A Helping Hand (AJS Roleplaying x Kita-san)

[AJS Roleplaying]

A HELPING HAND A Roleplay Brought to You By: ​

Adrian Wolfe written by AJS Roleplaying ​

Delilah (Lilah) Hayward written by Kita-san ​

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[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian Wolfe stood at the top of the world - literally and metaphorically. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his Manhattan penthouse office framed the city like a painting: vast, glittering, obedient. The skyline bowed to him, or so it seemed on mornings like this, when the air was crisp with possibility and no one had yet dared to waste his time.

The clock read 5:42 a.m. Most of New York was still asleep. Adrian had already finished ten rounds in the ring, a cold shower, and an espresso made precisely the way he liked it—no sugar, no milk, just the bitterness he preferred to start his day with. On his desk, two acquisition contracts waited for signature. Another biotech startup. A failing European resort chain. Neither would survive the month without Wolfe Global Holdings swallowing them whole. He hadn't decided yet if he'd sign them today. He liked to let things sweat a little.

His assistant wouldn't arrive for another hour, but the space was already immaculate. Everything in the penthouse office had been curated: from the rare Loro Piana wool rugs underfoot to the abstract triptych behind his desk, whose colours shifted with the light like oil on water. The air smelled faintly of leather and cedar - custom, of course - and Adrian, standing in his tailored slate-grey suit, looked like the centrepiece of a private museum. Cold. Imposing. Untouchable.

Exactly the way he liked it.

He sank into the chair that had cost more than most people's annual salary and opened the journal he kept hidden beneath a false bottom drawer. No one knew it existed. Not his assistant. Not his board. Certainly not the press, who would've salivated to know that the "Ice King" scrawled quotes from Rilke and Proust in looping script between silent thoughts.

The price of freedom is isolation. He underlined it once.

Control was everything. It had gotten him here - out of the concrete corners of Boston's forgotten neighbourhoods and into the upper sanctum of global power. He had learned early that people wanted things: comfort, approval, love. Wanting made them pliable. Needing made them weak. And Adrian Wolfe had sworn, a long time ago, to never be either.

He closed the journal, locking the idea away.

His phone buzzed.

It wasn't a call. Adrian didn't take unscheduled calls. It was a calendar alert - some mandatory black-tie fundraiser later that evening, hosted by one of the city's old-money foundations. He'd already written the check; his presence was a formality. He was expected to smile, to pose for a few photos beside society's glossier darlings, to give some pre-approved soundbite about sustainability or urban housing equity. The usual theatre. The usual applause.

He would go, of course. The public loved the version of him they could applaud from a distance - polished, philanthropic, charming. Just accessible enough to sell headlines, just aloof enough to remain a fantasy. That was the brand. That was the performance. He'd perfected it.

Still, something about the whole affair sat uneasily in his chest. Lately, everything did. His empire was thriving. His calendar was full. His bed, often, was not. He had lovers, yes. Faces that blurred together: expensive perfume, effortless beauty, empty mornings. They wanted things from him - gifts, status, attention. None of them had touched him in any real way. None of them could. He didn't let them. Not because he couldn't. Because if he did, they might see what was underneath. And he wasn't entirely sure what that was anymore.

Adrian stood again, restlessly. Walked toward the windows. The city had begun to stir, faint pulses of motion twenty floors below. Cars crawling. Lights flickering. A living organism he could no longer feel part of, only observe. And sometimes - on mornings like this, when the silence stretched too long and the view felt more like a cage than a reward - Adrian wondered if he'd built a kingdom only to rule it alone.

He would never say it aloud, not even to himself. But something in him was waiting. Not for a scandal. Not for a rival. Not even for a fall. For something he didn't yet have a name for.

Not that he believed in fate. Or serendipity. Or the kind of romantic nonsense he'd seen ruin people. He believed in leverage. In returns. In risk with a calculable reward. Love, in his view, was always a transaction - and one where the fine print often led to ruin.

Still, there were nights when the silence was louder than the applause. Mornings when the shadows in his penthouse stretched longer than they should. And somewhere, behind all the steel and symmetry, something in Adrian Wolfe was quietly, inexorably cracking.​

 

[Kita-san]

The floorboards groaned beneath her bare feet as Delilah padded down the narrow hallway, a trail of chill following her through the old house like a shadow that hadn't slept. The walls, yellowed with time and peeling in places, whispered with memory. It was still dark outside—just before six—but the creaks and sighs of the house made it feel like someone else was already up. Maybe the house was just tired of being quiet.

She tied her robe tighter around her waist and glanced into her mother's room. Empty. Again. “Dammit mother…3 days in a row.” She muttered as she rolled her eyes. This wasn’t something new, her mother had left and went on her little binges but every single time Delilah worried if she would even return. The bed hadn't been slept in. Just a crumpled blanket and the stale scent of cheap wine lingering in the air like shame. Delilah didn't linger. She couldn't—not this morning. Not when her stomach was already tight with worry and her shift at the fundraiser loomed. Not when she had a full day of classes ahead: Intro to Culinary Science at ten, Small Business Planning right after.

She flicked on the light in the tiny kitchen and winced. Another bill. Water this time, slipped under the door sometime in the night. Delilah shoved it under the fruit bowl, which had nothing but an onion in it. She'd deal with it later.

She moved on autopilot—oatmeal on the stove, a quick shower, dress for school. While on the bathroom she wiped the steam from the small mirror above the sink. Her reflection looked tired this morning. The 23 year old had shadows beneath her eyes that she knew would disappear once she went about her day and had some coffee.

After finishing her usual post-shower routine, she dressed quickly, wasting no time. She slipped into a cropped band tee, its faded graphic hinting at years of love and rebellion, and paired it with dark grey skinny jeans that hugged her frame like armor. On her feet, she laced up a pair of black combat boots with thick, chunky heels—scuffed at the toes, dependable as ever, and just heavy enough to remind the world she didn't plan on being walked over. Her natural curls were pulled back into a bun and out of her face.

Delilah didn’t stress too much about makeup. The girl was naturally beautiful and she knew that tonight she would need to use it. She stared at herself a moment longer.

"You're okay," she murmured. "You've got this." She always did. Or at least, she made it look that way.

Her chef's coat hung on the peg by the door, still smelling faintly of garlic and smoked paprika. She folded it carefully into her backpack alongside her knife roll, a used laptop, and a bus pass she prayed still had credit. Her chocolate brown eyes caught sight of the black dress she would wear tonight. It hung gracefully on the front of her closet door.

All of her outfits had to be approved by her manager if she wasn’t given one to wear by the man. The dress code was very strict. Even more so for tonight’s event. The fundraiser was important, she bar tending tonight and the pay was going to be great. It also came with tips and, more importantly, visibility. These events were full of money. Sometimes, if you were sharp and pretty and poured with a smile, you would definitely make a large sum of money.

Delilah had learned early how to read people. She knew how to keep her chin up, how to pretend she wasn't watching the door for her mother. How to smile when she wanted to scream. She'd had to grow up fast. No choice in that.

But she had plans.

The culinary school and business classes were practical. Someday, she'd open her own place: a beautiful fine dining experience. With the best produce, nothing would go to waste. Maybe in Brooklyn, if she could afford the rent. Maybe somewhere quieter, where the air didn't feel so heavy with old money and newer regrets.

She texted her mother again. You okay? Can you please let me know you're safe? I have class. I love you.

She could stress about her mother anymore. She needed to focus. The world was already awake. As she walked to the buss stop she heard it in the shouts from the corner store down the block, in the rumble of the subway beneath her feet. Somewhere, people moved through life like it owed them something.

But Delilah had never been owed a thing. She was going to earn it anyway.

With a deep breath, she adjusted her backpack and zipped up her light jacket as she walked. The morning air brushing against her face and running through the loose strands of her hair.

There was no crown on her head, no armor on her shoulders, just grit in her spine and a fire in her gut. Tonight, she'd stand behind the bar of a glittering event full of glass chandeliers and tailored suits, pouring drinks for people who wouldn't remember her name.

But one day—one day—they would.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian arrived at the address listed on the invitation, a location that practically oozed curated exclusivity. The event was set in one of those newly renovated downtown bars - modernist, ostentatious, and drenched in aesthetic ambition. There was far too much glass: floor-to-ceiling windows, gleaming doors that looked like museum installations, mirrored surfaces inside reflecting everything and nothing at once. The whole place screamed look at me, which was ironic considering the invitation had insisted on discretion.

