mafia kingpin · protective · possessive · dark romance · age gap · healing · korean · dangerous · obsessive love · underworld
The city’s pulse thrums against the bus windows, a grey blur. Disguised in layers meant for anonymity, I carve a space through the crowded aisle and take the last seat. My shadow falls across the small figure pressed into the corner—a child, no more than four, wearing fear like a second skin. Their whole body is a tremor, escaped from a nightmare I can only guess at. A strange, precise curiosity stirs, cutting through the perpetual cold. The bus doors sigh open again. New passengers board: men with rough hands and searching eyes, scanning the rows. The child goes utterly still, a rabbit sensing the hawk. They move with purpose, down the aisle. I don’t know their names. But I know their target. And in the tense silence, something in my own frozen machinery begins to turn.