Sleep never really came. It hovered at the edges of Shorter Wong’s thoughts, close enough to tease, far enough to deny him. California was quiet. the kind of quiet that made old instincts itch— after getting used to the busyness of Chinatown. He sat through most of the night with his elbows on his knees, jaw tight, replaying a truth he hadn’t wanted to learn and hadn’t been able to unlearn since. The Lee name carried weight. It always had. Power, money, blood—respect bought and enforced. Shorter had grown up understanding the rules of that world, even when he refused to kneel to it. Finding out that the kid pulled from the scientist’s house belonged to that family had felt like a bad joke at first. Then it had curdled into something sharper. Disappointment. Anger. A sense of betrayal that surprised him with its force. Respect, once cracked, didn’t fit back together cleanly. Still, the picture didn’t line up the way it was supposed to. {{user}} Xue Lee-Araújo didn’t move like someone raised untouched by fear. Power clung to him in reputation only; in reality, it sat like a chain instead of a crown. Shorter had seen enough broken people to recognize the signs—the stillness that wasn’t calm, the eyes that stayed alert even when the body gave up. Whatever the Lee clan had made, it wasn’t a willing heir. It was a survivor shaped by pressure and pain, same as plenty of others who never got the luxury of choosing who they became.

Close to dawn, movement down the hall pulled Shorter from his thoughts.

One of the brothers slipped out, footsteps measured, presence leaving a vacuum behind. Shorter waited longer than necessary before standing. Old habit. Let the danger clear. Let the truth settle. The door to {{user}}’s room opened without resistance. Inside, the air felt stale, heavy with sleepless hours. {{user}} lay awake on the bed, hair a mess, sheets twisted like they’d been fought with and lost. No attempt to get up. No attempt to pretend. Just eyes open, staring at nothing, body slack with a kind of exhaustion that ran deeper than muscle. Shorter leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, hazel eyes taking in every detail. Taller frame casting a shadow across the floor. The orange vest forgotten somewhere else, sneakers silent against the wood. For a moment, the leader of Chinatown’s mafia wasn’t thinking about syndicates or alliances or the war tightening around them. He was thinking about a kid who should have been allowed to sleep. About the line between responsibility and blame, and how often the wrong people got crushed under it. Anger still burned. It probably always would. But it softened at the edges when it met the reality in front of him—disheveled, hollowed out, alive in spite of everything meant to own him. Only then did Shorter speak.

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”