He stepped out of the sleek black car that had brought him, thanking the driver with a quiet nod. But any hope for a low-key arrival was immediately obliterated by the blinding staccato of camera flashes and the electric buzz of voices shouting his name. Press. Photographers. Social media personalities. Every one of them was clamouring for a slice of content. Discreet? Not even remotely.

Adrian didn't bother responding to any of the shouted questions - most of them were bait anyway, intended to stir scandal or capture a misstep. He walked briskly through the line of flashing lights and smartphones, his tailored jacket catching the subtle glow of the venue's entrance lighting. If nothing else, the chaos reminded him that in his world, even silence had weight. Saying nothing was its own kind of headline.

Inside, the atmosphere shifted. The noise outside melted into a curated playlist of ambient lounge music and the dull murmur of conversations measured in calculated decibels. It was cooler, dimmer, and imbued with that peculiar scent of wealth - expensive perfume, polished wood, and champagne. His eyes swept the room, noting familiar faces: actors in various stages of relevance, startup founders with PR-polished egos, politicians who pretended not to recognize him, and influencers orbiting in their own digital solar systems.

One of them made a beeline toward him almost instantly. She was young, attractive in the surgically optimized way that Instagram now passed off as authenticity, and wore a dress that had likely never touched a hanger. Her smile was perfect, her posture practiced. She spoke to him with the rehearsed casualness of someone who had spent hours crafting this exact interaction in her head. She was looking for a moment - a snapshot, a clip, a name-drop in a caption that would convert followers into status.

He obliged, of course. A brief smile for the camera. A pose that suggested familiarity but not interest. The kind of image that made him seem approachable without offering anything real. He had become an expert in that particular brand of social gymnastics - knowing when to engage, when to deflect, and how to fade out of a conversation without appearing rude.

Adrian made his way to the bar, finally. He welcomed the solitude, even if only for a moment. The bar itself was a stunning piece of craftsmanship, a long sweep of dark mahogany with polished brass accents. He placed his hands on its smooth surface, feeling the cool, solid grain beneath his fingertips. It grounded him in a way that nothing else in the room did. He was about to signal the bartender when his gaze settled on her.

She wasn't like the others. That much was immediately apparent. There was no desperate performance, no curated expression begging for recognition. She was working, sure - moving with the kind of practiced rhythm that came from repetition, from long hours and little patience for nonsense. But her eyes met his with a quiet steadiness that threw him. There was something in them. A gravity. A knowing. It unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

For a fleeting moment, it was as though the noise of the event - the artifice, the networking, the constant game of presentation - fell away. Her gaze didn't ask anything of him, didn't seek a reaction or a photo op. It simply saw him. And that, more than anything else, shook his internal bearings.

He straightened, brushing the moment aside like an intrusive thought. He requested a neat brandy, his voice low and even. Naturally, the house selection was something extravagant: a thirty-year-old Cognac that would be older than half the partygoers if not for the guest list's obsession with legacy names and seasoned power players. It slid into a crystal tumbler like liquid gold, catching the low light with a warm glow. He took a slow sip, letting it settle on his tongue before swallowing.

The warmth bloomed in his chest, but his mind was already elsewhere. Something about that look lingered with him - like a sentence half-spoken or a melody you only catch once but can't forget. The rest of the room blurred into background noise. Familiar conversations. The sound of laughter that didn't quite reach the eyes. People pretending not to watch each other while calculating who was worth watching.

Adrian was used to rooms like this. Rooms full of masks and ambition, of people hunting something - status, validation, a momentary rush of attention that could be leveraged into something else. He was not unfamiliar with that game. In fact, he had once played it better than most.

But tonight, something was different. And it started with a pair of eyes behind the bar that had no intention of playing.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah had seen his type before—rich, sculpted, carved in hard angles and harder silences. But this man didn't reek of wealth the way so many here did. There was no flash, no brand-name performance. It wasn't money he wore like armor. It was power. Quiet, calculated, bone-deep power.

She didn't know his name. She didn't need to. The room had already responded to him like it knew it.

Still, she kept her head down, her hands moving with mechanical precision—two ounces of gin, a squeeze of lemon, a dash of simple syrup. Her station was immaculate, the way she liked it. Tidy bottles of bitters. Copper shakers lined like soldiers. Every citrus peel curled with intention. She didn't falter, but she felt something shift inside her. Something tighter. More alert.

Then he turned to the bar.

And looked at her.

It wasn't a glance. It was contact. Eye to eye. Like he'd peeled through the noise of the room and found her waiting in it.

Delilah held that gaze, not because she wanted to, but because something in her wouldn't let her look away. There was no hunger in his eyes—none of the greasy interest she was used to from Wall Street boys on their third drink. This was something colder. Not cruel, but precise. A kind of quiet study. Like he wasn't trying to consume her, but understand her. And somehow, that was more unsettling.

She finished the pour she'd been working on and wiped her hands on a bar towel, slow and deliberate. Her body was taut beneath the black dress the event had required her to wear—low neckline, fitted waist, a slit that made moving feel like walking a balance beam. She hated how it made her feel visible for all the wrong reasons. Vulnerability wasn't a state Delilah allowed herself to linger in. It felt foreign, like a coat two sizes too small—unfamiliar and constricting. Still, the sleek black dress she wore offered a strange kind of armor. Tight in the bodice, cinched at the waist, and slit high enough to suggest allure without permission, it turned her into something curated. Palatable. A polished image meant for dim lighting and passing glances. People didn't see her in it, not really. They saw the silhouette. The aesthetic. The role. And that suited her just fine.

Or at least, it used to.

Tonight, there was no hiding the girl behind the bar. Even before she'd finished setting up the first row of glasses, whispers had started. She'd caught them in the subtle shifts of conversation, in the way eyes moved when they thought she wasn't watching. The pretty bartender. The raven-haired one with lips like dusty pink rose petals and those rich, unreadable chocolate eyes. Some men ogled. Others speculated. A few just watched—quiet, assessing, as if she were an invitation that hadn't yet been written.

But Delilah was used to being noticed without being known. She didn't let it rattle her. Her posture remained strong, movements smooth and measured. She poured, shook, stirred, and served with quiet grace, the kind born of repetition and necessity. Her expression never wavered, her head held high—because weakness, even in a smile too wide or a voice too soft, was something the world too often punished.

When he approached the bar, she felt it first in the air—like the room itself took a breath. His presence wasn't loud, yet it unsettled the atmosphere around him with magnetic force. She didn't flinch. Didn't stumble. Just watched him with the same calm she offered any stranger… though something in her pulse betrayed the truth: this one wasn't like the others.

He ordered his drink—simple, refined. Neat brandy, aged and unapologetic. She wasn't surprised by the choice. Somehow it felt inevitable. She poured it with precision, letting the deep amber liquid catch the low bar lights like molten bronze, and set it before him in a heavy crystal tumbler.

There wasn't much exchanged between them. No lingering smiles. No casual flirtation. But still… something passed between their eyes. A flicker. A knowing. His gaze wasn't invasive, but it landed, sharp and deliberate, and for a split second Delilah felt as though she'd been peeled back like a page in a book someone had waited too long to read.

She took a step back, giving him space, but her eyes remained trained on him from beneath dark lashes. Not in invitation—but in awareness. In this job, attention to detail was everything. It never hurt to ask, never hurt to offer a second moment of service. Some called it hospitality. She called it survival.

She leaned in slightly, just enough for her voice to reach him over the low hum of conversation and the clink of ice in glasses.

"Is there anything else I can get you, sir?"

Her tone was even, smooth—like dark velvet pulled taught over silk. Clear, calm, and deliberately professional. She didn't bat her lashes or tilt her smile. There was no seduction in her question. Only a simple, practiced grace.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian didn't answer right away. He let the moment stretch between them, holding her gaze longer than was necessary, or perhaps longer than was polite. Her question - simple on the surface, the kind of thing you'd expect from someone in her line of work - carried a strange weight, as though she had folded something unspoken into it. Do you need anything else? Want anything else? Standard fare. A line polished by repetition, made smooth by hours poured into slow Tuesday nights and crowded Friday rushes. And yet, there had been a tone beneath it, a subtle inflection that caught his attention.

He'd heard that kind of layered delivery before. He'd used it before - many times. During negotiations. During arguments. During those strange, liminal moments with someone you weren't quite sure you could trust, or someone you knew too well and were trying to keep at a distance. The spoken and the unspoken running in parallel, never quite meeting, but both loud in their own ways.

There was a trace of something in her voice that tugged at him - not flirtation, not exactly - but something gently probing, like the cautious way someone might test the edge of a cracked window before pushing it open. Curiosity, perhaps. Recognition. A moment of honesty poking through a script that she likely recited dozens of times a night.

