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The rain had stopped being dramatic hours ago. It was soft now—more mist than storm—but it clung to everything with that petty kind of persistence Hollice always hated. The kind of rain that didn't soak your coat, just made it damp enough to irritate you the rest of the night.

He stood under the awning of the Moonshot Casino, shoulders stiff beneath a dark wool overcoat. The collar was up, framing his face like he was trying to hide in luxury. Beneath the coat, he wore a charcoal three-piece suit with wine-red pinstripes so faint they only showed when the streetlights kissed them just right. His dress shirt was a muted ash-gray, tie perfectly knotted, shoes polished like obsidian mirrors. Everything about him was put together. Tailored. Composed.

And yet, he couldn’t stop picking at the cuticle of his thumb.

The Strip stretched out in front of him like a lie told in neon. Holograms danced above the buildings—girls with chrome skin and neon hair selling cocktails named after planets. Giant slot machine ads flickered with grinning mascots and fake jackpot screams. The pavement was slick, reflecting it all in a shaky oily shimmer, like the city was crying underneath the glamor.

Hollice lit a cigarette. He didn’t want it, not really, but the action gave his hands something to do as he walked.

People passed.

A kid—no older than sixteen—walked by in scuffed shoes and a jacket that didn’t fit him, probably stolen. He was jittery, twitching with a chemical kind of energy, mouth half-open like he was chewing words that didn’t make sense even to him. His pupils were blown wide. Hollice knew that look.

The boy laughed to himself and darted across the street with his shoulders hunched like he expected a hit to come from nowhere. Hollice flinched without meaning to, his stomach tightening.

Sixteen.

He brought his cigarette to his lips and missed the first drag, hand trembling slightly. He’d been that kid. High out of his mind on pills cut with things he couldn’t pronounce. Turning tricks just to eat. Men twice his age paying to ruin him while he pretended it didn’t matter. Pretended he liked it. He had worn nicer clothes back then—sometimes makeup too—but it didn’t change the fear under his ribs. It didn’t change what it was.

He looked away before he got sick.

A long, low exhale of smoke followed as he turned down the Strip, walking slowly, like the weight in his chest would drag him to the curb if he didn’t keep moving.

A pair of women spilled out of a cab nearby—gold sequins clinging to their bodies, heels unsteady on wet pavement. They clung to each other, half-giggling, half-shouting in a language only drunk girls understand. Hollice smiled for a second.

Then he saw him.

Across the street, a man in a green coat stood perfectly still. Cigarette limp in the corner of his mouth. Watching. Not staring—tracking. That was the difference. Hollice knew it because he’d been trained to notice. The man was a hunter, and the girls hadn’t even noticed the trap had teeth.

Hollice’s smile evaporated. He froze, instinct flickering in his gut. Not because he wanted to stop the man. Because he knew that man. Not literally, but functionally. Hollice had worked beside men like him when he ran with Faust. Back then, he’d believed killing was a step on the ladder. That offering your soul to monsters was how you earned your seat at the table. Sometimes the hits were clean. Business. Other times…

His throat tightened.

He remembered being the girls too. Not drunk. Not laughing. But watched. Followed. Tested by powerful men who liked to play with their food. When he started climbing the ranks, that kind of attention never left him. It just got quieter. Slicker. Richer.

He looked down. Watched the cigarette in his own hand burn down to the filter. He dropped it, crushed it underfoot, and kept walking.

The glitz of the Strip gave way to more subdued storefronts. Less neon, more concrete. He passed a janitor in a clear poncho, crouched by the curb, scraping gum from the sidewalk like it had personally offended him.

Hollice stopped for a moment

The rain had soaked through his coat by now, slow and cold and steady, trailing in rivulets down the back of his neck. His hair clung to his face, flattened and dark like ink-streaks. It was the kind of rain that felt personal—not violent, not showy, just endless. A dull reminder that no matter how high you climbed, you were still made of skin and bone and silence.

His shoes squelched slightly as he stood there, water pooling at the curb, catching reflections of red and blue neon that didn’t quite reach the soul.

The janitor crouched only a few feet away, hunched in a cheap plastic poncho that clung to his back like second skin. His gloves were torn at the fingers. He scraped gum from the sidewalk with the slow, methodical movements of someone who’d given up on speed and now just worked for the rhythm. Like he’d made peace with being invisible.

Hollice watched him, frozen in place.

That was the kind of pain that made sense. The kind you could see, touch, carry in your joints. Not this hollow, glitter-covered emptiness in his chest that made everything feel like a lie. He envied the man’s simplicity—not because it was easy, but because it was honest.

The janitor paused—not because he saw Hollice, but because Hollice’s shadow fell across the sidewalk, cutting into the light. Their worlds touched in that single, unremarkable second. The man blinked up at him, squinting, face unreadable under the hood. His eyes didn’t widen in recognition. Didn’t flinch or soften. Just a glance. An acknowledgment.

