Beauty kills faster than bullets.
 
For over a century, Dorian Gray has moved like smoke through revolutions, war rooms, and bedroom shadows—eternally young, infinitely bored, and always dangerous. Once a spy, always a survivor, she slips between agencies, nations, and betrayals like silk. Her smile is currency. Her loyalty is rented. Her portrait—hidden in a vault somewhere in Berlin—carries every sin she’s ever committed.
 
Now, someone’s trying to paint the world red.
 
An elite terrorist known only as Black Boccara Rose, a rogue botanist turned biochemical genius, is cultivating a toxin bred from extinct flowers and grief. Her plan? To release it across the South Side of Chicago—turning beauty into mass death. Her signature? Every victim is found surrounded by obsidian roses and butterflies with human eyes.
 
Dorian is dispatched to eliminate the threat. But she’s not alone.
 
Jenny Everywhere arrives mid-mission with information that Boccara’s experiments may be multiversal in origin—linked to a reality fracture first detected near Bronzeville. The Spider lurks in the periphery, trying to decide if Dorian is on the side of the angels or the architects of apocalypse.
 
And watching them all is Allan Quatermain, media mogul, fixer, and mercenary for hire—his name whispered in back channels and black market boardrooms alike. A former adventurer from the African interior, Quatermain has built an empire of secrets and syndicates. He claims he’s here to stop the toxin. But his true motives? No one knows. Not even him.
 
As alliances shift and trust withers, these operatives must race against a blooming death—and decide what’s worth saving when your past is immortal and your sins never die.