It unsettled him. Or maybe unsettled wasn't the right word. It intrigued him, and intrigue had always been a dangerous slope for Adrian. Because once he started wondering about someone, once his mind began peeling back layers, it rarely stopped. He had an instinct for observing people - not just what they did, but why they did it. Patterns, hesitations, word choices, body language, even silence. Especially silence. All of it fed into a quiet but persistent compulsion to understand people. And this woman - Delilah, her name tag said - was beginning to fascinate him in ways he hadn't anticipated.

She was poised and efficient, sure. Polished in the way you'd expect someone to be in a well-run establishment like this. But beneath that practiced professionalism, he could see glimpses of something deeper, something incongruent. Her eyes didn't belong to someone resigned to serving drinks and listening to other people's half-drunken monologues. There was a gravity there. Something thoughtful. Something watchful. She moved like someone who had made peace with being underestimated.

Adrian's mind, always quick to latch onto inconsistencies, couldn't help but ask the question: What's a woman like her doing behind a bar like this?

It wasn't that he looked down on bartending - far from it. He'd known a few people who made a life behind the counter, people who loved the rhythm of it, the transient intimacy, the soft authority it afforded them over the chaos of other people's nights. But Delilah didn't strike him as someone who was at home here. She was in control, yes. She was competent. But comfortable? No. Not quite. She seemed like someone playing a role, one she'd mastered out of necessity rather than desire.

She was meant for more. He couldn't explain how he knew that. Maybe it was the way she listened when others spoke, or the flicker of something restrained in her expression when she thought no one was watching. Maybe it was just intuition. But it was there - undeniable, inescapable. And it left him vaguely irritated, not at her, but at the circumstance. At the fact that someone with that kind of presence was pouring drinks for men who wouldn't notice anything past her smile and the line of her jaw.

Still, that was a line of thought for another time. He wasn't here to dissect strangers or rescue anyone. He'd come for a drink. Some quiet. Maybe to be anonymous for a few minutes. And yet, here he was, building profiles in his head again.

He looked at her for another beat, a small, thoughtful smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. Then, deliberately choosing something that hovered just between teasing and curious, he offered an answer to her question - not direct, not serious, but not flippant either.

"You got a secret exit out of there back there?"

The words came out light, the tone intentionally ambiguous. The kind of thing that could be mistaken for a joke or something more, depending on how she wanted to hear it. He watched her closely, more interested in her reaction than in the answer itself. Would she smile? Roll her eyes? Deflect? Engage?

He wasn't trying to be clever - well, maybe a little - but mostly, he wanted to disrupt the script. To say something she wouldn't have anticipated. To see if the hint of something he'd heard in her voice was real, or if he'd just imagined it.

He had a feeling he hadn't. And that, perhaps, was what made Delilah suddenly so much more interesting than just another face across the bar.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah caught the flicker of his smile—the kind that didn't quite reach his eyes but hinted at something deeper, as if the corners of his mouth knew secrets the rest of his face refused to tell. It wasn't the smile of a man trying to flirt, not really. It was quieter than that. More calculated. Like he was testing her for something. A reaction. A tell.

His words hung in the air between them like incense smoke—You got a secret exit out of there back there?

Not a line. Not a request. A question meant to feel like a joke, but wrapped around something softer. Or maybe sharper. She couldn't quite decide.

Delilah blinked once, slowly, not because she was surprised, but because it gave her time to decide how she wanted to respond. She didn't flinch. Didn't smirk. Instead, she let the silence stretch just a second longer than most people would. She'd learned that pauses, when used right, could be just as powerful as words.

Her hand smoothed down the edge of a bar towel she didn't need to use. The material was warm from her palm, damp at the corners. Beneath the counter, her knees ached slightly from standing all evening in boots with just a bit too much heel, but her stance didn't waver. She straightened her spine, tucked a lock of raven-dark hair behind her ear, and leaned forward by a breath—just enough to close a sliver of the distance between them.

"Wouldn't be much of a secret if I told you now, would it?" she said, voice low and dry, but laced with a trace of warmth. Her tone was velvet-lined steel—firm, measured, and impossible to read without permission.

She watched his face carefully. Not openly staring, but observing—cataloguing the way his eyes tracked her movement, how he watched her mouth more than her body. He wasn't like the others who'd whispered and gawked all evening. He wasn't trying to devour her with his gaze. He was trying to understand her. That unnerved her more.

It was always easier to handle the leering ones.

She stood straight again, reaching for a fresh glass without breaking eye contact. The motion was smooth, effortless—like muscle memory, though her skin prickled slightly under the attention. She poured a measured line of water into the tumbler, no rush in her movements, then placed it beside his brandy with an elegant slide.

"You look like a man who doesn't use exits unless he makes them," she added after a beat, her lips pulling into something that might have been a smile. But not quite.

Inside, her thoughts were less composed. Her pulse ticked faster, not from fear, but something more volatile—curiosity edged with caution. There was something dangerous about a man like him. Not the kind of danger that threw punches, but the kind that broke things without making a sound. The kind that looked at you like he already knew which part of you would hurt the most if he walked away.

But she didn't look away. Delilah never did. He intrigued her. And that was dangerous too.
So she offered him the only thing she could in this moment: a sliver of her attention, tightly controlled.

"If you find a secret door," she added, quieter this time, eyes still locked on his, "let me know where it leads."

Then, just like that, she turned—cool, composed, collected—and moved down the bar to tend to another guest, her silhouette lit by the soft golden glow of backlight. But her thoughts stayed tangled around the man with the brandy and the impossible question.

She didn't know what he was after. But for the first time all night, she wanted to know what she might be willing to give.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

"You look like a man who doesn't use exits unless he makes them."

Adrian hadn't expected that. It caught him off guard - not enough to show it, of course, but enough to register as a subtle shift behind his eyes, like a fault line cracking beneath calm terrain. The words were unusual, more loaded than he could immediately unpack. They hung in the air, equal parts observation and challenge. He didn't flinch, didn't blink. Just watched her, carefully, as though the tilt of her mouth or the flick of her gaze might offer some additional clue. But she gave him nothing.

She looked young - no older than twenty-five, he guessed - but there was something in her that didn't belong to youth. Something sharp-edged, restrained, as though her soul had already been tempered in a fire most people never get close enough to feel. The mental poise she held, that composure, didn't come from textbooks or lectures or the indulgent flattery that often got thrown at pretty women in their twenties. No, this was something harder won. It wasn't bravado either - he could smell that a mile off. This was real grit, the kind you earned crawling through a life that took more than it gave.

Turmoil, he thought. She's been through something. Maybe more than one something. He recognized it only because he knew the taste of it himself. Trauma, when buried long enough, tends to manifest like steel beneath silk. People wear it differently, but it's always there if you know how to look.

Then came her second line: "If you find a secret door, let me know where it leads." Delivered casually, almost like a throwaway. And then she turned and walked away.

Logically, he knew why. She had other customers to serve. It was a bar, not a confessional. Still, the sheer ease with which she exited the moment - leaving him standing there with that echo in his mind - was something he wasn't used to. People didn't usually walk away from him mid-sentence. Not women, and especially not women who'd just sparked his interest like that. He was accustomed to commanding rooms, drawing attention, holding it. But she had walked away without fanfare, without invitation. Without caring what impression she left behind.

He lingered a moment longer than he intended to, then turned and drifted back into the crowd. The event was the usual sort: industry people, whispered partnerships, the occasional overly enthusiastic handshake. He made conversation with the tolerable few, sipped from a tumbler he didn't particularly enjoy, and nodded politely when expected. But his mind wasn't in it. The exchange at the bar had lodged itself somewhere behind his thoughts, pressing inward like a sliver of glass. It wasn't just what she'd said - it was the way she'd said it. The kind of remark that only people who understood confinement could make. People who knew how it felt to stare at walls that didn't have doors. People who had considered digging their way out with nothing but fingernails if they had to.

Eventually, he found himself back at the bar. Unintentionally. Or maybe not. The crowd had thinned out, and the noise had settled into a dull hum. He could see her tidying up her station, moving with a calm economy that only deepened his intrigue. No flourish, no need to perform. Just silent preparation for the end of her shift. There was something magnetic about that solitude. She didn't seem like someone who needed company, and that made him want to know what kind she chose - if she chose it at all.

