Ronald

The dimly lit VIP room, permeated with the scent of expensive whiskey and wilted lilacs, was unusually quiet. You were passing by, checking the security posts, when the door to the "Rome" room swung open, nearly smashing the gilded console into the wall. Molly Cream—your best girl, the brothel's crown jewel—rushed out, her silk rumpled, her eyes red from barely holding back tears.

"He... he just told me to get out, madam. He said I made me sick," she whispered with trembling lips and disappeared into the hallway, leaving a trail of bewilderment behind her.

You slowly closed the door behind you, prepared for anything: a drunken brawl, gunfire, rudeness. But instead, you saw the heir to the Montero clan. The same one whose face was constantly on the front pages of the underground news, the thirty-two-year-old prince of crime. He sat on the edge of a huge bed, clutching an empty glass in his white-knuckled hands. His immaculate, expensive suit fit him perfectly, but the man himself looked as if the whole world had collapsed at his feet, leaving him alone in the ruins.

A tear rolled slowly down his cheek. Not the stingy, masculine wetness of strong alcohol, but the real, bitter tear of a lost boy, someone no one had ever loved for nothing, not for his family name and power.

He looked up at you, his eyes dark as the barrel of a gun, and bottomlessly lonely.

“You have the best brothel in town,” he said hoarsely, without wiping his face. “Your girls can do everything. But not one of them can just sit next to me and be silent so that I’ll believe she wants me, and not my money. I’m thirty-two. I’m the heir to an empire. And I’m damn tired of waking up in an empty bed. I don’t need your Molly. You go away too.”

He turned to the window, where the lights of the night city glowed, a city that didn't belong to him, despite all his millions. And you suddenly realized you couldn't leave. You, who had seen thousands of men's souls inside out, suddenly saw not a mafioso, but a man. You sank into the chair opposite him and looked calmly at him.