LOGINMorning arrived far too early and far too loudly."Get up now, you have work," Van's voice cut through the fog of sleep, accompanied by the distinct, irritating sensation of someone shaking his shoulder with absolutely no mercy.Lance groaned, refusing to surface, still tangled somewhere between sleep and the memory of cold eyes and a firm grip on his arm. "*Still lost.*""BITCH, COME BACK TO REALITY. YOU HAVE WORK." Van's volume climbed several decibels, apparently done with gentle approaches."Oh my fucking ears," Lance groaned, finally cracking one eye open, glaring at his friend with the particular resentment reserved only for mornings after too much alcohol."Get out now," Van said, unmoved by the glare, already yanking the blanket off him entirely."Are you throwing me away?" Lance pouted, making absolutely no effort to move despite having no covers left to hide under."Mr. Lance," Van said, deadly patient, "did you forget you have a job to do?"That, finally, seemed to land. La
"I will be back," Lance announced again, the words slurring softly at the edges, more promise to himself than to anyone listening."Let me co—" Van started, already half out of his seat."Stay here. I will be back," Lance said, waving him off with the loose, unbothered confidence of a man who had no idea how unsteady his own feet had become. He was gone before Van could argue, swallowed into the shifting crowd of the club.The lights blurred into long streaks of color the further he walked. The bass no longer felt like music so much as a second pulse layered over his own, and somewhere between one step and the next, Lance realized he had absolutely no idea where he was going."...uh... I'm lost," he murmured to himself, thoughts moving thick and slow, tangled up in gin and noise."Wher—" He never finished the word.His foot caught on nothing at all — the simple, humiliating betrayal of balance too many drinks had promised him and he pitched forward, already bracing for the impact of
The V.I.P. section had gone quiet, the noise of the club reduced to a distant hum beyond the velvet curtain. Azhael sat rigid on the leather booth, drink forgotten in his hand, painfully aware of the man beside him."Elison will kill you," Azhael said, low and warning, the words meant as a shield.Heinz only smiled, unbothered, leaning in close enough that his voice dropped to something intimate. "Stop thinking about other men in front of your husband.""H...ein...z," Azhael breathed, the name catching in his throat."So beautiful," Heinz murmured, staring into his eyes like he'd found something he had no intention of looking away from.Azhael sat frozen, too stunned to speak. There was something in that gaze — warm, unguarded, dangerously sincere that unraveled the sharp words he usually kept ready. He hated how his silence gave Heinz the space to lean closer still."Even you smell so good," Heinz said, dipping his head toward the curve of Azhael's neck.That broke the spell. "Sto...
The club pulsed with a heartbeat of its own — bass thick enough to feel in the ribs, light bleeding blue and violet across a hundred restless faces. It was the kind of night the city swallowed whole, where secrets and sin sat at the same table and nobody asked questions.Lance Ivory hadn't meant to be the center of attention. He rarely did. But it happened anyway, the way it always did — a rose tucked behind his ear, dark hair falling into eyes that looked bored with the whole world, and a body draped carelessly over a velvet booth like he owned the room. Beside him, Van Hert laughed at something Lance had said, the two of them tangled up in that easy, reckless kind of fun that only came after the third drink.That was when the stranger approached."Hey, beauty~" the man crooned, sliding into the space beside their table like he'd been invited.Lance's expression didn't so much shift as *sag*, a flat, exhausted little grimace crossing his face before he could stop it. He didn't even b
The abandoned factory groaned under its own weight, rusted staircases zigzagging up through the dark like the skeleton of something long dead. Heinz Floris stepped carefully over the debris scattered across the floor, phone pressed to his ear, voice clipped and businesslike even here, in the middle of nowhere."We have arri—" he started, before the call cut him off mid-sentence, forcing him to finish the conversation with a series of short, irritated replies instead.Beside him, Mateo Stellar took one look at what waited for them deeper in the building and exhaled slowly. "My goodness..."There, in the center of the ruined space, a man sat slumped in an old electric chair, wires coiled around his limbs and torso like something out of a nightmare, his body utterly still.Mateo crouched beside him, checking for any sign of life, though the answer was already obvious before he even finished. "He's dead," he confirmed grimly.Heinz pulled on a pair of gloves without being asked, his earli
The office was, as always, aggressively elegant—dark wood, towering bookshelves, chandeliers that dripped candlelight across leather furniture nobody ever seemed to actually sit in. Elison Floris stood near the window with his phone in hand, unbothered by the grandeur around him, mid-sneeze."Achuu~""Are you sure you didn't catch a cold?" Azhael asked, not even glancing up from his own drink.Elison waved a dismissive hand, nodding instead toward the matter at hand. "Did you find anything about him?"Azhael sighed, long and put-upon. "No. You told us nothing except that he smells nice.""He really doe—"The door burst open before Elison could finish defending his single, deeply unhelpful data point."ELISON!" The voice cut through the room like a blade, loud enough to rattle the chandelier overhead."*Close his ears* STOP SCREAMING," Elison snapped, clamping his hands over Azhael's ears as though that would somehow solve the noise problem at its source.Mateo Stellar—Heinz's perpetua