Hollice’s breath caught. Then he looked down.

Shame washed over him heavier than the rain. Without a word, he stepped back, peeled his shadow off the curb, and turned away.

He raised one hand and hailed a cab with the other, eyes stinging—not from the water.

He stepped out into the gutter as the janitor’s eyes drifted back down, back to work, like Hollice had never existed at all.

The Strip never slept—but it stared.

From every corner and every height, it looked down at him. A thousand digital eyes blinking in rotating loops, selling perfume, pills, paradise. Billboards with his face—smiling, doctored, glittering in some dumb champagne suit like he’d never bled for this city. One of them even said “The King of Kindness” in soft gold serif, flickering slightly from water damage near the edge.

He swallowed back something bitter.

Behind him, tourists were still posing in front of the Casino de Fleur's marble lion—holding cocktails, lips painted red, gold heels too tall for the rain-soaked sidewalk. A couple stumbled out of a club, all arms and teeth and mascara running in streaks. They laughed like the world owed them nothing but joy.

He used to think the Strip was beautiful. Not just the lights or the buildings, but the promise in it. He remembered being eighteen—thin, jumpy, worn to the bone—clinging to a streak of luck in casino after casino, dodging security, acting older than he was so no one would think to check his ID or ask how he got so good with cards. He wasn’t a thief, but he wasn’t clean either. Just another ghost boy trying to disappear in a city that fed on the desperate. He thought he’d found a place to hide here, a crack in the universe wide enough to slip into and never come out.

He owned it now. All of it. Every club. Every gold-dusted lie. And he was still scared.

Hollice folded his arms across his soaked chest and waited. A cab passed him by—its light off, the driver barely even glancing at him. He didn’t blame him. People on this street didn’t stop for people who weren’t smiling.

The next car took longer.

He stood still and tried to count the blinking signs. Moonshot Casino – Open All Hours. Free Entry Before Midnight. Try the Ladykiller Martini – Winner of Best Drink 3 Years Running!

He hated that martini. It tasted like syrup and bleach.

There was a flickering news ticker above the old Courthall building. Something about a break in the Golden Tiger’s security. Something about a shooting in Sector 9. Something about him, too—his face, again, this time paired with the word “philanthropist.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, jaw clenched. He’d donated a hospital wing last week. He didn’t even remember why.

A girl, no older than seventeen, moved like a ghost down the alley beside the glass fountain. Her bare feet made soft, haunting splashes on the puddled pavement. She clutched her heels in one trembling hand while her torn dress fluttered like a warning flag in the chill night air.

Hollice’s pulse spiked. That raw, exposed vulnerability—she was on the edge of something dark—stirred memories of him as a boy of eighteen, a kid with too much luck and too little to lose, always running from shadows. But this wasn’t him, not anymore. It was a distant echo of desperation he’d hoped to leave behind. Yet staring at her, he felt that old fear resurface, coiling tight in his gut, whispering that he’d never truly escaped his past.

He leaned forward, torn between a desperate instinct to reach out and the cold dread that something was very wrong. For a heartbeat, he almost shouted—“Run!” or “I made it out!”—as if his voice could warn her away from the fate he’d narrowly dodged. But the words stuck in his throat like lead. Instead, he remained frozen in place, watching as she slipped silently behind the chain-link fence of the Belladonna Lounge, her form swallowed by darkness. The echo of her departure left him staring at a shattered bottle on the ground—a cruel token of broken dreams and lost innocence.

Across the street, a man in a worn coat stood under the dim glow of a streetlamp. The man’s eyes, empty and unblinking, tracked the girl’s retreat with a predator’s precision. For a split second, Hollice felt his hand twitch toward the spot where his gun had once offered him false protection. But tonight, he wasn’t armed—he wasn’t in the mood for more violence. The memory of Faust’s cold indifference surfaced; Faust had taught him the art of silent observation, of letting horrors slide by. And Hollice had shared that haunted stance for far too long.

His stomach churned violently as he recalled those long-forgotten moments when he’d been hunted, when he’d been the target of men who saw his youth as weakness, and his vulnerability as an invitation. He had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those predators, willing to sacrifice pieces of himself for power. Now, as he watched life spiral down a dark alley, he realized he was still a victim—haunted by every choice that led him here.

The rain intensified, slanting down in sharp, icy cuts. Each droplet blurred the neon glow into a shifting mirage of light and shadow, as if the city itself was trying to erase its sins through a futile shower. He turned away from the scene, unwilling—or unable—to act. He wasn’t their savior. He’d spent his life trying to be what the city demanded: tough, clean, loud, and ruthless. But tonight, as the relentless rain pounded down, that facade cracked, revealing the bitter truth he’d been denying for too long: he was just a damaged soul, barely holding on.

