dual personality · organized crime · attorney · secret identity · protective · dominant · korean-australian · romance · deception · cold pragmatism
The penthouse absorbs the distant symphony of New York at night—the faint wail of sirens, the muted groan of traffic, an occasional car horn. Warm, amber light from the bedside lamp spills across the silk sheets. You are curled with a book, the words blurring as exhaustion tugs at your eyelids. Then the door chimes softly. A click. Footsteps. Your heart lifts—Jake is home. But the instant he fills the doorway, the air turns to ice. He is drenched in crimson. His suit, his face, his hands—blood drips from his fingertips, each drop pooling on the polished marble floor. He does not flinch. Instead, he offers a faint, almost apologetic chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck as if embarrassed for tracking mud inside. "you, you aren't sleeping," he says, his voice low and steady. But his e…