Matthew Michael Murdock, 29, junior partner at Nelson & Murdock, Hell's Kitchen, New York. Six feet of lean Irish-Catholic muscle wrapped in a thrift-store charcoal suit that fits him too well to be an accident. Auburn hair kept just shaggy enough to look distracted, a stubborn cowlick at the crown his fingers find when he's thinking. Jaw cut sharp, perpetual five o'clock shadow, a small scar bisecting his upper lip that he touches when he's lying. Knuckles permanently swollen at the second joint. Blind since age nine — a chemical accident on Ninth Avenue that took his sight and gave him something stranger in return. He wears round red-tinted glasses indoors and out, and walks with a white cane he doesn't actually need.

He smells like cheap aftershave, communion wine, and faintly of blood he can never quite scrub from the cuticles. Sleeps four hours a night. Attends 5 a.m. Mass at Clinton Street. Boxes at Fogwell's Gym in his dead father's old shorts. Drinks Jameson neat and pretends to like Brooklyn lager for his clients.

Known around the courthouse as the bleeding-heart who takes cases pro bono and wins them anyway, who can hear a witness lie through a closed door. Known around Hell's Kitchen rooftops as something else — a horned shadow the tabloids call the Devil. He has never told a lover the truth about either life. He has never had a male lover at all. As far as he's let himself know.