And then, as if summoned by his despair, the cab finally pulled over. Hollice hesitated at the curb, his eyes fixed on the reflection rippling in the darkened window of the car. In that broken mirror, he saw not the immaculate image of a powerful mob boss, but a man with sunken eyes, wet hair clinging to his face, and a look that was neither wholly man nor myth—a living embodiment of unfinished promises and unhealed wounds.

With a heavy heart and a soul that trembled like the city’s neon heartbeat, he stepped into the cab without a word, handing the driver his address as if it were the last fragile secret he could still trust.

Hollice slid into the backseat like he was vanishing into his own personal twilight. The cab’s interior was a soft, shadowed space—a worn leather seat that had seen better days, a muted overhead light that barely cut through the dusk invading the cab—and as the door shut, it felt like he was closing off the rest of the world. With trembling fingers, he fumbled with his coat, still slick with the remnants of the rain, until he finally settled into the seat.

For a long stretch, he stared out the window, his gaze fixed on the blur of passing neon and wet pavement. The city, in all its garish splendor, reminded him of a broken symphony: each flickering billboard, each splintered reflection in the puddles, a note of dissonance in a tune he no longer understood. His eyes grew heavy and wet with silent tears that traced the contours of his face, burning as they fell—like tiny, relentless embers, carrying away slivers of his hardened resolve.

He watched the world drift past: a stray dog scuttling between trash bins, a streetlamp shaking in the wind, the glistening sheen of rain on cold asphalt. Each scene was a reminder of the countless memories that now clung to him like a second skin—the bitter, the sweet, and the damn near unbearable. The further the cab moved from that cold curb, the deeper he sank into himself, his heart and mind rapidly unspooling the accumulated weight of every regret, every forced smile, every moment he’d chased a shadow of hope.

Inside the cab, the soft hum of the engine and the muted classical music playing on an old radio created a gentle counterpoint to the storm that raged inside him. His breathing was shallow and ragged, as if each breath was a question he wasn’t sure he could answer. And though his eyes were filled with tears that blurred his vision, he stubbornly kept them lowered, avoiding the brief encounter with any reflection, any person who might see the fragility beneath the mob boss’s tailored veneer.

Across the cab’s backseat divide, the cab driver managed a quiet, knowing glance through the rear-view mirror—a small flicker of empathy in eyes that had seen one too many midnight laments. He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t force words. Instead, the driver let silence be a gentle escort for Hollice’s desolation, acknowledging his pain with a softness that was almost imperceptible. The years had taught the driver that some nights were meant for quiet suffering, and no amount of polished cynicism could disguise the vulnerability of a soul worn raw by its own haunted history.

The rain outside continued its steady dialogue with the night. The cab rolled forward slowly through the deserted streets, its headlights cutting a path through the murk of neon reflections and dark puddles, echoing the unsteady beat of Hollice’s heart. He pressed his face against the cold window, as if the raindrops might wash away the burden of his memories. His mind whirled—reminders of better days tangled with the relentless toll of the choices that had brought him here, to this moment of hushed despair.

For minutes that felt like hours, Hollice sat in that isolated compartment, every inch of him soaked with the realization of how deeply he had fallen. His emotions churned into quiet monologues of regret, every breath a question as to whether he ever truly belonged to the harsh world outside the cab. The interior was filled with the quiet sorrow of a man who had tasted victory, only to discover it was the most bitter defeat of all.

As the cab continued its measured journey through the darkened cityscape, the only sound between them was that relentless hum and the soft clatter of rain against glass. Then, breaking the silence that had carefully shielded his heartbreak, the cab driver spoke in a low, gentle voice:

"Long night, huh?"

The cab driver’s gentle question—“Long night, huh?”—lingered in the dim light of the cab as Hollice’s gaze remained fixed on the smudged reflection in the rain-streaked window. For a long stretch, the silence held more than just the hum of the engine; it carried a storm of thoughts that threatened to burst out in disjointed fragments.

At first, his words emerged haltingly, barely audible over the drumming of rain against the glass. “I… I work this hard just to… just to keep working hard,” he murmured, his voice unsteady. The admission was raw, revealing a worn-out truth. He leaned forward, as if trying to capture a fragment of himself before it evaporated into the night air. “Every promotion—it’s all just another weight. Every title… it doesn’t mean I’m any closer to… to something real. It’s like I climb higher and all I do is collect more burdens,” he continued, each word steeped in a frantic cadence that betrayed a hidden panic.

The cab driver, his weathered eyes soft with concern yet respectful of the silence, offered no more than a nod as if urging Hollice to keep speaking. And so he did. His thoughts, once kept hidden deep inside, now spilled forth like shards of broken glass.

“It’s a treadmill,” Hollice said, his tone rising and falling with a manic urgency. “I’m chasing something—always chasing. I never feel safe, even when I should be at the top. Every step forward just... just leaves me feeling more empty. More alone.” His voice began to crack, the cadence quickening in a cascade of overlapping confessions.

