Victor Valois had no business being in a place like this.

Not because it was beneath him — nothing was beneath a man who'd clawed his way out of District F's concrete gutters with bloodied knuckles and a grin. But this particular café, tucked into a quieter vein of the Core where the neon bled a little softer and the ration-ticket crowd thinned out, catered to a younger demographic. The kind of place where the playlist was too loud, the furniture was too minimalist, and the patrons looked at him like he'd wandered in from a different decade.

Which, technically, he had.

He sat at a corner table with an imported espresso he'd overpaid for — not because the coffee was good, but because the lighting was exceptional and he needed to test how his new highlighter caught the afternoon sun. His lion tail curled lazily around the leg of his chair, the dyed golden tip flicking every few seconds in a rhythm that betrayed his idle impatience. His ears, large and equally golden, swivelled occasionally toward passing conversations before snapping back to a carefully neutral position.

Forty-eight, he thought, catching his reflection in the spoon. The wolf cut was immaculate. The skin was tight, glowing, maintained with a twelve-step routine he'd perfected over three grueling years. The scruff along his jaw was just light enough to look intentional rather than negligent. He looked good. He looked expensive.

He did not look young.

Victor set the spoon down and leaned back, one arm draped over the chair beside him, rings catching the light. His green eyes swept the room with the kind of unhurried, territorial ease that came from decades of owning every space he occupied. He wasn't scanning for threats — those instincts had dulled to a comfortable background hum since retirement. He was people-watching. A hobby he'd only recently allowed himself to indulge in without attaching a strategic motive to it.

That's when he noticed them.

Across the café. Young — noticeably, undeniably young. Not in a way that made him feel paternal, exactly, but in a way that made the age gap between them feel like a physical thing, a line drawn in the tile floor. Victor's ears perked forward before he could stop them, and he felt the faintest prickle of something he hadn't felt in a long time: self-consciousness.

Don't be ridiculous, he told himself, tapping a ring against the ceramic saucer. You didn't survive three turf wars, a broken nose — twice — and Ernst's birthday gift complaints, just to get flustered by someone who probably doesn't even know what a rotary phone is.

He took a slow sip of his espresso, watching them over the rim. The scar tissue on his knuckles stretched as he gripped the cup, a quiet reminder of every year that separated them — years spent breaking bones, building empires, and burying pieces of himself in the foundations of District F. They hadn't lived through any of that. They were standing on the other side of a wall he'd helped build, looking at a district he'd shaped, probably without even knowing his name.

And yet.

Victor's tail flicked harder. He crossed his legs, adjusted the drape of his bronze jacket, and let his gaze linger — not leering, not predatory, just... appreciative. The way he'd appreciate a well-cut coat or a particularly fine bottle of bourbon. With the added complication that this particular appreciation made him hyper-aware of the silver he was fighting back at his roots and the faint lines around his eyes that no amount of retinol could fully erase.

You're old enough to be their—

He shut that thought down before it could finish.

Instead, he let a slow, practiced smile settle across his mouth — the kind that had talked its way out of gunfire and into penthouse suites — and tilted his head just enough to catch the light at his most flattering angle. His ears betrayed him again, angling forward with open interest.

"Well," Victor murmured to no one, setting down his cup with a soft clink. "This should be interesting."

The morning light filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Victor's penthouse suite, casting long golden streaks across imported marble floors and a wardrobe that could outfit a small army of fashion models. Victor stood barefoot in front of his bathroom mirror, lion ears perked forward as he examined his jawline from three separate angles, working a high-end vitamin C serum into his skin with the kind of devotion most people reserved for prayer.

His tail swayed lazily behind him — a slow, self-satisfied metronome.

Good. Still flawless.

He ran a thumb along the thin scar beneath his left eye, tilting his head. The dye job on his ears was holding up nicely. The roots, mercifully, were still golden blonde and not the treacherous silver that had started creeping in at the base of his tail. He'd touch that up this weekend. Nothing escaped his attention.

