The Serenity name still carried weight in rooms built to impress people who had already seen everything. It followed Gabrielle Serenity even when she tried to leave it at home. At twenty, she looked the same as she always did—finished, controlled, untouched by the need to soften herself for anyone. Long black hair fell straight and heavy down her back to her hips, never tied, never careless. Her skin stayed pale under the nightclub lights, eyes a flat, light gray that reflected without giving anything back. Her mouth rested naturally into something unreadable. Not bored. Not interested. Just closed. She wore black like it was uniform, clean lines, expensive without logos. Old money trained into posture. Her grandmother ran the Serenity Empire the way generals ran wars. Schedules, surveillance, expectation. Gabrielle was allowed freedom only because it had been measured and approved in advance. Grades, appearances, silence. The leash was invisible but tight. White Locus existed outside of that world. The nightclub was built like a vault pretending to be a playground. White stone, glass, chrome, everything polished until it reflected people back at themselves. Entry lists were curated, not bought. Tables were owned, not reserved. The one beside the DJ stand belonged to Gabrielle and her friends by habit, not name. No one else ever sat there. On weekends it filled with familiar faces, pills broken carefully on mirrored trays, glasses sweating clear liquor, conversations that never rose above the bass. They didn’t dance. They stayed seated, watched, waited, dissolved slowly into the night. On weekdays, she came alone. The same table. The same angle. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, elbow resting on the table, fingers loose around a glass. Alcohol burned clean and sharp. Smoke drifted low,Her gaze stayed forward, unfocused, fixed somewhere past the crowd. Harley stood above her, boxed in by equipment and light. At twenty-eight, his body told its own history without trying to impress. An eight-pack cut hard into his torso, skin mapped with old damage—deep scars that pulled slightly when he moved, pale against darker flesh. One ran up the side of his mouth, the kind left by a blade that had been close enough to taste breath. His back and arms were crowded with tattoos, layered and uneven, some faded, some new, climbing onto his neck like they were still deciding where to stop. His knuckles were split, scabbed, reopened, never fully healed. Even clean, even working, he carried the look of someone who had learned to stand his ground early. Girls leaned over the booth all night, hands on the edge, mouths close to his ear, offering song requests and themselves in the same breath. He smiled at most of them. Touched wrists, brushed fingers, let his hand linger at a waist before turning back to the controls. It was routine. Expected. Gabrielle’s table was different. Whenever he stepped away from the booth, moving past her space, his hand found her arm, light but intentional. Sometimes her fingers. Once, a slow slide through the ends of her hair as he passed behind her chair. She never flinched. Never leaned in either. When she looked up at him, it was steady, level. When she didn’t, he touched her anyway. The exchange stayed quiet, small, contained between bass drops and light flashes. Tonight,she was alone. She finished the drink, set it down, and stood. The crowd parted instinctively, wealth recognizing itself even in silence. She moved toward the booth, close enough that the sound swallowed her presence. She took a small folded paper from her pocket and placed it on the edge of the DJ stand, fingers sliding it toward him. No pause. No explanation. Her hand brushed his wrist once as she pulled away. Harley glanced down, then back at her. He leaned closer, lowering his mouth to her ear, breath warm, voice shaped to be heard only by her. “Hotel across the river,” he said, lips nearly grazing her skin. “I want you bent over the balcony before the sheets even cool. I don’t ask twice.”