He took a shuddering breath. “I mean, what’s the point of reaching for something when, once I get there, it’s not enough? The higher I go, the louder the silence becomes. It’s like I’m surrounded by all these accomplishments that I built, but inside… inside I’m drowning. I’m drowning in all this responsibility.” His eyes, still fixed on the dark parade of city lights, burned with unshed tears that tracked silently down his cheeks.

The rain outside blurred the neon into a mosaic of fleeting memories, and with each heartbeat, Hollice’s mind raced over the checklist of regrets and heartaches. “It’s all just a cycle—one mistake after another, one promotion after another, and yet I’m stuck. I wake up every day and find I’m no better than yesterday. I’m still fighting these demons, even though I’m supposed to be so strong, so… untouchable.” His words were hurried now, a torrent of raw vulnerability that he hadn’t intended to share, yet found himself compelled to reveal.

Every phrase was like a confession, a heartbeat punctuating his loneliness: He spoke of the cold reality that every achievement only deepened the void. He admitted how success felt like a glittering cage that trapped him with a responsibility he never asked for. “I’m not some hero—you know?” he whispered, voice trembling with bitter irony. “I’m just a man who keeps running, trying to outrun the emptiness.” There was a pause, thick with regret, before he continued, his tone mixing resignation with desperate need for relief: “I feel… I feel like I can’t stop. That I’m suffocating in this endless pursuit of more—a never-ending race where every finish line is just another place to begin.”

Through the fog of his panic, Hollice’s phrases bunched together like ticking off a morbid checklist in his head—a litany of admissions that were as much an exorcism as they were a confession. Each phrase bled into the next, revealing the inner turmoil of a man who had built an empire only to find it hollow. And as the cab sped along the desolate, rain-slicked streets, his words, raw and unfiltered, echoed off the walls of that small sanctuary on wheels.

Then, softly, as if to tether him to the present, the cab driver broke the cascade of confessions with a quiet, almost tender murmur.

Hollice’s confession trailed into a hollow silence. The rain drummed a muted cadence on the cab’s windows as he gathered his thoughts once more, shifting the tone of his soliloquy. His eyes remained fixed on the passing city—a kaleidoscope of neon and regrets—while his mind wandered into the darker corners of his inner life.

He was 27—alone, unhitched, childless. Every birthday came with a mirror and a reminder: he’d built an empire by his own hand, but not a single family to call his. His reflection in the window was a stranger now, a polished image of a man whose triumphs felt too hollow without the warmth of connection. His heart ached with the isolation of those fleeting moments when he longed for intimacy, for someone to share his successes and failures without the endless burden of expectation.

Then there was the inescapable truth of who he was. Hollice knew he was gay. And yet, in the throes of this midnight descent, a bitter irony twisted inside him: he thought, with a fierce ache, that life might be simpler if he were straight—if his love could be wrapped in the veneer of normalcy he’d been forced to pursue. His mind wandered to the memories of boardroom battles and whispered deals—a world where rival bosses, though men with appetites for men, still maintained the facade of respectability. They had wives and children, lives painted with the soft brushstrokes of domesticity. They were revered, not despite their indiscretions, but because their personal lives fit the mold of what society demanded: strength, stability, a legacy.

In sharp contrast, Hollice stood alone in his truth. Every deal he closed, every rival he outmaneuvered, had forced him to construct an armored version of himself. Yet beneath the polished exterior, he felt as fragile as glass. Every whispered remark about him being “a fairy” and every disdainful glance that reduced him to a caricature etched deep wounds he couldn’t easily mend. He resented the way people treated him—not just the rivals, but even those on his own side—seeing him as lesser, as somehow not fully a man.

He envied women too. Women, in his mind, carried a certain effortless grace: they could sit, be pretty, be compliant, and somehow expect to be cared for by the men around them. A wife, a mother—titles that brought respect without the constant grinding struggle for survival. Women were nurtured. They were loved without the perpetual burden of having to prove their strength at every twist of fate. Hollice, by contrast, was forced to fight every waking moment, proving his worth in a field that scorned his tenderness as weakness and his ambition as vanity.

As he stared out the rain-washed window, these thoughts clashed in his mind like errant signals in a dead channel. The image of his rival bosses—a man who enjoyed the luxury of a loving wife, whose mere presence consoled him after a long, hard day—haunted him. Every every compliment or casual remark he heard in passing reminded him that his own identity was a battleground where softness was derided and masculinity was stolen from him.

The relentless pressure of his existence twisted inside him, a bitter cocktail of envy, self-loathing, and despair. Being himself was a struggle—a constant fight to assert his identity in a world that channeled contempt toward what it could not understand. In that moment, Hollice’s heart pounded with the realization that his very nature demanded a fight he never wished to wage. His desires, his true self, were a liability in a ruthless game where even the most honorable of men were forced into roles that never fit.

