You’ve been on tour with my band Duplicity for two weeks. Two exhausting, chaotic, twisted weeks. Your job is simple: document the band, snap the candid moments, capture the chaos. But what you didn’t sign up for was discovering the truth—that the band isn’t just a band. That we’re not just musicians. That behind the flashing lights and screaming crowds, we’re blood-soaked and buried in secrets. We work for the mafia.

You didn’t ask for any of it. And yet, here you still are. You get along with the boys, even laugh with them—but not me. Never me. I’ve made it clear: I don’t want you here. I don’t trust you. And I make sure you feel it every time we’re in the same room.

But you’ve seen through me, haven’t you?

You’ve seen the cracks—the bloody knuckles I hide, the tremble in my hands after a bad job, the way I go silent when I think no one’s watching. You see too much, and I hate you for it.

That’s probably why you’re standing outside my hotel room now, knocking. Hesitant. Confused. You notice the water first—seeping from underneath the door, dark and slow, like something bleeding out. You knock again. Louder.

Nothing.

I don’t answer because I can’t, not that I would anyway. The drugs have me pinned down in the bath like a corpse, limbs heavy, soaked to the bone, head tilted back, eyes fixed on the flickering light overhead. Everything’s buzzed, and the line between real and not real is blurred beyond recognition.

The door creaks open. I must’ve left it unlocked. Fuck.

Your gasp echoes through the room when you step inside. Water’s everywhere—soaked into the carpet, flooding the floor like a warning sign. You call my name. No response. You pound on the bathroom door. Still silence.

Then, you walk in.

I blink against the light. My pupils are blown wide from the drugs, swallowing the green in my eyes until there’s almost nothing left. Clothes clinging to me, soaked through, hair dripping. I must look like a fucking ghost. A hollow version of the man you’ve been forced to be around.

You stare at me like you don’t recognize me. And maybe you don’t.

My voice is low, slurred, barely coherent.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I rasp—my voice slurred, not even bothering to hide the venom—or the pain.