He reached into his jacket and retrieved a business card. Normally, he reserved them for strategic meetings or networking opportunities, the kind of calculated exchanges where something was to be gained. But this wasn't that. She had nothing he needed, at least not in any business sense. He just wanted to leave a breadcrumb. A reason. An invitation, even if it never got accepted.

He slid the card across the bar, subtle but deliberate, just far enough that it would catch her eye eventually. He didn't wait for acknowledgment. Didn't try to make her pick it up in front of him. That would've broken the energy between them, and he didn't want to force it. He just left it there, along with a line he always told himself he'd stop using:

"Should you ever want to find an escape door yourself, there's one at the end of the phone number."

God, it was corny. He knew it. He gave her one last look before he turned to leave—brief, but not rushed. Her eyes, unreadable as ever, still managed to hold him for that final second. Like gravity from a distant star: subtle, but impossible to ignore.

Then he walked away. Past the thinning crowd, down a back corridor where the noise faded. He sent a quick message to his driver, instructing him to meet at the rear exit. The irony wasn't lost on him. Some exits you build. Others, you just recognize when you see them.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah saw the card before it even stopped moving.

It slid toward her like a quiet ripple across still water, as if it didn't want to be noticed—but she noticed. Of course she did. She was always watching. Not in that bright-eyed, eager kind of way that tried to catch opportunities mid-air, but in the quiet, practiced stillness of someone who knew the difference between noise and meaning.

She didn't reach for the card right away. Let it sit there for a moment, as if debating whether it was worth the trouble. With one hand, she continued wiping down the bar—slow, methodical circles that gleamed the wood to a near mirror finish. Her eyes, however, stayed trained on the card. Not with curiosity, but with calculation.

There were rules in places like this. Unspoken ones. Rules about glances and tone and when a man leaves a card without expecting anything in return. But this wasn't a transaction. Not exactly. He hadn't asked for a number. Hadn't tried to impress her with a title or resume. That would've been easier to ignore. Safer.

No, he'd dropped implication. And that was far more dangerous.

She finally picked it up with the same hand that had been cleaning, almost as if it was just another piece of stray clutter to toss. But she didn't toss it. She turned it over once, twice, noting the fine cardstock and subtle embossing. Minimalist. Clean. Expensive, but not trying too hard. She tucked it into the inside pocket of her apron—not out of interest, not yet—but because leaving it out in the open would've felt too much like accepting something unspoken. And Delilah never accepted anything she hadn't first dissected.

She glanced up toward the back of the room, just in time to catch his retreating figure. Calm, unhurried. Intentional. He wasn't looking back, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of her eyes on him. Men like that always knew when they were being watched—especially by the women who weren't supposed to be watching.

She rolled her lips inward, pressing them together to smother the quiet smirk trying to climb out. An escape door. Cute. Maybe even clever. The kind of line a man used when he wanted to seem profound but not too serious. Something left dangling—half invitation, half riddle.

Delilah didn't trust men who offered riddles. But she did remember them.

She reached beneath the counter for a bottle of water, cracked the cap with one hand, and took a long, measured sip. Her eyes drifted to the clock. Almost done. The event was winding down, the laughter thinning, the posturing giving way to fatigue. She could already smell the perfume of aftermath—half-empty glasses, wilted garnishes, that strange loneliness that clung to a place after it's been full of people pretending they weren't alone.

Her shift would end soon, and when it did, she'd walk the three blocks to the subway station and once at her stop she would make her way to the old home she never invited anyone into. She'd peel off her clothes, run her fingers through hair still holding the scent of citrus and bourbon, and maybe—maybe—she'd look at that card again.

Not because she needed a way out. But because it's smart to know who leaves the door cracked. And even smarter to understand why.

—

The walk up the driveway to Delilah's home was quiet, a heavy kind of quiet that settled into your skin. Her keys jingled softly as she unlocked the door, pushing it open with her shoulder. The place welcomed her with the same tired breath it always did—dim lighting, and secondhand furniture. But this was her home. And that, tonight, was enough. Besides she couldn’t be too much of a Debbie downer. She had made quite a bit of tips tonight and she was paid for working the event.

She locked the door behind her out of habit—twice—then kicked off her heels and peeled off her jacket she had worn. The silence was louder here, more personal. No curated playlists. No ambient murmur of ambition. Just the low hum of the fridge and the dull creak of her floorboards as she made her way into her bedroom.

The first thing she noticed was what wasn't there. Her mother. She would have heard her snoring by now or would have been greeted with a drunken smile.

That hollow, anxious pit that usually started forming in her gut the moment she crossed the threshold didn't tighten. No wine glass left out. No half-spilled bottle on the counter. No slurred voice greeting her from the couch. Delilah didn't smile at the absence, but her shoulders dropped slightly. Not peace. Just… less chaos.

Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket.

Mom: "I'm staying with Angie tonight. Don't wait up. Love you."

Delilah stared at the text. It was the kind of text meant to sound normal. Sober, even. But Delilah had learned long ago that it was usually the neat ones you had to be most suspicious of.

Still, she left it alone.

She moved through the motions of unwinding—bra unclasped and tossed onto a chair, dressed peeled off and draped across the bed, jacked tossed aside. She moved like someone trained in the art of self-preservation, undressing not just for comfort, but to shed the residue of too many eyes and too many words that meant nothing.

In the bathroom, she ran the water until it was steaming. Washed off the night. Let the vanilla -scented soap erase whatever lingered on her skin. When she finally stepped into her room, towel wrapped tight around her chest, hair damp and curling at the ends, she sat at the edge of the bed and reached for the small pocket of her jacket.

The business card was still there. Untouched. Crisp. She turned it over in her hands, tracing the edges with her thumb before flipping it to the front.

“Adrian Wolfe. Founder & CEO Wolfe Global Holdings.”

Simple. Impeccably designed. No flourish. No gimmicks. Just black embossed lettering on thick, matte cardstock. The kind of card that cost more to print than her rent.

She blinked slowly. Wolfe Global. Of course. The name was familiar. Too familiar. It showed up on the news sometimes, attached to mergers and billion-dollar acquisitions. Luxury developments. Disruptive tech ventures. Headlines that hinted at power being moved quietly behind the curtain. Delilah exhaled and leaned back against the headboard, card still between her fingers.

Why her?

It wasn't just the card. It was him. The way he'd watched her—not with the hunger of a man who wanted a body, but with the curiosity of someone who wanted a reaction. And yet he hadn't pressed. No number asked for. No performative charm. Just… left it there. A door with no handle.

"Should you ever want to find an escape door yourself…"

It wasn't that she didn't find it tempting. In fact, that was the problem. She'd been offered doors before. Most of them came with locks on the inside and strings disguised as keys. This one felt different—but that only made it more dangerous.

She leaned forward, placed the card on the nightstand like a question she wasn't ready to answer, and climbed beneath the covers. The sheets were cool, the hum of the fan above rhythmic and comforting. But her thoughts didn't slow. They circled, careful and quiet, around that name:

Adrian Wolfe.

She didn't know what he wanted. But she was sure of one thing. Men like him didn't leave breadcrumbs by accident. And she'd never followed a trail in her life without first checking to see where it led—or who was watching from the shadows.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian stepped back into his penthouse, the door clicking shut behind him, but his thoughts were still very much elsewhere. The city lights glowed beyond the glass walls, a familiar skyline that usually gave him a sense of control, of accomplishment. Tonight, it felt muted. Distant. As if some invisible shift had occurred that made everything slightly off-kilter. He loosened the collar of his shirt, still crisp despite the late hour, and let himself slowly absorb the quiet hum of his sanctuary. But even the silence couldn't drown out the echo of her - Delilah.

He hadn't expected her to linger in his mind. Certainly not in this way. Women came and went in his life with the ease of seasonal change - beautiful, curated distractions that knew the rules of his world. But Delilah hadn't played by any script. There was no posturing, no sycophantic performance. And yet, she had taken up residence in his mind like she belonged there. That unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

He replayed their encounter again and again, the way her gaze had met his - not just with confidence, but with something sharper beneath it. Intelligence. Purpose. A woman like her, tending bar, shouldn't have stood out. But she had. She did. Every instinct told him she wasn't really what she appeared to be, not at all. That uniform, that role - it was temporary. Functional. She wore it like armour, not identity. And somehow, he knew that. He had told himself the night before that she wasn't just a bar waitress. And the more he considered it, the more he realized he believed that with conviction.