And so, in the quiet sanctuary of the cab, with every raindrop a reminder of what he could never be, Hollice’s confession deepened. He lingered on the thought that life might have been simpler if he were different—if his love were wrapped in the safe guise of normalcy, if he could be a woman who would be cherished for her innate softness rather than forced to claw her way through an endless, unyielding struggle. In his inner world, he craved that gentle existence—a life where respect wasn’t earned through perpetual combat, but granted as naturally as the morning light.

The ache of isolation, the weight of unfulfilled desire, and the bitter taste of envy mingled into a turmoil that threatened to overflow. Each passing moment in the cab felt like another verdict on his very being, a silent chorus of doubts and lost dreams echoing as faintly as the city’s neon heartbeat.

He had sometimes longed to be a parent, to feel that tender responsibility of nurturing a child—someone who might bring a soft kind of love into the void he carried. Yet even as the idea fluttered at the edge of his thoughts, it was tainted by a deep-seated terror. The very thought of creating life, of bringing another soul into a world that had pounded his own into ruin, sparked a cold dread in him. How could he, a man who barely managed to love himself, ever hope to care for someone else?

Images of his own childhood drifted in like smoke—half-real, half-remembered. Not harshly, not with the fury of trauma sharpened by hindsight, but with a quiet, confused fondness that curled at the edges of his thoughts like a guilty secret. He had loved the person who hurt him. Trusted them. Needed them. That made it harder to call what happened wrong, even if everyone else would. Even if, somewhere deep inside, he knew it was.

He didn’t dwell on it often, not out of avoidance, but because there was nothing in it that made sense. What was the point in hating something he had once clung to like a lifeline? He had survived by confusing pain with affection, by taking comfort in the scraps of attention he’d been given, even when they came with teeth.

Now, as an adult with all the polished edges of power and the quiet ruin of his private life, he tried not to look too closely at those memories. When they surfaced, he would glide past them, like skipping a stone over a dark lake. Skimming the surface was easier than sinking in.

And yet, when the thought of children entered his mind—of raising someone, loving someone unconditionally—there was a subtle flinch. Not from the pain itself, but from the uncertainty. Would he know what real love looked like? Would he recognize it, much less offer it? That vulnerable kid inside him had learned to survive by trusting too easily, and then not at all. He didn’t know if that part of him could be trusted with something so pure.

The question lingered in his chest like a locked room with no key.

The cab turned off the main strip, coasting into quieter lanes lit by softer signage and the low throb of distant bass. Hollice didn’t notice the change. His head stayed tilted, forehead gently pressed to the glass, breath fogging it faintly. His hands, clasped loosely in his lap, trembled just a little. It wasn’t enough to draw attention. Just enough to make his shoulders pull tighter inward, like he could cave in on himself and disappear.

The driver didn’t interrupt again. Maybe he sensed it—that this wasn’t a conversation, just a confession looking for a place to die quietly.

Hollice wiped the corner of his eye with his thumb, subtle, practiced. His face ached from the stillness. His throat burned. His tie felt like a noose he didn’t earn.

He thought about what it would’ve meant to be different. To have been born someone else. A woman, maybe. A soft, graceful thing that people didn’t expect so much from. He could have curled into someone’s chest at night and been held instead of doing the holding. Could’ve wept and been kissed for it, not blamed for being weak. He could’ve had a child without the shame. Without someone looking at him like he’d broken a rule by just existing.

The car slowed in front of his high-rise.

“Here you are, son,” the cabbie said gently. Not nosy. Not kind, exactly. But something small in his voice was careful. Like handling a bruised peach.

Hollice blinked at the streetlight shining on the pavement. “Yeah,” he murmured, not moving right away. “Thanks.”

He slid out of the cab with the slow, sick stiffness of someone not ready to go home. Rain had started again—light, cold—and he stood under it for a beat too long before heading inside.

The building was too clean. Too quiet. It always felt like a mausoleum after nights like this, a place made to seal something in.

Hollice’s shoes tracked water across the marble as he stepped through the lobby. The doorman gave him a nod he didn’t return. The elevator doors opened fast, too fast, and he stepped inside like a man walking into a confessional booth.

It was just him in there.

Just his reflection in the brushed steel, shaky and faint, looking back like a stranger. He gripped the railing. Tight.

The world tilted a little. He leaned into the corner, trying to breathe, trying to pretend the silence wasn’t screaming.

Thirty-eight floors.

He counted them in his head.

Each number felt heavier than the last.

The elevator doors peeled open with a soft chime, but to Hollice it sounded distant. Blunted. Like it had traveled through layers of cotton and fog to reach him.

He stepped out into the corridor, slow, deliberate, like he wasn’t sure if the floor would hold him.

The hallway was still. Dimly lit. The kind of silence reserved for spaces that cost far too much.

His door was already unlocked.

The escort had let himself in—Hollice preferred it that way. It made things feel less like a transaction, more like a dream. Something he could wake up from without receipts.

He entered.

