++++++ So I've had this one sitting on my computer for a bit, and since I'm struggling with a bit of writer's block in regards to my Arrow/Flash fics I thought why not try putting this one out?

I'm loving writing this because it's letting me go way, way darker than one would go with an Arrow or Flash fic.

I hope you enjoy anyway.

I do not own ++++++

One

"There is a simple way to solve the crime problem; obey the law, punish those who do not."

Unknown.

Growing up in Hell's Kitchen, the first thing people can think of is how and when they can escape it. Say you're one of the lucky ones-one of those lucky souls able to leave behind the stench and reputation of the Kitchen, you try and leave those memories behind and move on with your new life.

It's not exactly normal to go back and live in Hell's Kitchen once you've left it behind unless of course you have something to hide. People usually end up in the kitchen when they have nothing left or are nothing…

Of course Isabella Murdock was none of those things. She had everything going for her, looks, money, a promising career and yet she threw it all away to move back to Hell's Kitchen to run a stupid little blog...well at least that's what her mother would say to her. There was a number of reasons why Izzy had chosen to move back to Hell's Kitchen and one of those reasons was to find her biological brother.

Isabelle, or Izzy as pretty much everyone called her, was born as the result of a one night stand just days before the death of her birth father, washed-up boxer, Jack Murdock. For a time, she lived with her mother, Christine and her brother, Matthew before the two were surrendered to Saint Agnes Orphanage due to their mother's incapability to look after the two children.

At the age of two, Izzy was adopted by Roger and Annie Moran. She lived in Hell's Kitchen with her new adoptive parents as well as her adoptive siblings Donald and Amelia for a time until Roger got a job in Washington and they moved. By that time, Izzy was seven and had no idea that she had any other family but the one she lived with. Life was happy and generally comfortable for Izzy...that was until she turned fifteen and found her adoption records by accident in their flooding basement.

That's when everything just fell apart. The relationship that Izzy had with her adopted family became like shattered glass. It wasn't that she was ungrateful to them for everything that they'd ever done for her, it was more the fact that she'd been lied to and that she had a whole different family out there somewhere...a family that Izzy felt that she had a right to. Changing her last name back to Murdock though was the final nail in the coffin-her parents wanted nothing more to do with her. Which is how she ended up back in hell's Kitchen straight after leaving university.

There was a subtle beauty that could only be appreciated by the people who lived in the Kitchen. A fragile, dangerous beauty that could be broken at any moment by anything. It was that fragile, dangerous beauty that had Izzy on the streets every day taking photos and documenting the men, women and children who lived in the Kitchen. Some of them were mistrustful of her whereas others found her presence calming. She'd even taken family portraits with promises to deliver the finished product to the people whose pictures they contained.

Izzy lowered her camera and smiled as the kids on the street played soccer on the road. She had a couple hundred of photos like this; kids playing in the streets, senior gentlemen playing chess, bikers posing with their bikes...she tucked a strand of raven black hair behind her ear and raised the camera once more.

She liked taking photos of people in their natural habitat, it showed the city at its rawest. She turned on her heels and made her way for the road, pausing for a brief second before she stepped off the sidewalk…

...only to be almost wiped out by a cab driver.

A set of arms snaked their way around her waist and pulled Izzy off the road, forcing her back onto the sidewalk.

"WATCH IT ASSBUTT!" Izzy shouted as she struggled out of the guys arms.

The cab driver stuck his finger up at her and went on his way as Izzy grumbled under her breath.

"You're lucky he didn't kill you."

"I had right of way!" Izzy argued.

"This is New York," he told her, "the pedestrians don't have right of way no matter how right we always are. You gotta be new here. Where you from?"

"It shows huh?" she blushed. Izzy gave her savior the once over and mused on how ordinary he looked.

He was a few inches taller than her with shaggy dirty blonde hair that had been somewhat combed back. He wore a cheap suit and carried a leather satchel as well as a little bit of weight on him. He looked so regular in contrast to her beaded and braided hair and bubble gum blue sun dress finished off with a pair of black Converse high tops.

He nodded. "So where you from?"

"Seattle, I'm Izzy." She held her hand out with a smile on her face. "Isabelle Murdock but everyone calls me Izzy."

Several times the guy blinked at her before he took it and shook her hand. "Foggy-Foggy Nelson."

Izzy raised an eyebrow. "Foggy? Did your mother hate you or did you just hate yourself?" she teased. The two of them crossed over to a coffee cart where they both ordered their morning coffees.

Izzy-a large double caramel cappuccino.

Foggy-two regular coffees.

"It's actually Franklin," he replied. "I like Foggy better. You know you have the same last name as a friend of mine? Except you're way prettier."

Izzy laughed outright as a slight red blush appeared on Foggy's face. "For that, you get free coffee, Foggy." She dug some money out of her purse and handed it to the barista to pay for the three coffees.

"Cool camera," Foggy pointed before he grabbed the coffees.

"Photojournalist."

"That's kinda cool, I'm a lawyer."

Izzy winced internally. She'd had her fair share of lawyers over the past few months as her adoptive parents fought to make her keep her adoptive name or forgo the inheritance that had been left to her in a trust fund by her grandparents. In the end Roger had caved and told her to take the money and never darken their doorstep every again.

