Love's Betrayer

In the winter of 1924, in the fog-shrouded port city of Verensk, a series of killings paralyzes the underworld and the high society alike—each victim a man or woman who had broken a lover’s heart. Inspector Adrian Volsky, a melancholic ex-soldier, hunts a killer known as "the Penman," who leaves poetic death letters at every scene. But when Volsky reads the latest note, he recognizes the handwriting—it belongs to his own first love, the woman he believed died in a fire fifteen years ago. As he digs deeper, he discovers that her supposed death was a lie fabricated by his own mentor, and that the Penman’s vengeance is not madness, but a chillingly logical verdict against a world that trades love for power. The story unfolds not as a whodunit, but as a ruthless excavation of how youthful idealism, crushed by cynical elders, inevitably breeds a monster—and how Volsky’s own choices, made in fear and complicity, set the fuse decades ago.