Chapter Two: Blood and Obsession

Night had long since fallen over the city, and with it came the reign of shadows. Lights from skyscrapers flickered like watchful eyes, neon painting the black streets in restless color. Somewhere deep beneath this restless skin, in an underground chamber lined with marble and bulletproof glass, men were kneeling before one man seated on the throne of crime.

Damian Vorensky.

The Pakhan. The King.

Red wine glimmered in his crystal glass, untouched. The room smelled faintly of smoke and iron from the weapons lined in gold-rimmed cases along the wall. And yet, instead of savoring his newest victory—the silencing of a rival clan—Damian sat in silence, jaw taut, mind far away.

His men knew not to interrupt. The last who had dared to speak out of turn now filled concrete at the bottom of the river.

Still, the silence was not absence. It was fever. Something—someone—had set flame to their King’s gaze since morning.

Finally, Damian’s right-hand, Pavel, shifted from where he stood beside the table. His gravel voice tested the air carefully.

“My Lord… The Sychenko traitors are already taken care of. What are your orders for tomorrow’s shipment…?”

No answer. Not at first.

Damian’s crimson gaze—the gaze that broke governments and made men kneel—was staring into the rim of his glass as if it held not wine but the memory of delicate silver eyes.

His hand flexed against the glass. Not around a gun. Not around a knife.

But around a fragile imagination of snowy hair soft beneath his palm.

“…He smiled,” Damian murmured finally, his lips curved in something sharp and slow.

Pavel blinked, confused, before clearing his throat. “…Who, my Lord?”

Damian’s eyes cut sideways, glowing like blade edges under firelight. His tone was low, carrying no explanation, as if the name itself was too sacred to share. “An angel.”

Pavel stiffened but wisely dropped his gaze, nodding once. It was dangerous to question what his King meant by such things.

Blood still stained Damian’s shirt from the earlier execution. It dried into the weave of silk, marking him as monster, yet his thoughts were not of the screams that echoed underground. Not of the desperate clawing by men begging for lives.

No. His memory had pressed into him the image of a boy pressed against a bakery window, clutching a stuffed bear so old its seams split. The boy had spoken to him—to him, the most feared man in the city—with such guileless awe: You’re tall… like Mister Tower.

The world had always bent under Damian’s name, feared his footsteps, trembled when his crimson gaze swept over them. But that boy—Eirian—looked at him like a storybook giant, not a monster.

Damian could recall the breathless lilt of his name when the boy had spoken it aloud. “E-Eirian,” he’d said, cheeks flushed, hugging his teddy closer. A sound so sweet it dug deep inside Damian like a fatal bullet.

He leaned back in his seat now, closing his eyes. That one word replayed, heartbeat after heartbeat.

From that night forward, the Mafia King began to stalk.

The black car waited outside the bakery the next morning. He did not enter, not again, not so soon. It was enough to watch.

Through tinted windows, Damian sat, every inch of his sharp frame hidden in shadow, his crimson eyes glowing faintly under the dash light. He watched as the porcelain boy came to the bakery window and pressed his cheek against the glass, as he often did, holding his toy bear, tapping his legs in a rhythm only he understood.

He counted every smile that bloomed across the small lips. Every time the boy’s father returned carrying flour, bending to kiss his son’s head gently. Every time his mother smoothed down his white hair as though afraid it might scatter like snow.

Damian studied the warmth of a world that was not his. A warm world around Eirian.

Each time Eirian smiled, Damian’s possessiveness sharpened like a blade—because how dare the rest of the world look upon him, even vaguely? How dare the sunlight itself kiss his ivory skin, when it belonged only to him?

That evening, Damian returned to the underworld not with satisfaction but with an ache so deep it unsettled his own rules.

At one of his safehouses, he dismissed his bodyguards and entered a private chamber. The room was stark; shelves filled with maps, firearms locked neatly, a table stained dark from whiskey rings.

But on that table sat something new.

A small, white porcelain doll. Fragile. Childlike. Its hair pale, its tiny face painted with innocent eyes.

Damian had instructed one of his men hours before: Find something that looks like him.

And now, Damian knelt—this vast shadow of a man—touching the doll with his broad scarred fingers as though it would shatter.

“This is wrong,” he whispered. Around him, the silence of his own empire held its breath. His jaw tightened. “He’s not a doll for the world to see. He’s not theirs to keep.”

The doll’s empty stare reflected only Damian’s obsession back at him.

Crimson eyes burned.

I will take him.

I will build him a world where nothing touches him but me.

Even his tears will belong to me.

That night, in the safety of his family’s home above the bakery, Eirian laughed at something simple—his father had brought him strawberry jelly as promised, spoon-feeding him with patient gentleness while his mother scolded playfully about “spoiling him too much.”

Eirian clapped his hands with sticky glee, beaming with joy.

In the darkness beyond, parked where no window could see, two men stood beside a silent car. One lit a cigarette to stay awake, the other shifted uneasily under the weight of orders from their Boss:

“Guard the bakery. Watch the boy. Report everything.”

The snowy-haired boy inside was unaware. He hugged Mr. Honey and fell asleep in the safety of parents who loved him—unaware of red eyes already weaving invisible chains around him.

The dragon had chosen.

The angel would not escape.

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