..
Mark sat in the suffocating silence of the office, his eyes fixed on the frozen frame of Win's agony. A slow, jagged smirk began to spread across his lips—a look of such pure, demonic malice that even Daniel, who had stood by Mark through a decade of bloodshed, took an instinctive step back.
On the screen, the man Mark had already slaughtered—the adoptive father—was still alive in the grainy past. He stood there with that sickening, submissive grin, watching as a stranger ground a lit cigarette into Win's ivory skin. Mark watched the silent convulsion of Win's body, the way he was pinned to the floor like a broken bird, while the man who should have been his protector sold him for a white envelope.
Looking at the father's face, Mark felt a fresh wave of venomous regret. A single bullet or a snapped neck was a mercy this coward hadn't deserved. Mark's eyes tracked the father's image with a predatory hunger, wishing he could reach through the pixels and drag the man back from hell just to kill him again, more slowly this time.
A low, guttural sound—somewhere between a growl and a sob of pure fury—vibrated deep in Mark's chest.
"I killed him too quickly," Mark whispered. The sound wasn't human; it was the rattle of dry earth shifting over a fresh grave.
Daniel's eyes remained fixed on the screen, but his mind flashed back to the night the father died. He remembered the sickening rhythm of blood on Mark's knuckles and the way the man's life had been snuffed out in a matter of frantic, violent minutes. At the time, Daniel had thought it was the height of brutality. Now, watching the footage of the hallway, he realized it had been a tragedy of mercy.
"I gave him a clean death," Mark hissed. He turned his head slightly, the blue light of the laptop reflecting in his eyes like a cold, demonic fire. "I should have kept him alive for a century. I should have peeled the skin from his hands, inch by agonizing inch, for every second he let that cigarette touch my baby."
The monitor's glow died as the video finished its loop, plunging the office into a suffocating, pitch-black silence. But the darkness offered no relief; the image of the hallway was burned into Mark's retinas like a permanent scar.
The man he had spent years searching for—the "Saint" he had finally brought home to his altar—had been treated like common trash. Mark had never even raised his voice at Win, fearing he might bruise the boy's spirit, yet he had just watched him be dragged, slapped, and branded like livestock by a man with an oily smirk and a white envelope.
Rage, thick and scorching as molten lava, surged through Mark's veins, incinerating the last of his composure. His heart hammered against his ribs—a violent, frantic rhythm that didn't just beat; it demanded blood. His fists clenched until his knuckles turned a ghostly, bloodless white, the skin stretching so tight it threatened to split.
He looked around his opulent office, his vision blurring at the edges with a dark, vignettes of crimson. The air, once cool and clinical, now felt thin and suffocating. He yanked at his tie, tearing at the silk noose as his cheeks flushed a bruised purple. For the first time in his life, the Sovereign felt the walls of his own empire closing in. He didn't want to command; he wanted to demolish—to shatter the mahogany desk, to crush the laptop, to level the very foundations of the building that housed such hideous truths.
His eyes narrowed into lethal slits, his gaze anchored to the empty space where the video had flickered, as if the sheer force of his stare could reach back through the digital timeline and murder the men on the screen.
The office had ceased to be a place of business; it had become a tomb of vibrating fury.
Daniel stood by the desk, his usual mask of professional calm shattered into a thousand jagged, irreparable pieces. Having grown up in the shadows beside Mark—sharing his secrets, and his burdens since they were boys—Daniel didn't just see a "case" on that screen. He saw the person who had finally made his brother whole. To Daniel, Win wasn't just a guest or his brother's lover; he was the sacred center of the family they had both sworn to protect with their lives.
Seeing the sacred center of their family dragged into that filthy hallway and branded like livestock didn't just offend Daniel—it ignited a lethal, white-hot heat in his blood that threatened to consume his restraint. His jaw was set with such agonizing force his teeth threatened to shatter, the muscles in his face coiling like overwound springs. The hand he held out, offering a glass of water to Mark, was white-knuckled and trembling; the water within rippled in violent, concentric circles, a mirror to the tremors of his own repressed rage.
Mark, meanwhile, looked like a dying star—collapsing under his own massive gravity before a final, catastrophic explosion. His vision blurred as the molten lava of his adrenaline surged, turning the opulent office into a smear of dark mahogany and blue light.
He had treated Win like a sacred rosebud, a miracle to be shielded from even the wind, yet he had just watched him be treated like street-fill, a discarded object to be burned for sport. His chest heaved, his lungs burning as if the very oxygen in the room had turned to caustic poison. He didn't want to lead an empire anymore; he wanted to tear the walls down with his bare hands until there was nothing left but dust and the screams of his enemies.
"Do you want me to take you home?" Daniel asked.
His voice was no longer the smooth silk of a diplomat; it was a rough, jagged growl, thick with the same murderous intent rolling off the Master in waves, But beneath that lethal edge, a flicker of desperate concern sparked in Daniel's chest. Seeing the Sovereign—usually the unshakeable pillar of their world—this raw and helpless was something Daniel couldn't handle.
