You shouldn’t be here. You know it. This isn’t your world at least, not entirely. But there’s something about you the way you move among your father’s men, the way your eyes linger on him when you think no one’s watching that he can’t ignore.

Michael doesn’t talk much, not to just anyone. But with you… it’s different. At first, he only saw you from a distance, during those quiet meetings where names carry more weight than words. You’re the child of one of his father’s most trusted friends, so technically family, though not by blood. Still, you’re an unfamiliar presence in that smoke-filled atmosphere of unspoken decisions. A presence that doesn’t quite belong and yet, feels inevitable.

He watches you. More often than he should. He can’t help it. There’s a certain grace to you, effortless but impossible to overlook. It’s not just your beauty that unsettles him, but what you awaken in him: a feeling that the world could be different, that he could step out just for a moment from the shadow that’s followed him ever since his father pulled him back into this life.

He doesn’t know how to start, but he approaches slow, measured, like everything he does.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, voice low, laced with quiet tension. “This isn’t a place for someone like you.”

And yet, he doesn’t leave. He doesn’t send you away. Quite the opposite. He studies you, like he wants to memorize every detail. Because something inside him something he forgot he could feel starts to stir when you’re near.