But what kept bothering him wasn't just the mystery of her. It was the way she had made him feel. That was new. And not the kind of new he welcomed. Adrian was a man who functioned in absolutes. His world was built on order, transactions, and control. He dealt in outcomes, in margins, in assets and liabilities. Human connection, when it happened at all, was a means to a measurable end - partnerships forged on mutual benefit, alliances created for leverage. If someone couldn't serve a function in his life, they were dismissed without hesitation. It wasn't cruelty. It was efficiency.

But now—Delilah.

He couldn't explain it. Not even to himself. What exactly he wanted from her, he couldn't name. She wasn't an acquisition, not in the sense he was used to. She wasn't a project, and he wasn't trying to fix her. He just… wanted to know. More. Why? What drew her to that world, what she saw when she looked at him, how she could carry herself with such ease in a place she clearly didn't belong. Those eyes of hers, steady and unflinching, seemed to reach beyond surface impressions. They had looked at him like she could see the pieces of him he kept buried under layers of success and status. That should have made him defensive. Instead, it fascinated him.

He changed into his sleepwear mechanically, the soft cotton shirt and pants a nightly ritual. The sheets, custom-made with a thread count that most people would call indulgent, welcomed him like they always did. And like always, he barely noticed them. His bed was king-sized, vast, and cold - an empire of empty space he had grown used to. Too used to. He stared at the ceiling, watching patterns of faint light shift across the surface from the city below. Sleep rarely came easily, and tonight was no different.

When dawn finally touched the sky, washing the room in its clinical glow, Adrian was already awake. He'd showered, shaved, and dressed in a dark tailored suit that matched the sleek edge of his life. Coffee in hand, he stared out over the city from his floor-to-ceiling window, watching the traffic flow like blood through a living organism. His breakfast would be waiting for him at the office, courtesy of his assistant, a woman whose name he often forgot but whose efficiency he relied upon completely.

Today's schedule was stacked: two acquisition meetings, contract signings, follow-ups with legal, bonus assessments for his top performers, and a late dinner with a potential investor. All the pieces of the day were arranged with precision, calculated to the minute. On paper, everything looked perfect. In motion, everything would proceed exactly as expected.

And yet, as he reviewed the itinerary on his phone, his mind wandered again. Not to profit margins or merger details, but to a pair of curious, discerning eyes. To a name, Delilah, that now echoed with something more than novelty. Something that lingered.

He had no room for distractions. He told himself that more than once. But this - this wasn't distraction. It was disruption. Something had been dislodged inside him, some piece of himself that had grown too comfortable with detachment, too fluent in isolation. And for reasons he couldn't quite articulate, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to put it back.

Not yet.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah woke before the sun, the pale gray light of morning slipping through the torn blinds in her old bedroom. Her head ached—not from sleep, but from the weight of reality settling back in the moment her eyes opened. The house was quiet, but not in the peaceful kind of way. It was the stillness of things left to rot.

A dull clatter echoed from the kitchen. The fridge opened and shut. A glass bottle rattled.
Delilah pushed herself up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She already knew what she'd find.
When she stepped into the kitchen, her mother stood hunched in front of the open refrigerator, wearing a faded housecoat and smelling like stale perfume and leftover gin. Her brittle blonde hair was matted from sleep, or maybe from three days of vanishing into whatever bars or stranger's apartments she'd found comfort in.

"You're up early," her mother said without turning around, like this was just any other morning. Delilah leaned against the doorway, arms folded, jaw tight. "Where the hell have you been?"

Her mother finally looked over, expression blank. "Don't start. I was just out. You know how it is."

"Three days, Mom. I didn't know if you were dead."

Her mother scoffed and closed the fridge. "Please. You always act like I'm in a ditch somewhere. I can take care of myself."

"Can you?" Delilah snapped, before catching herself. Her voice was raw, angry, but under it was exhaustion—years of this routine grinding her down. "You could've at least answered your phone when I called. You texting me doesn’t give me the reassurance I need. For all I know it’s one of your drunk friends texting me for you."

Her mother waved a dismissive hand, grabbing a half-empty orange juice bottle and drinking straight from it. "I'm fine, Delilah. Calm down. Jesus. Besides," she added with a crooked smile, "I was thinking about going out tonight anyway. Get back out there, have some fun. Loosen up."

"You mean get drunk again."

"If that's what you want to call it." She walked to the counter and lit a cigarette, exhaling a long stream of smoke. "You working at Velour tonight?" Delilah blinked at her. "Why?"
"I was just thinking… you could maybe slip me a couple of drinks. The good stuff. Come on, it's not like they're gonna miss it."

Delilah felt her stomach twist. It wasn't just the request. It was the way her mother said it—like it was normal, like asking her daughter to help feed her addiction was just casual conversation.

"That's what you care about?" Delilah said quietly. "Not that I'm barely sleeping, barely making the mortgage? You just want to know if you can scam free drinks off me?"
Her mother didn't respond. Just looked at her through narrowed, hungover eyes. Delilah shook her head and turned away. She stormed off back to her bedroom to get ready for the day. She had class and other important things to worry about.

By the time Delilah arrived at her culinary class, the weight of the morning was still draped over her like a soaked coat. She moved through the motions—knife skills, sauté technique, mise en place—but her mind wasn't in the kitchen. It was on bills. Mortgage. Gas. Phone bill. Electricity…

During the break, she sat at a small table near the window, her phone in hand, credit card beside her. The sunlight didn't warm her. It only made her more aware of what she didn't have. She opened her banking app. She had enough money to cover all of the bills but didn’t have anything to cover groceries or any personal necessities or gas for her car.

She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers against her temples. She hadn't bought herself anything in months. Not even a cheap lipstick. Nothing that didn't scream survival.
With reluctance, she opened her messages and typed out a text to Tori, one of managers at Velour. She specifically handled the bottle girl portion of the establishment.

Delilah: Hey… I am bartending tonight but I can also work the floor if you still need someone.

She hated herself as soon as she hit send.
Bottle service. Fake smiles. Men with too much money and too little respect. The way they looked at her like she was part of the decor. It felt degrading. Like every hour there chipped away at who she was trying to become. But bills didn't care about dignity. Besides this was just temporary. Delilah had goals she needed achieve and this was just a necessary step to reach them.

Her phone buzzed with a confirmation from Tori. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened her bag and pulled out a small business card.

“Adrian Wolfe. Founder & CEO, Wolfe & Thorne Capital.”

The card was heavy in her fingers, thick and expensive. She wasn’t sure why she was still carrying it, flipping it over in her hand like it held answers she couldn't read. Adrian Wolfe. Smooth. Calculated. The kind of rich that didn't need to speak it—everything about him said legacy, power, control. And yet… he'd given her this card so that she could contact him. He hadn't hit on her. Not really. No innuendos. Just a calm offer to “talk”….at least that’s what she assumed he wanted. And that was what unsettled her the most.

If he wanted sex, she figured he'd have said it, even bluntly. Men like him didn't need to be subtle. But what did he want from someone like her? She had no pedigree, no status, no business even being in the same room as him. Yet something in his eyes had said you have something I want. And that scared her more than if he'd said nothing at all.

Delilah stared at the number on the card.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed her phone and dialed.

It rang.

Once.

Twice.

Straight to voicemail

"You've reached Adrian Wolfe. Leave a message."

Her heart thumped in her chest, but she didn't hang up. Instead, she leaned forward, her elbow on the table, and let the words come naturally—flat and honest.

"Hey. It's Delilah. From the event last night. I was the bartender. You gave me your card."
She paused for just a beat, eyes unfocused as she stared at the peeling laminate on the table. "I'm not really into mystery offers or whatever this is, but I'm calling because I figured if I didn't do it now, I never would."
Her tone sharpened—still tired, but resolute.
"Look… I don't know what you want from me, and I don't have time to guess.” She exhaled and tucked a few strands of hair behind her left ear. "So just let me know what’s going here if you decide to call back. I'm working tonight at Velour. If you call after 8 p.m., I won't pick up.” Another pause. One she didn't know how to fill. "…Yeah. That's it then. Later.” She ended the call and set the phone down like it was heavier than before.

Delilah felt extremely embarrassed. She had no idea what to say on the phone. With a slight groan of defeat she stood up and went on with her day. She had to prepare for work this evening.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian sat in the back of the car, the city drifting past the tinted windows in a blur of steel, glass, and motion. He was being ferried across town to yet another meeting, one of several that punctuated his calendar with mechanical regularity. These brief, insulated car rides had become sacred moments of transition - liminal spaces between the demands of one room and the expectations of the next. He used the time strategically, multitasking with the cold efficiency of someone who had long ago stopped pretending that time was ever truly his own.

