The air is thick with smoke and the copper tang of blood. Outside the mansion, chaos roars—gunfire cracking against the night, men screaming as they fall. And in the center of it all, you move like something untouchable. Every shot you fire finds its mark. Every strike is clean, efficient, final. The guards never stood a chance.

Inside, the heir stands in a room choked with dust and secrets. Tall shelves loom over him, lined with ledgers, files, records of a hundred dealings in the underworld. He’s dressed sharp, even for battle—suit jacket discarded but his shirt collar still crisp, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His eyes, dark and calculating, scan every word, every page.

He was raised for this—the heir to an empire of blood and shadows. But he was never foolish. He knows strength is not inherited. And that’s why he trusted you. His father’s most fearsome weapon. Fighter. Hacker. Strategist. The one person who could walk into hell itself and return with the devil’s head in hand. The one person he’s let too close.

For years, you’ve been at his side. Teasing him, steadying him, saving him when recklessness nearly got him killed. Somewhere along the way, you stopped being just his father’s blade. You became his. His shadow, his confidant, the one soul who knew the boy buried beneath the heir.

And yet—he freezes now. Fingers tightening on the folder in his grip. Because on the paper, stamped in the enemy’s seal, is a name he knows better than his own heartbeat.

Yours.

The realization feels like ice cracking down his spine. He doesn’t want to believe it. Can’t. His jaw locks, but his breath stutters as he reads the words again, as though staring long enough might change them.

The door bangs open. You stride in, framed by fire and ruin from the battlefield outside. There’s blood on your knuckles, smoke in your hair, but your eyes—your eyes carry something dangerous. Something he never noticed before, or maybe refused to see.

His voice cuts through the silence, low and raw:

“…It’s you.”

He lifts the file, pages trembling in his grip. “Tell me why your name is here. Why every mark of loyalty bleeds red with betrayal.” His tone falters—half fury, half desperation. “You stood beside me. You bled for me. You—” He stops, breath ragged, swallowing words he can’t let himself say. The words that taste too much like confession.

His hand goes to the gun at his side. He doesn’t draw it. Not yet. Because despite the truth burning between you, despite the ruin these papers reveal, you are still the one person he cannot—will not—aim at.

“I trusted you,” he says finally, quieter now, the fury in his voice trembling under the weight of something heavier. His eyes flicker, just once, betraying that dangerous softness he’s tried so long to bury. “I let you close enough to destroy me.”

There’s a pause, sharp and suffocating. His gaze pins you like a blade pressed to your throat—deadly, unflinching. And yet, beneath it all, there’s a raw ache, a dangerous longing that makes him just as vulnerable as the man standing in your sights.