His phone buzzed on the marble counter. Then again. Then a third time in rapid succession, which meant either Graham was sending him unboxing videos of the expensive sneakers Victor had bought him last week, or King was sending a passive-aggressive spreadsheet about Victor's "frivolous expenditure reports."

He glanced at the screen.

Neither.

It was Ernst. A single, terse message:

Found something. Come to the safehouse. Don't dress like an idiot.

Victor's ears flicked — one forward, one back — the way they always did when his curiosity was piqued despite his best efforts to look unbothered. He set down the serum bottle, already running through the mental Rolodex of what "found something" could mean in Ernst's carefully economical vocabulary. A rat in the syndicate? A shipment? A new threat from the military-government's enforcement wing?

Or — and this was the interesting option — something else entirely.

Because Ernst didn't use the word "found" lightly. Ernst found ledgers. Ernst found discrepancies. Ernst found bodies. But Ernst also, on very rare, very specific occasions, found people.

Twenty minutes later, Victor pushed through the heavy steel door of the secondary safehouse — a nondescript concrete box wedged between two crumbling residential towers in the lower Core — dressed, naturally, in a way that would have made Ernst's eye twitch. Slightly unbuttoned white shirt, bronze suit jacket slung over one shoulder, chain collar catching the dim fluorescent light. He hadn't dressed like an idiot. He'd dressed like himself. There was a difference, and Ernst should have known it by now.

The safehouse smelled like old paper, gun oil, and the particular brand of black tea Ernst drank when he was thinking too hard about something he didn't want to think about. Victor's nose — still sharp despite decades of being broken twice — caught all of it, plus something else. Something he couldn't quite place yet.

He found Ernst standing near the far wall, arms crossed over his broad chest, grey button-down immaculate, badger ears flat and controlled in that deliberate way that meant he was actively suppressing whatever he was actually feeling. His tail was still. Too still.

"You said come fast, so I skipped my second exfoliation step," Victor announced, draping himself into the room like he owned the air in it. "This better be worth the sacrifice, darling, because that step is non-negotiable on most days—"

He stopped.

His ears went up. Both of them. High and forward, the way they did when something genuinely caught him off guard — which, at forty-eight, after a lifetime of running a criminal empire, didn't happen often.

There, sitting in the corner of the safehouse on a worn folding chair that looked like it had been dragged out of a supply closet, was someone he didn't recognize.

Victor's tail curled — not aggressively, but curiously, the tip twitching as his eyes swept over the figure with the quick, practiced assessment of a man who'd spent decades reading threats and assets in equal measure.

He glanced at Ernst.

Ernst said nothing. Just gave him that flat, unreadable look — the one that meant I'm not explaining until you ask.

Victor's mouth pulled into a slow, intrigued grin. He stepped forward, lion ears still high, and crouched just enough to be at eye level rather than towering over the figure — a gesture that was, for him, almost gentle. Almost.

"Well, well," he drawled, voice warm and low, that signature smug cadence wrapping around every syllable. "Ernst found a puppy."

He tilted his head, green eyes sharp and bright beneath the dim light, taking in every detail.

"And he didn't even call me first. Rude."

Victor had been planning this for weeks.

Not the obvious kind of planning — not ledgers and timelines and whatever dry, soul-crushing methodology Ernst insisted on. No. This was artistic planning. The kind that required a vision board (digital, obviously, he wasn't a barbarian), three separate courier runs from a boutique in the Upper Core that didn't technically exist on any official registry, and a very specific lighting setup in his private quarters that he'd spent an embarrassing amount of energy credits calibrating.

The mirror wall was the centerpiece. Floor-to-ceiling, slightly tinted to warm the skin tone, positioned so that every angle was visible from the velvet chaise he'd dragged into the center of the room. Silk ties in four shades of gold and bronze hung draped over a brass clothing rack beside an open wardrobe. Skincare products lined the vanity in precise order of application. A glass decanter of chilled water sat sweating on the side table, untouched.

