LOGINThe estate was mostly quiet by the time Lance came back.Rain had started sometime after midnight, water sliding down the massive windows in thin streams while the guards outside rotated shifts under the dim courtyard lights. Most of the house had gone still hours ago.Ragnar was still awake.Of course he was.He sat in his office with untouched documents spread across the desk, though his attention hadn’t truly been on work for the last hour. His mind kept circling back to Lance leaving with Marcus earlier that evening.The club.The drinking.Marcus’s idea of relaxation.Ragnar already hated it.A knock came at the office door before it slowly opened.One of the guards stepped in carefully.“Sir… Lance is back.”Ragnar looked up immediately.Something in the guard’s expression made his eyes narrow.“What happened.”“He’s drunk.”A pause.Then the guard added carefully, “Very drunk.”Ragnar exhaled once through his nose before standing.That alone was irritating enough. Lance rarely
Marcus didn’t believe in rest.Not really.To him, a “day off” just meant finding a different kind of violence.The club was loud enough to make thoughts feel distant, bass shaking through the walls and up the floor while lights flashed red and gold across bodies moving too close together. Expensive liquor, expensive perfume, fake laughter. The kind of place filled with people pretending they weren’t dangerous while surrounded by men who actually were.Lance walked beside Marcus through the crowd, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable.Women noticed him immediately.Of course they did.He had changed in five years into something impossible not to stare at. Tall, sharp-faced, scar crossing his eye, tattoos peeking from beneath dark clothes, his presence heavy in a way that made people instinctively look twice even when they shouldn’t.Some looked interested.Some looked nervous.Most looked both.Marcus grinned as they entered the VIP section, one arm thrown lazily over the back
Ragnar’s room was quiet, but unlike the rest of the estate, this silence wasn’t tense.It was suffocating.The kind that pressed against his ribs the longer he sat in it.Rain tapped softly against the windows overlooking the grounds, the dim light from outside spilling faintly across the dark wood of the room. Papers sat abandoned across his desk, untouched for over an hour now. His drink had gone cold beside them.None of it mattered.Because his mind kept circling back to the same person.Lance.Or whatever was left of him.Ragnar leaned back slowly in his chair, fingers pressing against his temple as exhaustion settled deeper into his bones. He rarely allowed himself moments like this. Sitting still meant thinking too much, and thinking too much lately always ended badly.Especially when it came to Lance.He could still see him clearly from earlier.The blood on the corridor floor.The guard choking on his own throat.That grin on Lance’s face after doing it.Oops.Like it was fun
The door clicked shut behind Jungwoo. For a few seconds, he didn’t move. One hand remained on the handle, fingers curled there loosely, as if he could still feel the heat of the room through the wood. The corridor was quiet, long and dimly lit, the kind of silence that usually calmed people. It did nothing for him. His breathing was slower than it should have been. Too measured. Too controlled for what was happening underneath. Then something in his face shifted. The polished amusement he wore so easily cracked at the edges, revealing something sharper beneath it. His eyes darkened, pupils blown wide as the last few minutes replayed themselves with cruel clarity. Lance’s hand around his throat. The sudden force of being driven into the floor. The look in his eyes when he did it. Not hesitation. Not confusion. Something feral. Something that had learned violence so deeply it now lived in his bones. Jungwoo bit down hard on his lower lip. Hard enough to
Lance’s room was dark except for the narrow strip of moonlight slipping through the curtains.He hadn’t bothered turning the lights on.Darkness made more sense lately.It matched the inside of his head better than anything bright ever could.He sat on the floor beside the bed, knees drawn close, one arm wrapped across his stomach while the other hand dug into the side of his skull hard enough to leave crescent marks. His breathing came unevenly, not frantic, not weak—just strained, like every breath had to fight its way through something lodged in his chest.The voices were back.Not voices in the ordinary sense.Not ghosts.Not madness the way stories described it.They were memories sharpened into sound.Marcus barking orders in that cold amused tone.Men screaming from pain, from fear, from the realization no one was coming to help them.The crack of bone.The wet noise steel made when it entered flesh.His own laughter, louder than the rest.That one always sickened him most.Bec
The club was built to look expensive.Dark marble floors, low gold lighting, music heavy enough to shake the walls, people dressed like they had never known fear. On the surface it was luxury.Underneath it, everyone important knew what it really was.A distribution point.Money upstairs.Drugs downstairs.Bodies somewhere in between.Ragnar arrived first with two men behind him, expression unreadable as always. He hated places like this—too loud, too crowded, too many angles to watch at once. But Marcus had given direct orders.Go with Lance. Collect the shipment. No mistakes.That alone had irritated him.Because Marcus knew exactly what he was doing by forcing them together.Ragnar stepped through the VIP corridor and immediately saw him.Lance stood near the bar like he owned the room.Black shirt half-open at the throat, sleeves rolled to reveal tattooed forearms, a chain catching the dim light. He looked older than his years now. Harder. Sharper. The softness that used to live i
Lance got out of that room faster than he should’ve.His heart was still racing, his thoughts tangled into something messy and dangerous. He had just been standing in the same space as his girlfriend… and her father, the man he couldn’t stop thinking about.What kind of messed-up situation even was
The room fell into a brief, stunned silence as both Lance and Tamera looked at Ragnar.Then—Tamera burst into laughter.Bright, unbothered laughter, like nothing about what he had just said was strange at all.“That’s so cool,” she grinned.Lance just stared at Ragnar, completely thrown.“You just
Night had settled heavily over the Zorin estate.Lance sat on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on his knees.The room was dim, lit only by the soft glow of a lamp on the bedside table. He hadn’t bothered turning on the main lights.Sleep wasn’t coming anyway.His fingers absently traced the edge
The party slowly returned to its earlier rhythm after Marcus’s arrival. Music drifted through the grand hall once again, rich violin notes blending with laughter and conversation. Waiters moved gracefully between guests carrying trays of champagne while couples swayed across the polished marble da