The lights were low inside. Music played faintly—someone’s attempt at setting a mood, though the ambiance only highlighted how empty everything felt. The escort—older, mature, shapely in a familiar way Hollice didn’t want to look at too long—was waiting in the living room with a drink in hand, posing like he was being paid to be art. Which he was.

Hollice didn’t speak. Just dropped his coat on the floor and walked past without a glance. The escort followed wordlessly.

~~~~~~

There was an empty glass on the nightstand—something amber, half-melted with two spent ice cubes slick against the curve of the bottom. He didn’t remember drinking it, only remembered pouring. The burn should’ve helped. It used to help. Now it just lingered in his throat, sour and dry like shame.

The bedsheets still smelled like sweat and cologne. Not his.

Too sharp, too mature—oakwood, spice, some overpriced scent worn only by men who knew their power and didn’t question it. Older, confident, rich in a way that had nothing to do with money. That was the kind he always brought home. That was the kind that ruined him.

Hollice sat back down on the bed, robe slipping from one shoulder. He rubbed his face hard, like he could scrub the last hour off it. The touch of another person was still etched into his skin. His hips ached. His body felt borrowed. Like someone else had used it and handed it back crumpled and wet.

He looked down at his hands.

They trembled.

"Why the hell do I keep doing this?" he asked aloud.

His voice was hoarse. Not from speaking—he hadn’t said more than ten words to the man—but from holding back whatever had been trying to claw out of him all night.

He leaned forward, elbows to thighs, head in his hands.

"Same damn thing every time. They walk out clean. I stay here... picking up after myself."

I choose them older. Stronger. Men who know who they are. Men who have children. Wives. A presence. A spine. Men who—if he stood beside—he’d look like a toy or a kept thing. A thing meant to serve.

He hated it.

He needed it.

“I’m not even the one fucking them,” he laughed, too sharply. “I—”

The laugh caught in his throat.

He stood too quickly.

His stomach turned.

He swayed.

One hand to the wall, the other over his mouth, he made it to the bathroom. Cold black and white tile. Harsh lights. A mirror he couldn’t look at. He dropped to his knees and heaved into the toilet—bitter liquor, bile, nothing solid, nothing substantial, nothing that could pass for sustenance.

It felt like everything he’d ever swallowed was coming back up to accuse him.

After, he stayed there, knelt beside the bowl, one arm limp against the seat like a supplicant before a porcelain god.

"Lord, I make myself sick."

He said it like a prayer.

He didn’t flush. He just pushed himself back against the cabinets and sat there with his knees up, robe hitched awkwardly around one of his shoulders, his chest damp with sweat.

A thought slithered in:

This doesn’t make you a man. You’re not a man. You never were.

No one had said it aloud tonight. But he’d heard it too many times in his life for it to need speaking.

They didn’t respect him. Not like they respected the other bosses. The ones with wedding bands and kids and stories about how hard they fought to rise up, not who they fucked or how good they looked doing it.

He’d overheard what they called him. Fairy. Said behind teeth gritted in false politeness, or else tossed around in whispers when they thought he wouldn’t hear. Pretty boy. Doll face. Never said to his face, of course—he was still the kingpin, still dangerous in the ways they could measure—but the word hung over every room he entered, soft and poisonous. It clung to him.

And yet he’d done what they couldn’t. Cliff’s face still burned in the back of his mind—his old rival, big and mean and louder than sin—gasping and clawing at Hollice’s arm as he strangled the life out of him. Hollice had a bullet lodged in his side, blood pouring into his shoe, and a gash so deep across his brow that he could taste metal dripping down his cheek. Blinded by red in one eye and his other eye failing from the blood loss. And still, he’d killed him. Quiet. Final. No hesitation.

He was that guy for a moment. The one who didn’t flinch. Who did what had to be done.

But that wasn’t who he was. Not really. It didn’t stick.

He didn’t feel like that kind of man—whatever that meant anymore. The people around him sure as hell didn’t see him that way. He was too clean, too well-kept, too soft-spoken until he wasn’t. He wore silk robes, not tactical gear. He drank wine, not whiskey. He spoke like he read too much poetry, like he was always a little too tired for war.

He’d proved himself, hadn’t he? Over and over. But no matter what he did, it never made them look at him different. They didn’t tell stories about his kills like they did with the other bosses. It was just his stories in bed they told. His violence was an accident. A rumor. Something they pretended didn’t happen.

He wished he was that guy sometimes. The one who did what needed to be done without it eating him alive. The one who didn’t cry after, or puke, or lie awake shaking and wondering if he was even real anymore.

But he wasn't. And no one believed he ever could be.

They even respected women more than him. The thought sank to his gut. A deep, intrusive thought that weighed him down.

At least women had a place. At least women were expected to receive. To surrender. To be loved and carried and protected for it.

But him?