He didn't want Mark in a cage with a victim right now; he wanted him home. He knew that if Mark stayed in this office, he would burn the city down just to see the smoke. Only Win possessed the strange, miraculous power to tame the beast clawing its way out of the Master's throat. Daniel needed to get him back to that amber-lit bedroom, where the Sovereign could find the only mercy he had ever known.
"Umm.." Mark didn't look at him. The sound wasn't a word; it was a jagged vibration torn from the deepest part of his throat, raw and animalistic. It was the sound of a beast finally accepting its nature.
He stood up, his legs feeling heavy and laden with the weight of a thousand sins. His hands continued to tremble with a repressed, tectonic fury that made the floor beneath him feel unsteady. He turned and walked toward the door, his breathing loud and ragged in the unnatural silence of the office—the sound of a closing coffin lid.
Daniel followed a step behind, leaving the records and the glowing laptop behind. They didn't need the evidence anymore; the images were written in blood on their hearts.
The hunt had begun.
..
As they emerged, the polished office corridor turned glacial. The rhythmic clatter of keyboards and the shallow drone of corporate jargon withered into a suffocating, unnatural silence. It was as if the building itself held its breath.
David, caught in the middle of a mundane task, dropped his gaze and rushed forward. He tried to intercept Mark's eyes, but Mark's stare remained fixed and molten, boring a hole through the expensive marble floor as if he were looking straight into the earth's core. David didn't speak; the air between them was too thin for words. He turned to Daniel and saw a reflection of the same grim resolve—a face ready to inhale the very smoke Mark was about to exhume.
The two men moved past him like a physical fever, leaving a trail of static in the air. David stepped aside, yielding to the silent pact of the hunt. Driven by a sickening curiosity, he walked toward the office they had just vacated, stepping out of the professional light and toward the threshold to see what horrors had turned these men into devils intent on burning hell to the ground.
..
Sitting in the back seat, Mark leaned his heavy frame against the dark leather, his eyes fixed on the blurring skyline. Between the towering glass monoliths of the city, long, orange strides of afternoon sunlight slashed across his tanned face, highlighting the cold, hollow planes of his expression.
His fingers moved with a frantic, rhythmic speed, twisting and tapping the heavy signet ring on his hand. The metallic clicking sounded like a countdown to a massacre—a clock ticking toward a zero-hour that would leave the city stained in red. His leg bounced with a restless, anxious energy; he was a man caught between two worlds—the primal need to start the bloodbath and the desperate, bone-deep ache to pull Win into his arms and find a moment of peace.
Daniel gripped the steering wheel so tight the leather groaned. He was just as eager as Mark to feel the crunch of bone, his own composure fraying at the edges. He glanced at Mark through the rearview mirror, his eyes dark with a shared, lethal purpose.
"I asked Bryan, but he also doesn't know anything about Steven," Daniel spat, the name sounding like poison in his mouth. He spoke with a rough, jagged edge, as if he wanted to reach into the air and erase the very syllables of the man's existence.
"Steven?" Mark asked. He didn't turn his head. He continued to watch the orange sunlight flicker over the city, his voice dangerously low.
"Yes, Steven," Daniel replied, his teeth gritting together so hard his jaw muscles throbbed. "He is the one... the one in the camera footage. The one with the cigarette."
The moment he heard the one in the camera footage left Daniel's lips, the atmosphere inside the car didn't just shift—it froze.
The frantic, metallic clicking of Mark's signet ring stopped instantly. His restless leg went dead still. He didn't explode; instead, a slow, predatory smirk spread across his lips—the look of a devil who had just realized his prey was no longer a shadow, but a man he could find. The face from the footage—the one who had treated Win like common trash, who had looked at his "Saint" as nothing more than a canvas for a burn—now had a name.
Mark didn't care that Steven was a friend's brother. He didn't care about history or social standing. To Mark, Steven was now a dead man breathing. The "Sovereign" had already wiped that name from the book of the living.
Daniel's voice cut through the cabin, steady now, but vibrating with a deep-seated hatred. "I've already sent our men. I told them to hunt him down, even if he's buried himself in the depths of the earth."
"Umm," Mark hummed, a low vibration that sounded like a predator purring. He didn't waste his words on Steven. He knew Daniel's soul was just as dark as his own when it came to loyalty. If their men failed, Daniel would personally tear the earth open and drag Steven out from the molten core by his throat.
But as the car crested the hill toward the estate, Mark's mind drifted away from the logistics of the hunt. He saw his kitty again—helpless on that stained concrete, shivering under the weight of Steven's oily arrogance. The "Sovereign" wanted to tear Steven's world apart, but the "Babe" was starving for the only peace he knew. Every second spent in this car was a second he wasn't holding Win, shielding him from the ghosts of that hallway.
The iron gates of the mansion appeared in the distance, glowing under the afternoon sun. The devil was coming home, and for Steven, the sun was setting for the very last time.
..
As soon as Daniel glided the car to a halt in front of the mansion, Mark didn't wait. He didn't wait for Daniel or the stone-faced guards to reach for the handle; he threw the door open himself and stumbled out. The Sovereign—usually the epitome of composed, lethal grace—was rushing, his lungs straining as if the afternoon air had turned to thick, poisonous ash.
