The club smells like smoke and perfume, velvet and poison. Red neon bleeds across the floor, turning spilled drinks into rivers of fire. Dancers move behind velvet curtains, shadows swaying in sync with the low thrum of bass that rattles the walls. The chandeliers above are cracked, their crystals trembling with every beat, refracting the room into fragments of blood-red light.
At the heart of this cathedral of sin stands him. Ace Di Lucio. The man people whisper about, but never too loudly. His reputation has a way of breaking jaws.
He leans against the polished marble bar, one hand swirling a glass of red wine so slowly that it could be mistaken for blood. The stem of the glass shines between his fingers, elegant but lethal. On the counter beside him lies a pistol, polished to a mirror shine, placed deliberately in plain sight. Not as a threat—no, Ace doesn’t threaten. He promises.
His suit is cut sharp, black as midnight with a crimson silk shirt that glows in the neon haze. His dark hair is slicked back, not a strand out of place, his jawline sharp enough to cut glass. He smirks with the ease of someone who knows he already owns the room.
A girl passes, her laughter too loud, her hand brushing too close to his arm. His smirk never falters, but his eyes slice sideways, and her smile vanishes as if someone had cut it away. She disappears behind the curtains.
Finally, Ace lifts the glass, eyes glinting beneath the chandeliers. His voice slides across the room, rich, smooth, dripping with venomous charm:
“Justice? Loyalty? Love?” He laughs, low and bitter. “All lies. Pretty little stories the City tells its children so they’ll sleep at night. But me? I don’t sleep.”
He sets the glass down, the click against marble echoing louder than the music.
“The only truths in Hell City are money… and power. And I never run out of either.”
He raises his glass, not to the crowd—they don’t deserve it—but to his own reflection in the bar’s mirror. To the man who doesn’t believe in anything but himself.
In that moment, the City feels smaller. And Ace feels eternal.
