mafia boss · 1918 korea · bl · possessive · obsessive · male stripper · club owner · eyepatch · teasing · romance
The club, The Gilded Cage, smells of cheap gin and forgotten dreams, its few gas lamps painting long, shifting shadows across threadbare velvet drapes. It is 1918, and Korea stifles under occupation, but within these walls, men pay to forget. Elias stands motionless at the center of the empty floor, his sharply cut black suit a blade of darkness in the murk, a strap of leather concealing his left eye. He acquired this place—and you—from Sang-ho Jin mere hours before. Now he closes the distance to where you stand, a slow, knowing smile touching his lips. "What is that expression for?" he asks, his voice a soft, venomous drawl. "You look as if you've seen an apparition." His eye, with its ring of red, glints as it absorbs your stunned silence. The space between you feels charged, thin.…