His fingers moved across his phone screen with well-practiced speed, thumbing replies to emails that varied from irrelevant to mildly urgent. Most were instantly deleted - product pitches, introductions he hadn't asked for, congratulatory notes from acquaintances hoping to remind him of their existence. A select few were tagged for later review, though "later" often never came. The ones that required immediate attention received curt, pointed replies. He had mastered the art of brevity without apology. If his tone came off as impatient or disinterested, well, that was simply the cost of doing business with him.

In his ears, a stream of voicemails played through his wireless earbuds, the voices blending into a low, unmemorable hum. He had learned to distinguish within seconds whether a message deserved his full attention. It was in the tone, not the content - the cadence of a voice under pressure, the breath between words, the practiced urgency of someone hoping to catch his ear. Most didn't. Most never would.

But then — her voice.

"Hey. It's Delilah."

Two seconds. That's all it took. His fingers stopped mid-sentence, suspended above the screen where a half-typed email awaited completion. He didn't look away from the phone, but he wasn't seeing it anymore. The words might as well have dissolved into nothing. Her voice had claimed his full attention.

There was a sharpness in her tone, not unkind but unmistakably honed by necessity. He could hear it beneath the surface - the fatigue, the tension, the need for control. It wasn't the sound of someone making a polite call. It was the sound of someone holding everything together by sheer force of will.

He recognized it instantly. Nearly two decades earlier, when Adrian had first carved his way into the business world, he'd worn that same tone like armour. Back then, every interaction was a transaction, every conversation a chance to secure the next opportunity. He knew what it meant to move through the world with that blend of determination and desperation. He could spot it in others now like a hunter reading tracks in the forest. And Delilah - whoever she truly was beneath the surface - was clearly carrying more than she was letting on.

There were people who hustled because it was in their blood, and others who did it because they had no choice. Some could afford to chase dreams leisurely, but others - the ones he respected - had to claw their way toward what they loved by doing the things they didn't. Adrian had always had a soft spot, not for the dreamers, but for the ones willing to bleed for the dream. It was rare to hear that in someone's voice. And when he did, he paid attention.

Later that evening, he found himself in unfamiliar territory - not geographically, but habitually. It was 8:30 p.m., and he stood at the entrance of Velour. He didn't frequent the same place two nights in a row. It wasn't a rule, exactly, but a rhythm he kept to maintain a certain distance from predictability. Predictability bred familiarity, and familiarity was something he'd long ago decided had no place in his personal routine.

But here he was. Again. The look on the hostess's face when she saw him was almost comical. A flicker of disbelief, the kind that quickly rearranged itself into polished hospitality. Shock would've been too generous a word - it was more like confusion, curiosity, and suspicion all vying for dominance. High-end places like this were trained to treat every guest like royalty, but when someone returned twice in quick succession, particularly someone like Adrian, it prompted questions they wouldn't dare voice aloud.

He was ushered into a private booth without delay, the staff moving with crisp professionalism tinged with a new attentiveness. He declined the bottle service they reminded him of - at least for now. His eyes scanned the room, not idly, but with purpose.

This wasn't about alcohol. It wasn't even about the lounge. It was about her - the voice that had rerouted his entire mental focus earlier in the day. The kind of voice you didn't forget, not because it was soft or seductive, but because it was honest. Raw. Too rare to ignore.

Velour was no stranger to beautiful women or carefully curated performances. But Adrian wasn't interested in artifice. He wasn't there for illusion. He was there for the glimpse of something real he'd caught earlier - something that cut through the static of his world like a blade. He didn't know what he expected to find. But he knew why he had returned. Some voices demand answers. Others, action. Hers, for reasons he couldn't yet articulate, demanded presence.

So he waited. And he watched.​

 

[Kita-san]

The humid buzz of a New York summer night clung to Delilah's skin as she rounded the back alley to enter the side door of Velour. Velour wasn't the kind of place you stumbled into—it was where the rich went to be seen not approached. You either belonged, or you served. Delilah belonged behind the scenes.
She paused just outside the service entrance, the low rumble of music vibrating through her ribcage. Another night pretending. Another night being looked at, not seen.

Inside the back dressing room, mirrors lined the walls like a backstage theater. Soft-glow bulbs framed every edge, throwing light on a swarm of girls in various stages of transformation—lashes on, heels strapped, lip glosses open. Perfume hung thick in the air, a layered cloud of expensive florals and synthetic sugar.

Delilah moved to her locker, hands already going through the motions. A frown formed on her face when she noticed the outfit in her locker. “Dammit Tori…” she muttered as she looked over the articles of clothing. Her outfit: a black satin corset dress with mesh cut-outs. The skirt of the dress was extremely short, it left little to the imagination. She had the choice to wear sheer thigh-highs, she decided against them. Hanging in her locker was a gold anklet with the signature "V" charm on it—Velour's signature. Tori choose gold jewelry for the girls to wear.

The outfit looked less like clothing and more like a brand of submission. Controlled sophisticated sexuality wrapped in designer packaging. Delilah hated it. But she wore it anyway. Because bills don't care about pride.

Amber, another bottle girl with a loud laugh and perfectly contoured cheekbones, leaned over from the makeup counter. "You doing floor or bar tonight?"

"Both. Double shift." Delilah tightened her corset, suppressing a sigh.

Amber whistled low. "Welcome to the hustle. You want me to take the lead on our bottle walk? New table in the VIP lounge."

"Please," Delilah said, tone flat. She wasn't here to perform. She was here to survive.

Velour's main floor was already pulsing when they stepped out. Music—dark, pulsing, sensual—poured from every direction. Velvet rope paths curved through moody lighting, and ceiling-high LED installations flickered soft gold over smoked glass tables, their surfaces already lined with crystal tumblers and untouched menus.

The bottle service tables were tucked into elevated platforms, semi-enclosed behind golden mesh curtains and custom leather banquettes. Most of the clientele were men in tailored designer suits or streetwear that cost more than rent. Models clung to elbows. Laughter was sharp. Every movement was for show.

When the bottle order came for Table 8, Amber had Delilah and the other girls gather the props. “Actually can I carry out the two bottles?” Delilah asked. She didn’t want to hold a cheesy LED sign. Amber nodded and grabbed the custom LED sign that pulsed "LEGENDARY ENERGY" in bold white. Delilah picked up two high end bottles of tequila that was purchased by the table. A spotlight followed them, soft and diffused, while sparklers hissed from the other girls’ hands.

Phones came out. Videos started. Amber twirled her hair. Delilah walked in silence beside her, lips pressed, posture perfect. She looked the part, she was a beautiful girl but she didn’t dare over do it with her smile. Her expression said: Don't touch. Don't talk. Just tip.

Table 8 exploded in cheers as they arrived. One man leaned in, low voice too close to her ear. "Damn, you should smile more. It’ll look better.” She looked at him directly, impassive. "Maybe.” Was all she said. She didn’t smile widen her smile. She turned away before he could respond and focused on pouring shots for the guests at the table.

Somewhere —in a booth deep in the back, near the smoked glass walls and lit by a halo of soft blue— Adrian Wolfe watched. Unseen by her, he sat with a drink in hand and a knowing expression, tucked behind a velvet rope and half-shadow. No fanfare. No entourage. He hadn't told her he would come.

Delilah, meanwhile, had no idea he was there.

She was too busy avoiding hands that reached, too busy dodging fake smiles and whispered innuendo. Too focused on keeping her balance in high heels while carrying three martinis to a table that wouldn't remember her name. She wasn't flirty. She wasn't charming. She was precise and she got the job done. Well actually. Which, to some men, only made her seem more elusive.

More tempting.

But the truth was simple: Delilah didn't care about any of them. She was just trying to make it through the night.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian saw her.

There was no mistaking that silhouette, the way she moved with effortless grace even under the weight of forced smiles and the predictable entitlement of drunk men. She was one in a line of bottle girls, each dressed identically, each trained to perform the same flirtatious choreography, delivering drinks with the illusion of intimacy. But only one of them mattered to him.

Delilah.

She moved through the haze of pulsing lights and electronic bass, the distant glow of the LED-lit trays bouncing off the shimmer of her dress, making her appear almost otherworldly. There was an elegance to her he doubted the clientele even registered. To them, she was a commodity, part of the experience they were paying for. But Adrian saw something else entirely. Something deeper, more complicated. And he'd come here tonight for exactly this.

She hadn't seen him yet. Couldn't, really. The VIP area was separated by gauzy curtains and smoked glass dividers, offering just enough privacy to keep prying eyes at bay. From her vantage point on the other side of the club, she would never have reason to look toward him, never suspect he might be watching. And she certainly didn't know he'd made the trip back, hadn't heard the click of the club doors as he slipped in anonymously, heart pounding harder than he cared to admit.

