders for those hits; those killings. But once you're in, there is no out. The cartel owns you. They tell you to do something—if anything—and you shall do just that or else they go after your family, your friends, everybody dear to you."

Karen's voice softened. "Why didn't you tell us that in the first place?"

"Because it doesn't matter," Morales said bitterly. "They're gonna lock me up for the rest of my life, whether I pulled the trigger or not. The DA doesn't care—they just want somebody to take the fall."

Uriel's eyes narrowed. "They may want you to take the fall, but we're not going to let that happen if we can prove there's more to this."

Morales's desperate, resigned eyes locked with Uriel's. "And what's the point? Even if you win, the cartel isn't just going to let me walk away."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Uriel said calmly. "For now, we have to deal with the case. The DA is spinning a tale with you as the murderer. We need to take it apart, bit by bit. If you want the slightest possibility of walking free, you gotta trust us."

Morales stared at Uriel for a long moment, then finally nodded. "Alright, I'll give you all you need. But you gotta promise me... if we win, you'll help me disappear."

Uriel turned to Karen and back to Morales. "We'll do what we can."

Back in the office, Uriel was reconvening with his team. The new intelligence flipped their approach completely on its head: Morales hadn't killed anyone, but he had ordered the hits. If they could prove it was someone else who'd committed the murders, they would gut the DA's case. "We need to find the real shooter," Uriel said as his mind paced the room in explanation. "If Morales ordered the hits, someone else pulled the trigger. The DA is focusing on Morales because it's easy, but they're not looking at the right person." Jake nodded. "I'll dig into the cartel's hitmen. They've got a whole lot of guys who could've done the job." Leo looked up from his laptop: "I'm still following the money. If we can connect any payments for these hits to someone other than Morales, that exonerates him from actually carrying out the hits." Karen added, "And if we can show the connection between the cartel and the organization from the Spears case, we can bring that to light as well. Maybe it gives us some leverage." Finally, Uriel ceased his pacing and, for the first time, set his eyes on his team. "Alright, we are going to dismantle the DA's narrative, piece by piece. Let's get to it."

The team dove into the next phase of the investigation, and Uriel felt that familiar rush of adrenaline from every impossible case. Complicated it was—maybe the most complicated—but that's where they thrived. It was no longer about freeing Morales; they were peeling back the layers of a much vaster conspiracy that interwove New York's criminal organizations in ways nobody could have foreseen. And that was a truth Uriel Zander was not going to stop until he had found it.