"You hate lawyers too, huh?"

She shook her head. "No-okay, maybe. Just had my fair share of lawyers lately." Izzy glanced at her watch and sighed, "so I gotta go-enjoy the coffee Foggy and thanks for saving my life."

"Nice to meet you Izzy Murdock," Foggy smiled, almost saluting her with coffee. "Tomorrow? Same time? Same place?"

Izzy chuckled. "Sounds like a date, Foggy Nelson." She waved him off and continued on her way down the street.

-XXX-

Isabelle Murdock had been in New York for less than three days and now she wanted nothing more than to be back home in Seattle with her friends and her family...not being chased by men with big guns.

All Izzy had done was go out and get something for dinner, tonight she was in the mood for Greek food. There was this sweet little Greek restaurant four blocks away who delivered but Izzy was in the mood to see some of the night life that Hell's Kitchen had to offer. With her headphones in her ears, Izzy walked around the corner flicking through the comments section on her latest blog when she heard someone scream.

Izzy ran around the corner in time to see a bunch of men pushing some terrified women into a black van with no plates. Oh my god! Izzy gasped. What can I do?

So what did she do?

Izzy took a photo...only the flash was on.

Four very angry sets of eyes turned to see who was taking the picture of them. Judging by the looks of them-they were Russian.

"Остановить ее."

"Oh fuck!" Izzy gasped. Definitely Russian. She pocketed her phone and dropped her food before she bolted.

And they followed her.

Four really, really big men with guns.

Izzy bolted down the street and darted into an alley that she thought was a shortcut to her apartment building but in reality was a dead end. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Izzy swore. She hit the fence with her hands and made the decision to climb over the fence.

Suddenly Izzy was slammed into the wall by something much, much bigger than she was. She hit the ground hard and seconds later someone hit her in the head. Izzy screamed as an instant pain hit every nerve in her body. She could feel blood running down the side of her face...it was warm...sickly warm.

Rough hands pulled Izzy to her feet and threw her against the wall.

"Где это?"

Izzy screamed...well more whimpered.

"Yбить ее, сбросить тело."

Izzy closed her eyes, tears were rolling down her face and all she could think about was her mum and dad...she was gonna die and their last words were words of anger and hate.

Only the pain never came.

She dared to open a single eye and found the four guys fighting with a masked man in black. Her journalistic instincts kicked in and Izzy immediately took a couple of photos. She screamed as a bullet hit the brick wall beside her. Izzy didn't understand how frozen she was...frozen in fear. She held a grade G4 brown belt in Krava Maga and she was cowering like a child.

Not only that...the man who was trying to save her life...it was him...the vigilante.

"GO!"

She didn't need to be told twice. Izzy stepped over the unconscious body of one of the Russians and took off running back to the street. Once she hit a crowd, Izzy slowed down, her head was thumping in pain, each step she took vibrated up into her brain.

Her apartment building was only another block away. She fiddled with her bag, looking for her keys. In frustration, she almost threw her bag but luckily someone was coming out of the building just as she ran up the stairs.

"Oh my lord!" gasped Mrs Stevenson who lived across the hallway. She was in the process of trying to set Izzy up with her son (who was incredibly gay). "Isabelle, darling, what happened to your face?"

Izzy gulped. "I-I slipped and fell on the way home from getting dinner. I just wanna go up and clean up." She brushed passed the concerned elderly woman and ran up the stairs, not stopping until she got to her front door.

Izzy scrambled in the door of her apartment, almost tripping over her cat, Blue, in the process. She slammed the door shut behind her and deadlocked it for good measure before she rushed to the bathroom. Izzy flicked the light switch and stared at herself in the mirror-her face was covered in blood and she didn't know how much of it was hers.

Immediately she turned the water on in the hand basin and waited for it to warm up, stripping her jacket and bag off in the process. Izzy immersed her hands in the flowing water and splashed it on her face, struggling to scrub the blood off. The water in the sink ran red with blood for what seemed to be a very long time but eventually the water ran clear.

Finally, Izzy looked at herself in the mirror, she only had a cut above her right eye where one of the guys had struck her with the butt of his gun. She bit her lip, Izzy had been one hundred percent sure that she was going to die tonight but some guy in a black mask saved her life. Sure over the past few days Izzy had heard rumours of a guy in a black mask beating down criminals but hell...she wasn't sure that he was real...especially in a city where aliens had literally rained down from the sky.

"Fuck," Izzy hissed. She stepped back and went on a mission to find her first aid kit (it was under the kitchen sink). After she'd fixed the cut on her face, Izzy grabbed the pizza menu off the fridge and called in an order for a pizza delivery after she'd lost her first dinner choice.

The photographer returned to her bathroom to grab her camera and see if there was any damage to her camera...thankfully there wasn't. She returned to the lounge room and sat down to look through the photos...she'd gotten a number of shots including those Russians. But that's not the photo that she wanted. Izzy wanted one of the man who had saved her life.

All that Izzy had was a grainy photo of the man in black as well as a cut on her face to prove that he was real and that he had saved her life. She sat on the floor and opened her laptop to a blank word document before she typed the seven words that would change her life forever.

Who is the devil of Hell's Kitchen?