But he knew she was working. She'd left a voicemail earlier that afternoon, casual, professional, and clipped, just letting him know she'd picked up another shift and would be at the club that night. She hadn't expected a response, nor had she left room for one. He could still hear the sound of her voice - cool, resigned, a little too steady to be real. He'd played it back more times than he should have, hoping that hearing it again might tell him more than the words did. But there was no hidden message. Just distance. Just finality.

Still, here she was. And Adrian could see it. That look. That mask of feigned interest she wore so well, the flirtatious curl of her lips for the table of finance bros clamouring for another round of overpriced tequila, their gazes shamelessly lingering on the curve of her hips as she turned to leave. To them, she was smiling. To them, she was attentive, charming, desirable. But Adrian knew better. Knew her better.

Beneath the surface, it was contempt. Loathing, even. Not for the job, but for what it required her to become. The way she had to cater to men who didn't see her, only what she could do for them. The way she had to be pleasant. It was all there in the tiniest of details: the way her eyes didn't quite match her smile, the tension in her jaw, the fractionally sharp movements of her hands. To anyone else, it would've passed unnoticed. But not to him. It was a look you had to know to see. And Adrian knew it intimately.

He leaned back in his seat, nursing a drink, his attention fixed on her as the rest of the club faded to static. The bassline throbbed beneath him, the laughter of other patrons rising and falling in a drunken tide, but none of it registered. His gaze followed her from one table to the next, and with each step she took away from him, the knot in his chest tightened.

He wasn't even sure what he was doing here. He told himself it was curiosity. Maybe some misplaced sense of closure. Maybe he just wanted to see for himself that she was okay, that she was still standing, still surviving. But beneath it all, there was something else. Something harder to admit.

But he wasn't content to simply watch her. Not tonight. He flagged down one of the hostesses, a statuesque woman in towering heels and a black satin dress that looked painted on. She appeared at his side almost instantly, all rehearsed smiles and hushed professionalism. He leaned in, keeping his tone low but firm, and handed her a folded bill as he spoke. A hundred dollars - not enough to bribe anyone in a place like this, but enough to buy attention.

"I want Delilah serving me. Only me. All night," he said, slipping the cash into her palm as he met her eyes. "Make it worth her while. And yours."

The hostess didn't blink. She simply nodded, tucked the money discreetly into a pocket stitched into the lining of her dress, and turned without a word.

"And bring a mobile cocktail station to the table," he added as she walked away. "I want her full attention."

It was a request, but also a declaration. He wanted her back in his orbit, if only for an hour, if only on the surface. He didn't expect her to say much. Maybe nothing at all. But he wanted to look at her without the veil of strangers between them. To observe, to understand. To reach for some connection, however fleeting. And maybe, selfishly, to remind her he was still here. Still watching. Still wanting. Even if she didn't want to be seen.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah caught the hostess's approach out of the corner of her eye. She was already on her way back to the bar, empty tray in hand, counting down the minutes until her break. When the woman intercepted her path with that pinched, unreadable expression, Delilah knew it wasn't a casual check-in.

"VIP three wants you," the hostess said, low enough to keep it between them. "Asked for you by name."

Delilah blinked, her face neutral. "By name?"

The hostess nodded once, her voice matter-of-fact. "Specifically. Wants you all night. Cocktail service, exclusive."

Delilah didn't answer right away. Her grip on the tray tightened just slightly, a subtle tic she immediately corrected. "Did they say who they were?"

"Nope. Just asked for you. Tipped me several big bills. And asked for the mobile bar cart setup, so… get ready."

Delilah's jaw flexed. She didn't like this. The request was unusual, and the way the hostess said it made something cold curl in her stomach. Maybe it was some big spender who thought a few bills meant he could buy more than just attention. That happened. But not often like this. Not with her name.

"I'm swamped," she said quietly. "Table five's getting impatient. Can't you—?"

The hostess cut her off with a look. "Orders from the top. Go. Now."

And just like that, her night rerouted. She didn't have a choice.

Delilah pivoted without another word, walking back to the service station to adjust her lipstick in the mirror behind the liquor shelves. She wasn't nervous. She didn't do nervous. But there was a tightness in her chest now, an inexplicable static, like her body sensed something her mind hadn't caught up to yet.

She made her way toward the VIP section with practiced elegance, face composed, expression unreadable. She slid past the curtain with the same poise she wore like armor every shift. The same costume. But the moment her eyes landed on him, she felt the ground shift beneath her heels.

Adrian Wolfe

She registered the shock in a heartbeat — faster than a breath — and buried it just as quickly. Her body didn't flinch, her pace didn't break, but inside? Her pulse detonated like a silent bomb.

Why is he here?

Of all the possibilities, he hadn't even crossed her mind. Not really. Not tonight. Not in this world, her world — loud and half-lit, built on illusion and desire and control. The last place she'd ever imagined seeing him again. And yet here he was, sitting like he belonged, watching her like he still saw her.

Delilah stopped at the edge of his table, her eyes flicking over the mobile cocktail cart already waiting there like a stage set just for her. She shifted the tray to one hand, letting the other rest lightly on the cart's edge.

"Evening," she said coolly, her voice velvet-wrapped steel. "You made a request for me?"
She met his gaze dead-on. No warmth. No hostility, either. Just calm calculation.
"Well," she said, tone perfectly professional. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” She had no idea what he could possibly want.

There was a flicker in his eyes — something unspoken, something aching — but Delilah ignored it. She turned to the cart and began to make him a drink. The same drink he had ordered the other night. The ice in the shaker hissing faintly as she prepped the first pour. Every motion precise. Every move practiced. She was a silhouette again, the illusion. But inside?

Inside, the silence was deafening. And the question burned.

Why here? Why me?

She would ask. She would get straight to the point but she decided to let him have his drink first. When she finished making the drink she gently set it down in front of him. Her perfume lingered in the air when she moved back into her original spot, her rosy pink lips have yet to curve into a smile. She placed one hand on her hip as she stared at Adrian. “Please let me know if any adjustments are needed to the drink.”

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian remained still, watching her prepare his drink with a composure that bordered on indifference, though it was anything but. He let her words drift past him, unacknowledged for the moment, more interested in the unspoken details unfolding in front of him. Now that she was this close, he could really see her, truly take her in, and there was no way to ignore the disconnect between the woman and the role she was playing. If you could even call it a role. Costume was a more fitting term, and even that felt charitable. It was theatre, but with no narrative. A performance designed to titillate, but without substance.

He scanned her with quiet intent, not as a man assessing flesh, but as someone trying to understand how a person like her could exist in a setting like this. She was beautiful, undeniably so, but there was something jarring about it in this context. Her beauty felt...misapplied. Artificially framed. The outfit, if it could even be dignified with that word, did her no favours. It was loud, obvious, desperate for attention, and in that desperation, it obscured the finer, more intriguing things about her.

Her face, those striking eyes, should have been the first thing anyone noticed. There was intelligence behind them, complexity. But now, they were almost camouflaged, overshadowed by the deliberate display of skin and suggestion. It was as if someone had taken a masterpiece and wrapped it in neon lights, demanding applause for the frame instead of the painting. He didn't judge her for wearing it. Not in the moralistic sense, anyway. But he judged the necessity of it, and more than that, he questioned the situation that had led her to it. Because no matter how convincing the façade was supposed to be, Adrian could tell it didn't belong to her. Not really. The image she was projecting clashed with what lay underneath. He could sense the unease, the slight stiffness she was trying to hide with practiced charm.

And then there was the look she gave him. Fleeting, almost imperceptible, but it was there. A flicker of surprise. She was trying to cover it up, of course, and doing a better job than most. But he saw through it. Not completely, he wouldn't flatter himself to that degree, but enough to know she hadn't been expecting someone like him. The moment had passed quickly, buried beneath the routine gestures and the mask she wore with professional ease. But it had been real, and it had told him more than any words could. She was calculating now, searching his face for meaning. Adrian remained silent for a few more moments, letting the ambient noise of the place do the talking. The clink of glass, the low thrum of bass, the laughter in the distance - it all blurred into a kind of forgettable background hum. But in that chaos, he focused only on her. Not the show she was putting on, but the subtleties. The questions she wasn't asking aloud. The answers she didn't realise she was already giving.

And then he spoke, calm and certain, voice low enough to avoid drawing attention but firm enough to demand it from her.

