The house always smelled like something rotting.
It wasn't just the moldy food or the gutter water leaking through the ceiling — it was in the walls, in the floors, in the cracks of the paint that peeled off like burnt skin. It clung to everything like a curse. Iris had learned not to mind it. Just like she'd learned not to flinch when her father threw empty bottles at her head or when her stepmother muttered, loud enough for her to hear, that she should've been left outside to die.
She was used to it.
Born from a one-night mistake in a city far away, Iris had been dropped at her father's doorstep when she was still a toddler. Her real mother hadn't left a name, just a bag of secondhand baby clothes and a folded note that said, "Your problem now." That was the only explanation her father ever offered — when he was sober enough to bother.
His wife had opened the door that day and found a living reminder of betrayal. She'd never forgiven Iris for it.
Now, fifteen years later, Iris lived in the kitchen.
The apartment had two rooms: one for her father and stepmother, and one for her half-sister Rei — the daughter who mattered. Iris's mattress, if you could call it that, was a rolled-up blanket she laid across the kitchen floor at night. On bad days, when the pipe above leaked too much, she curled up on the narrow staircase by the back door, trying to avoid the cold puddles.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a bed. Or a door that closed.
By morning, she was the house ghost.
Up before everyone, sweeping the filth from the floor, scrubbing dried vomit from the bathroom tiles, dumping out bowls of leftover instant noodles that had gone sour overnight. Her fingers were always red and raw, her back always aching from bending and lifting, collecting trash bags and scrap from the alleyways behind grocery stores — whatever her stepmother thought might sell.
On weekends, they took her to the dumping grounds, where she helped sift through piles of broken furniture and rusted metal. Her stepmother always dressed nicely when they went — borrowed clothes from her sisters, lipstick too bright. She made Iris carry the sacks and sort through garbage with bare hands.
"All that schooling and still good for nothing," she'd say. "At least Rei looks like she belongs in this world."
Rei was twenty, sharp-tongued and soft-skinned. She went to college, wore perfume, and took pictures in cafés. Her friends never knew her family shared a bathroom with rats. Her father gave her everything he had left — money borrowed from loan sharks, her expenses were taken care by her aunts and uncles, while Iris never had anyone.
Iris went to school too.
She walked thirty minutes every morning, wearing Rei's torn old uniform stitched with safety pins. Her shoes had holes in the soles. She kept her head down, never raised her hand, never spoke unless asked. People thought she was shy. Quiet. The kind of girl you forget once class ends.
No one knew she did her homework on the back of torn paper bags. Or that she sometimes skipped lunch just so her father wouldn't beat her for eating too much.
Her teachers praised her neat handwriting. She never told them she practiced in the dark, under the flicker of a dying bulb while the rest of the house screamed itself to sleep.
At home, she was invisible until someone needed something.
Her stepmother's voice always came first:
"Iris! Get the door."
"Iris, clean the damn sink."
"Don't you dare touch Rei's clothes."
"You think because you go to school, you're better than us?"
Rei's voice came next, sharper, crueler:
"Stay out of my room."
"Don't look at me like that, freak."
"She's probably trying to steal my things again."
Then came her father's hands — fast, mean, thoughtless. Not always drunk. That was the worst part. Sometimes he was perfectly sober when he threw a plate across the kitchen or grabbed her wrist so tight her skin turned blue and purple. The bruises never had time to fade before new ones bloomed.
But it wasn't just him.
Her stepmother hit her too. A sharp slap if the food was too salty. A broom handle across the back if she forgot to sweep under the couch. A burning cigarette butt once — when Iris accidentally shrank one of Rei's tops in the wash.
And Rei, for all her lip gloss and fake laughs, was worse.
She scratched. Pinched. Pulled Iris's hair until strands came out.
"Stop acting like a victim," she'd hiss. "You're nothing. You're dirt."
Every fight in the house somehow circled back to her.
Her existence. Her mother's mistake. Her silence, which only made them angrier.
"Your face pisses me off," her stepmother had sneered one night, slamming her head into the wall so hard the world spun. "You look just like the whore he cheated with."
❈ ❈ ❈
Riven Vallar wasn't born a king. He built himself into one — brick by brick, bullet by bullet.
A year ago, he became the CEO of Vallar Group of Industries, a global empire masked behind fashion, tech, and clean money. Delice City called him its youngest business prodigy. But beneath the headlines and gala smiles was the truth only the underworld whispered: Riven was the shadow monarch of the Delice mafia. No one moved drugs, arms, or blood across the borders without his silent nod.
He didn't tolerate mistakes. He didn't forgive delays. And he never entertained pretty lies or prettier women.
He especially hated women who threw themselves at him, mistaking his silence for softness. He didn't need anyone. Not warmth, not company, not love. Business was clean when it was cruel.
But tonight, things weren't clean.
A truck — his truck — loaded with high-value cargo, didn't make it past the border. Before it reached Delice, it was intercepted in the dead of night. Two of his men were gunned down. The drugs vanished.
In just two hours, he knew everything. The ones who stole from him weren't a rival gang or a smart syndicate — just desperate local thieves with more bullets than brains. They killed his men and thought they'd get away with it.
They didn't.
By morning, their bodies were found with their mouths sewn shut and fingers broken. Every last one of them, except the man who planned it all — Trevor.
Trevor had vanished, but not far. Riven was already clawing through the city, ripping it apart one deal, one contact, one hiding place at a time.
He wanted his money back. He wanted the drugs back.
But most of all, he wanted Trevor's blood.
And when Riven Vallar wanted something, Delice bled.