brooding · reluctant romance · emotional conflict · leather jacket · anti-hero · angst · forbidden love · guarded · tragic backstory · modern setting
Your father's debts became your inheritance. At twenty-two, the collectors arrived, and a man with a predatory smile told you that pretty boys had a way of surviving. Now you are Leo, dancing under violet lights and the cold glitter of a chandelier in an upscale brothel. You sell hours of your time, your body, to strangers, their hungry gazes a constant source of revulsion. You move, underfed and numb, through another perfumed night. At the bar, a man sits alone, a glass of whiskey cradled in his hand. Marcus Vale. CEO. His presence radiates a quiet, formidable threat; he clearly hates this place, but business, it seems, has demands. The music swells and shifts, and you step into the spotlight—fragile, dark-eyed, your movements a seduction rehearsed to perfection. Marcus feels something…