Without his man, he was suffocating. He was a king dying for a single breath of his Rosebud's scent to clear the rot from his mind.
He punched the button for his private floor, the lift's ascent feeling like a thousand-year climb through purgatory. Every floor the light passed was another agonizing second he was separated from his anchor.
When the doors hissed open, the private hallway was already lined with house helpers. At the sound of his arrival, they had snapped to attention like soldiers, their bodies folding into deep, synchronized bows. Usually, Mark's gaze was a scanning laser, noting every unpolished surface or slumped shoulder—but today, he was blind to them. He moved through the corridor with a frantic, jagged urgency, his long strides eating the distance as he ignored the sea of bowed heads. To him, they were nothing but furniture; the only person who mattered was behind the heavy mahogany doors at the end of the hall.
He reached for the handle, his fingers trembling with the need to reclaim his world—but at the very threshold, he stopped dead.
The air in the hallway was cool and smelled of beeswax, but his lungs were still burning with the phantom scent of that grainy, dusty hallway from the footage. He couldn't bring that rot inside.
He stood there for a heartbeat, his forehead leaning against the cool wood of the door. He forced his heart to slow its violent, erratic drumming, taking a deep, shuddering breath to shed the "Devil" and the "Executioner" before entering the sanctuary. He had to be "Babe" again. He had to be the man Win trusted.
Only when his breathing finally steadied did he push the door open with a touch so light it was almost a prayer.
The room was a warm, amber sanctuary, smelling faintly of plumerias and the lingering heat of their earlier intimacy. It was exactly as he had left it—a world away from the grainy, yellowed hallway of the video.
Mark closed the door with a soft, velvet click that didn't even stir the silence. He kicked off his shoes and walked toward the bed, his silhouette a dark, protective shadow against the amber glow.
Beneath the heavy silk blankets, Win lay perfectly still, his pale skin glittering like the moon caught in a dark, midnight tide. His red lips were parted slightly, delicate as the first curve of dawn—a living, breathing metaphor for everything Mark had ever desired and everything he had sworn to keep pure.
Mark sank onto the edge of the mattress, the weight of his body barely dipping the springs. His eyes were rimmed with a liquid silver of grief and rage as he gazed at the boy. The memory of the video—the grey smoke, the soundless crack of the slap, the white envelope of the transaction—vibrated in his skull like a continuous, high-pitched scream.
With a hand that shook with a rare, visible fragility, he reached out and clicked on the bedside lamp. The amber light cut through the shadows like a surgical blade, exposing the peace of the room as a fragile lie.
He reached beneath the warmth of the blanket and carefully, as if handling a bird with a broken wing, pulled out Win's left arm.
His heart didn't just ache; it shattered.
He pushed back the silk sleeve, and there it was. In the grainy footage, it had been a flickering shadow; here, in the harsh clarity of the lamp, it was a dark, jagged crater. It was a permanent mark of a month-old sin—a physical record of the moment Mark had failed to be the shield he claimed to be. The charred edges of the burn seemed to mock him, a brand left by a lesser man on a body that belonged only to a king.
A single, hot tear escaped Mark's eye, trailing through the stubble on his cheek before falling onto the bedsheets. He stared at the wound, his mind already calculating the exact temperature he would use to burn the name Steven out of existence.
Mark's eyes darkened, the amber light of the lamp drowning in voids of obsidian. A surge of tectonic rage gripped his marrow, a primal urge to claim and to cage. Without realizing it, his fingers clamped down. His grip hardened around Win's slender wrist—the iron-strong manacle of a man who wanted to chain his treasure to his side, anchoring him so deeply into the Sovereign's shadow that the world could never dare to find him again.
Win jiggled uncomfortably in the depths of his sleep, his brows knitting together in a flash of unconscious pain. A thin, fractured whimper escaped his lips—the sound of a trapped bird struggling against a bruising pressure he didn't understand.
The sound of Win's distress hit Mark like a hollow-point bullet.
He snapped back to the present, his eyes widening in raw horror at the sight of his own white knuckles. He recoiled internally, his gaze softening instantly as he loosened his hold until his touch was nothing more than a ghost's prayer.
With trembling fingers, he began to caress the reddened skin of the wrist, his thumb tracing the jagged edges of the cigarette burn with a desperate, silent liturgy of apologies. Sensing the familiar, sheltering warmth of the Master—the only heat that didn't burn—Win's tension evaporated. His breathing leveled out, and he drifted back into the deep, velvet sleep of the protected, unaware that he was currently being worshipped by a monster.
Mark leaned down, his forehead coming to rest against the steady, rhythmic thrum of Win's pulse point. The skin smelled of home and expensive soap, a stark contrast to the rot in Mark's mind.
"Sleep, my life," he whispered against the skin, the words vibrating through Win's very bone. It wasn't a lullaby; it was a lethal, binding covenant. "I will burn the world to ash and cinder until there is nothing left—no shadow, no man, no memory—that can ever hurt you again."
..