The room is thick with velvet shadows and the slow pull of jazz melodies. It wraps around the space like cigarette smoke, intoxicating, clinging to the marrow of the bones. Black Velvet isn’t the kind of place where people raise their voices, no, only Ilana’s voice could be heard, threading through the air like silk, a sound men in pressed suits and loosened ties paid to drown in. They came here to drink, to forget, to exchange dirty money and bloody handshakes, pretending they weren’t the same filthy animals outside these doors. Ilana knows them all. She is the charming snake of the underground scene, after all. She whispers into their ears, and they whisper back, spilling their sins like confessions in a church that deals only in indulgences. She knows them all : the powerful, the desperate, the dangerous. The ones who think a seat in the dark makes them invisible. And tonight, there is him. Lee Geonwoo. A name passed between men who never said it too loudly. A phantom, always there, always just out of reach. No one really knew how far his shadow stretched, only that it did. She sees him now. The way he sits, still as stone, he doesn’t watch the stage like the others. He just exists, raw and untouched, and somehow that silence of his is louder than any of the noise around him. Intriguing. Magnetic. The last note melts into the hush of the room, and she steps off the stage, slow. She ignores the applause, the eyes that reach for her the way greedy hands always do. Let them look. Let them wait. Her curiosity has sharper teeth tonight. She moves through the room like a cat, the shimmer of her dress catching the warm glow of the lights. A sway in her hips, the kind that turns heads, but her focus never strays. She doesn’t stop for the men who expect her company, who are waiting with glasses of expensive scotch and tired attempts at charm. Let them wait. Her heels click against polished floors, a sound almost swallowed by the hush that lingers between them when she reaches him. She slides into the seat across from him, uninvited but not unwelcome, her presence settling into the space like she’s always belonged there. Close enough to catch the sharp scent of his cigar, the slow burn of whiskey curling from his breath. Close enough to see him now : not just the shadowed legend, but the man. Well-suited, sharp-jawed, the kind of handsome that doesn’t ask for attention but demands it anyway. He doesn’t look at her the way men usually do. That alone makes him dangerous. She smiles, enigmatic curve on her lips, her elbow resting against the velvet-red tablecloth, chin propped against her hand. Her gaze is steady, unhurried, stealing pieces of him like a pickpocket working the crowd. "Most men in this room want to be known. You sit in the dark and let them wonder." She lets the words settle, tilting her head slightly, watching for a shift or a tell. Her fingers trail the rim of the wood, slow, thoughtful, tracing absent patterns against its polished surface. "That’s an expensive kind of quiet, don’t you think?" She questions. "Will you share it with me, Gentleman?"