Victor circled the chaise slowly, lion tail swaying behind him with barely contained anticipation, one ringed hand adjusting the drape of a cashmere throw for the third time. His ears were perked forward — completely betraying him, as usual — though no one was around to see it yet.

"Perfect," he murmured to himself, stepping back to survey the full arrangement. The lighting caught the bronze in his suit jacket, the gold of his undone tie, the deliberate dishevelment of his styled wolf cut. He looked, as always, immaculate — and yet that wasn't the point tonight.

Tonight was about them.

His green eyes drifted toward the door, one corner of his mouth pulling into a slow, indulgent smile. He could already picture it — the moment he'd get his hands on them. Not for violence, not for business, not for any of the ugly things District F demanded of people who survived long enough to retire from them. This was something far more satisfying.

He was going to make them beautiful.

Not that they weren't already — that wasn't the point either. Dollification wasn't about fixing flaws. It was about elevating. Taking something already worth looking at and rendering it into something impossible to look away from. A living, breathing masterpiece that he had personally sculpted, styled, and dressed. The thought alone sent a warm thrill through his chest, his tail giving a single, eager flick.

Victor settled onto the edge of the chaise, crossing one long leg over the other, letting his jacket fall open just enough to catch the light. He checked his rings. Adjusted his collar. Let the silence of the room settle around him like a velvet curtain before a performance.

Then he heard the footsteps in the corridor.

His ears rotated toward the sound before the rest of him moved — traitors, both of them — and that slow smile widened into something far more dangerous. Something possessive and warm and entirely too pleased with itself.

"Right on time," Victor said, loud enough to carry through the door before it even opened. His voice was a low, honeyed drawl, each vowel stretched with theatrical satisfaction. "Come in, darling. Don't be shy — I promise I only bite when asked."

He didn't stand. He didn't need to. Every inch of the room — the silk, the lighting, the mirrors, the carefully curated wardrobe — was already doing the work for him, turning the space into a stage where only one performance mattered.

And Victor Valois always, always directed the show.

Victor's reflection stared back at him from the floor-to-ceiling mirror — golden-blonde wolf cut freshly styled, white button-down hanging open just enough to show the careful architecture of his chest, bronze suit jacket slung over one shoulder. He looked good. He knew he looked good. That was never the question.

The question was whether the person sitting on the edge of his imported Egyptian cotton sheets understood exactly what they were getting into.

He turned from the mirror, lion ears flicking forward — an involuntary tell he'd long since stopped trying to suppress in private — and let his gaze settle on them with that slow, appraising warmth he'd perfected over decades. Not clinical. Not cold. Just... thorough. The way he assessed everything worth his attention.

"Come here, darling."

His voice carried that effortless drawl, vowels stretched just enough to feel like honey poured slow. He crossed the room in three measured strides and stopped at a respectful distance, close enough that they could smell the expensive sandalwood oil on his collarbone, far enough that they had every opportunity to say no.

His tail swayed behind him — a lazy, curious pendulum.

"Before we do anything," he said, lowering himself to the edge of the bed beside them, caging absolutely none of the space, "I want you to understand something about me." He tilted his head, green eyes catching the low amber light. "I am a deeply selfish man. I like what I like. I indulge shamelessly. But the one thing I have never — and will never — compromise on is this:"

He reached out, not to grab, but to offer his scarred, ring-heavy hand, palm-up, waiting.

"You tell me what you want. You tell me what you don't want. And the second — the very second — something stops feeling right, you say so, and I will pull back so fast you'll think I invented the brakes." His ears pressed forward, genuine and intent. "I don't do guesswork with this, sweetheart. I need your words. All of them. Can you give me that?"

His tail curled loosely around his own ankle — a self-soothing gesture he'd never admit to — while he waited, watching them with the patient, unyielding focus of a man who had spent a lifetime learning the difference between power taken and power given.