She knew he was dangerous.
That was never the problem.
Elena Hartmann has built her life on control: the right words, the right rooms, the right moral distance. She understands violence from courtrooms and debates — safely, from the outside.
Then she meets Adrian Duarte.
A brilliant defense lawyer with a flawless reputation and a past no one in Hamburg speaks about directly. Adrian does not seduce her with promises. He does something worse: he sees her clearly. He leaves the door open. And Elena keeps stepping through it.
When old names from Wilhelmsburg return — a dead girl, a missing man, a witness who knows too much — Elena learns that Adrian’s silence is strategy. The closer she gets, the harder it becomes to tell whether she is uncovering the truth or becoming part of it.
Then another man turns up dead in the harbor.
And Elena must face the question she has avoided from the beginning:
What if the abyss was never Adrian?
What if it was the part of her that wanted to stay?