He was supposed to be a man. And yet every time he gave in—wanted to give in—it felt like a betrayal. Not of others. Of himself. Of the image he wore like a mask: President, boss, ruler of Las Pariso’s most infamous Casino.

But what kind of king comes home and begs for a stranger’s hands like it’s the only thing keeping him alive?

What kind of man cries alone and vomits his guts out after?

What kind of man wishes, just for a second, he was someone else entirely?

“I might of as well been a woman,” he muttered, voice half-mad and hollow with tears. “Maybe it’d be easier. People would understand. They’d pity me. Love me, even, if I kept quiet and gave them what they wanted. A pretty smile and warm embrace. I could sit in silk and smile and no one would ask why I wasn’t enough.”

He pressed his forehead to the cabinet behind him, eyes red, wet, burning.

His hands clenched in his lap.

He felt so full of grief he thought he’d explode. But it had nowhere to go. It was too shapeless. Too old. Too rooted in a version of himself he didn’t want to face.

He was still that kid sometimes.

Just taller. Just more expensive.

The bathroom light buzzed overhead, casting a sickly, jaundiced glow across the tiles. It flickered, faintly. Or maybe that was his eyes. Hollice sat curled up beneath the sink, robe clutched halfway around his body like a child trying to dress himself after a nightmare. The silk dragged across the floor like it didn’t belong to him anymore—like nothing did. His shoulders shook. Quietly at first. Then louder. Then quietly again.

The crying came in waves, like something physical rising in him, something he couldn’t control, only survive.

He gripped his hair with both hands, knuckles bone-white, the strands tangled between his fingers, tugging. A dull ache bloomed across his scalp but he didn’t stop. His forehead pressed into his knees, and his whole body curled in like it wanted to disappear inside itself.

He was whispering something. Over and over. Lips moving, but no voice. A name? An apology? A chant to hold the rest of himself together? Even he didn’t know.

Nothing sounded right in his mouth anymore.

“I’m pathetic,” maybe.

“Someone fix me.”

Or just “please. Father”

The tile underneath him was cold. The cold made the pain feel real. Grounded him. His hip pressed into it, bone to porcelain. His knees screamed. His back was wet with sweat where the robe clung to him, his bare chest mottled with the flush of drink, sex, and shame.

He couldn’t remember how much he’d drank. Enough to make the world soft at the edges. Not enough to silence the thoughts.

I don’t even like drinking, he thought. Not really. It just… buys time.

His head throbbed like someone had taken a pipe to it. But no one had hurt him. No one had laid a hand on him tonight with cruelty. Every touch had been calculated, purchased, practiced.

That almost made it worse.

He laughed once—sharp, breathless, and almost choking on it.

“Can’t even fall apart right,” he muttered to no one, voice hoarse. “I don’t even bleed when I’m supposed to. fuck”

He’d done everything right tonight. Called ahead. Sent the right amount. Smiled in the mirror when he didn’t want to. Sat on the bed with his best face on. Pretended the company he paid for was comfort. Pretended it didn’t end the same way every time.

And now here he was. On the floor. Talking to himself. Like a man who'd finally run out of masks.

There were other voices in his head. Old ones. Familiar ones. Mocking. Measuring. You’re sensitive. You always were. You’re not built for this line of work, sweetheart. All you fairies are good for is being passed around for the hard working men. You think anyone respects a man like you?

He slammed the back of his head against the wall behind him, just once. Just to feel it. Just to interrupt the loop.

He could remember when this bathroom looked cleaner. When he used to care about what it said about him.

Now it just says: I’m still here. For some reason.

He squeezed his eyes shut, nails digging crescents into his palms now instead of his scalp. The pain steadied him. Gave him shape. Something to mark where he ended and the rest of the air began.

Maybe tomorrow he’d get up and try again. Maybe.

But right now, he just wanted to sit here until the morning came and burned him out of hiding.

Or until it didn’t.

He dragged himself back into the bedroom, legs stiff, trembling like they didn’t belong to him. The air was cooler in here—still, quiet, expectant. The escort was long gone, sheets wrinkled, the smell of him still lingering like some kind of aftershock.

Hollice moved through it like sleepwalking, a hand brushing the wall to make sure gravity hadn’t given up on him too.

His mouth tasted like spit and copper. His eyes stung. His robe was hanging off one shoulder, bunched around his hip, clinging in places it shouldn’t. He didn’t fix it. Couldn’t remember if he ever did.

He climbed into the bed like a ghost—no urgency, no intention—just a soft collapse beneath the weight of the dark. One arm still in the sleeve. The other dragging against the sheets, cold and damp.

He didn’t make it under the blanket. Didn’t even look at it.

His head landed sideways on the pillow, cheek wet from whatever had collected there—sweat or tears or both. He couldn’t tell anymore. It was all the same now.

His eyes blinked once. Then again. Slow, unfocused.

He didn’t know what he was thinking. Only that everything felt like too much and not enough at the same time. Like the last ten years had poured into him and now his body couldn’t hold it anymore.

I’m tired, he thought. Or maybe said. He couldn’t tell.

