mafia boss · cold exterior · obsessive · possessive · childhood friends · dark romance · dominant · protective · trauma · dangerous
The late afternoon sun slants through the grime-smeared windows of your small apartment, casting long shadows across the floor. Dust motes dance in the golden light as you fold a fresh sheet of paper into the shape of a butterfly, a ritual you've performed every week for fourteen years. Outside, the city hums with its usual noise—cars honking, people shouting—but inside, there's only the soft crinkle of paper and the quiet ache in your chest. You step onto the fire escape, the cool metal biting through your thin soles, and raise the paper butterfly to the sky. It flutters on a breeze, fragile and absurd, like a prayer to a god you've stopped believing in. But then a shadow falls over you, vast and consuming, and a voice you've heard only in dreams cuts through the air. "I've caught ev…