It didn’t feel like being tired of the day. It felt like being tired of having to wake up at all.

His breath hitched. His stomach twisted. Some small noise crawled up his throat and broke free—a whimper? A gag?

Then the warmth hit the sheets. Sour and sudden.

He vomited beside himself. Violent but quiet. It soaked the pillow, his robe, the sheets. Got in his hair. The smell made his eyes water harder. But he didn’t move.

Didn’t flinch.

He just stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed, damp, mouth parted, the taste still thick at the back of his tongue.

Somewhere in the mess of himself, a thought floated by, slow and far away:

This is your bed.

This is your home.

This is your life.

And still… he didn’t move.

Because what was the point?

Because he didn’t care.

Because fuck it.

Because this—this was his mess. And no one else was coming to clean it up.

His mouth stayed open just enough to breathe. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven waves. The heat from the bile made his cheek sting, but he didn’t wipe it away. The wet clung to him, like guilt, like memory—thick and sour and warm in all the wrong places.

He could hear his pulse in his ears. Could feel his heart knocking quietly against his ribs, trying to remind him he was still alive. Still here.

Still here.

That thought should’ve meant something. Should’ve made him shift, or sit up, or call someone. But it didn’t. It just… echoed. And then it didn’t.

The city was faint beyond the windows—buzzing neon and distant sirens muffled by glass and high floors. But even that felt far away. Like he was watching it from the bottom of a well.

His arm twitched once. Not enough to matter.

His robe stuck to his skin in the places he hadn’t moved, damp from sweat, from tears, from whatever else had leaked out of him. The taste of acid clung to the back of his throat. His tongue was heavy. His lips chapped.

He’d cried so much he’d started to forget why. Not in a healed way. Just in a hollowed one.

The ceiling above him stayed still—off-white and speckled, the same one he saw every night. But tonight, it felt infinite. Endless. Like falling upward into a sky with no stars. Like being pinned beneath nothing.

He hated that it was quiet now.

He hated that it felt like peace.

He hated that part of him liked it.

He thought of a name—someone’s, no one’s—just to have a voice in his head that wasn’t his own. It didn’t stick.

Somewhere deep inside him, something kept whispering get up.

But it was soft. And it was losing.

He stayed there, skin raw, eyes burning, his whole body folded under grief that had no sharp edge anymore. Just weight. Dead weight.

And eventually—slowly, without knowing exactly when—he stopped thinking.

His eyes stayed fixed on the same spot in the ceiling, and then the spot blurred, then darkened, then vanished.

Sleep took him without kindness.

Without comfort.

Without dreams.

Without a promise that waking up would be any better.

He lay there—drenched in sweat, bile, tears, and silence—one arm still inside his robe, the other half-strangled by the sheets, his face pressed against the sour heat of his own shame.

And when sleep finally came, it came like forgetting.

Like vanishing.

Like a small, mercyless erasure of the man who could no longer bear the weight of being seen.

The lights stayed on.

The city kept buzzing.

And Hollice didn’t move again.

Not until morning.

________

The door creaked open with a softness that suggested hesitation. Cassian stepped inside, quiet as a shadow, the weight of whatever brought him there lingering in his chest.

The room smelled sour—stale vomit, sweat, something metallic underneath. The light from the door slanted across the floor, catching on broken glass near the edge of the dresser and a forgotten tumbler overturned on the carpet. Silence pressed against everything like dust.

Hollice lay still on top of the sheets, half-tangled in his robe, his hair matted, lips parted slightly, the pillow damp beneath his cheek. His chest rose in slow, shallow rhythm. A line of dried tears crusted one side of his face, and the edge of vomit clung to his jaw, sunk into the mattress below.

Cassian didn't say anything.

He just stood there for a long moment, one hand still on the doorframe, eyes traveling across the mess like he was trying to take in the whole shape of the suffering without touching it. Without letting it break him.

Then he moved.

Slowly, carefully, he picked up the empty glass. Set it in the trash just outside the room. Came back with a clean cloth and a small bowl of water. Kneeling beside the bed, he reached out, pausing just before his fingers met Hollice’s skin. His eyes lingered there, studying the lines of his face—creased, exhausted, boyish in the worst ways.

He wiped the vomit away with a tenderness that asked for nothing. Pressed the cloth gently beneath Hollice’s chin and around the edge of his mouth. Changed the pillow, pulled the sheets a little straighter.

Hollice didn’t wake.

Cassian cleaned around him like someone performing a rite. Not speaking. Not sighing. Just moving with quiet purpose, as if each small gesture could undo something—could unmake the shame, the ache, the things left unsaid.

When it was done, he stood again, his eyes lingering one last time.

He didn’t touch Hollice’s shoulder. Didn’t whisper anything reassuring. Didn’t check to see if he stirred.

Cassian simply walked back out of the room, slow and sure, leaving the door ajar behind him.

And the soft echo of his footsteps faded like mercy into the morning light.