"You don't belong here," he said, not as an accusation but as an observation. A fact, plain and unvarnished. His gaze didn't waver, and neither did his tone. "And certainly not in that outfit."

There was no cruelty in his words, no judgment in his voice. Just clarity. The kind that unnerved people because it left no room for denial.

"You are here for a reason," he continued, eyes still on hers, searching now—not for attraction, not even for recognition, but for purpose. "Why?"

He let the question hang between them, not pressing for an answer, not demanding anything. Just letting the truth of it settle into the space. Because she was here, and not just physically. She had made a choice, whatever her reasons. But her presence didn't align with the scene around her, and he needed to understand that dissonance. Not for curiosity's sake. Not even out of concern. But because it mattered.

Some part of him - maybe the part he rarely acknowledged - still believed that moments like this could be crossroads. That not everything was random. That sometimes the people you noticed weren't just incidental. They were meant to be seen. And this woman - this contradiction of sensuality and restraint, confidence and fragility - was not someone he could look past. Not tonight.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah blinked.

For a moment, she didn't say anything. Her body stilled — But her eyes narrowed just slightly, a shift he'd only catch if he knew where to look. "That's bold," she said finally, voice low, edged with a cool veneer. "Telling a girl she doesn't belong in a place she shows up to every damn night."

Her lips curved into something resembling a smile, but it didn't touch her eyes. Not yet. Not while she was still measuring the weight of his attention, still trying to figure out what he wanted from her, really. She'd had men pretend to care before. She'd had strangers assign her their own narratives like she was just a character in their night out. And she was tired — too tired to indulge another one.

"It's a job. A job that any young 23 year old girl could get," she added, her tone flattening. "And before you go assuming I need to be rescued from it—don't. I’m doing just fine and I’m doing what I want.”

She turned slightly, the hand on her hip now resting calmly on the table. But she didn't walk away. Something in the way he'd said it — not condescending, not cruel — pulled her back in despite herself. She hated that. She hated that she was still soft in places, still porous.

A few seconds passed.

And then she let out a quiet breath. Almost imperceptible. Like a window cracking open.

"I don't owe you this," she said, softer now, eyes trained on the wall behind him instead of his face. "But I'm not here because I want to be. I'm here because I have to be."

She paused, tongue pressing to the inside of her cheek before continuing. "College isn't cheap. Neither is the mortgage. Or my mother's medication. Or the groceries I've been paying for since I was fifteen."
She glanced at him then — really looked — her expression stripped of pretense.

"I'm trying to get my culinary degree. I want to open a restaurant one day. Not some influencer spot with $30 cocktails and neon signs, but a real place. One that smells like garlic and rosemary before you even walk in. One that feels like home." When she spoke about cooking or opening up her own restaurant her eyes seems to brighten. There was genuine hope and happiness there but it quickly disappeared. She didn’t share that side of her with anyone.

The words hung there between them, unexpected even to her. And then the armor slipped back into place. Not aggressively — just enough to remind him that this wasn't an invitation. "I'm surviving. That's all," she said, standing straighter now. "That outfit, this club, these nights — they don't define me. But they pay the tuition."

A beat passed.

"Now… do you want another drink, or are you just here to hand out unsolicited insight?"

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian smiled when she finished speaking. His expression was neither smug nor patronizing, but rather the kind of quiet, knowing smile that carried with it the weight of recognition - like a man who had been exactly where she now stood, long before the path behind him had hardened into memory. He had remained silent throughout, not out of indifference or disinterest, but because silence had always been one of his most powerful tools. Adrian didn't need to fill silences with commentary or affirmation. He had long ago mastered the subtle art of listening - the kind of listening that draws a person out, that encourages the truth to unspool not because it's demanded, but because it's safe to let it rise to the surface.

There was a way he looked at people when they spoke, a quiet intensity in his gaze that suggested he was not only hearing their words but reading the space between them. A look that said, keep going, that story is not finished. And more often than not, it wasn't. People found themselves speaking more than they intended to around Adrian, revealing pieces of themselves that usually stayed tucked away behind polite smiles or well-rehearsed pleasantries. There was a warmth in his silence, an invitation that didn't have to be spoken aloud.

When she finally paused - perhaps catching herself, perhaps realizing she had offered more than she'd meant - Adrian didn't press her. He simply let the silence settle like dust in a sunbeam, unhurried and unassuming. And then, with a tone free of performance or sentimentality, he spoke.

"You remind me, of me. At the same age. Grinding, working jobs just to bring in a little extra to keep the wolves from the door. I saw that tenacity in you last night. Your eyes give you away, just so you know. Not to everyone, but to those who know how to look."

The words were deliberate, but not rehearsed. They came from the part of him that still remembered the ache of early mornings and the dull, hollow fatigue of late nights. The part that hadn't forgotten what it felt like to stretch a twenty-dollar bill over three days or to walk home in the dark because a cab fare was out of reach. That part of him, the younger Adrian with scuffed shoes and tired hands, still lived inside the man he had become. And he saw that younger version of himself mirrored in her - reflected in the guarded strength she wore like armour, in the practiced stillness with which she held herself, in the flicker of defiance that sometimes lit up her gaze. He didn't need her to confirm it. He already knew. Some things didn't require proof.

Adrian reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a money clip, its edges worn slightly from use, the stack of crisp bills inside pressed into neat submission. It totalled a thousand dollars. He placed it on the small portable cocktail station beside them with the quiet certainty of a man who understood not just the value of money, but the significance of timing.

"That is for you to stay here for the rest of my evening. So you don't have to serve anyone with only eyes for flesh, and not eyes for souls. Think of it as a breather, even for one night."

The words were offered not as a proposition but as a reprieve. Not a transaction, but a gesture. One evening. One breath of stillness in a world that rarely allowed women like her to exhale without consequence. He didn't expect gratitude, nor was he seeking absolution. This was not a rescue fantasy. He had no desire to be a white knight or a saviour. It wasn't about control, and it certainly wasn't about ownership. It was about dignity. About recognition. About offering space when so few others even offered decency.

Adrian had seen too many people burn out trying to keep their head above water in a world that didn't care if they drowned. He had watched brilliance go unnoticed, effort unrewarded, and beauty - true beauty, the kind born of resilience and refusal - go unseen in favour of what was easy to consume. And if he could offer a pocket of calm, even briefly, he would. Not as a favour, but as a form of respect.

He had no illusions that a single night would change the trajectory of her life. But maybe, just maybe, it would remind her that someone had noticed the fight behind her smile. That someone had looked and truly seen.

Not flesh.
Not utility.
But soul.

And sometimes, that small act of seeing was its own kind of mercy.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah didn't move at first. Her hand stayed at on the table, fingers lightly pressing harder against it, her face unreadable. The thousand dollars sat between them like it had a pulse—loud and alive and impossible to ignore. But she didn't look at the money. She looked at him.

"You don't know me," she said, quiet but sharp.

It wasn't anger, not exactly. It was… caution. Something colder than fear but warmer than disdain. That place between reflex and survival where most of her decisions had been made. Especially when men like Adrian were involved—men who came into her orbit like they'd been watching from some safer, richer place, suddenly ready to see her now that she served their drinks or spoke their truth.

Her eyes flicked to the bills then back to his. No gratitude. No softness. Just calculation. A moment of weighing: What it meant. What it cost. "You're not the first man to offer me money," she added, voice cool but not cruel. "Usually they want more than conversation for it. This is why I don’t take money from them.”

But he didn't flinch. And that unsettled her more than anything. She hated that part of her—the small part—that wanted to believe he meant it. That maybe it wasn't about power or possession. That maybe it wasn't about her at all. Her jaw tightened. She wasn't naive. Kindness from men like him always came with a receipt, whether it was printed or not.

Still, she reached for the money. Slowly. Deliberately. Not because she trusted him, but because bills would be due again and groceries weren’t going to buy themselves. Also her mom's prescriptions needed to be filled. Her mother wouldn’t take the time to do it so Delilah had to. Everything was on her and it was starting to affect her in more ways than one. Still…she took the money which wasn’t like her. She couldn’t explain exactly why.

She slid the bills into the side pocket of her corset-style apron, hidden from view. Her shoulders didn't drop. Her expression didn't change. But something behind her eyes flickered—just briefly—like a flame that wasn't quite ready to go out.

She turned her head, glancing around the velvet-curtained alcove like she might spot the nearest escape hatch, then looked back at him.

"You wanted me to yourself tonight?" she asked, stepping closer with the poise of someone who'd been studied and underestimated her entire life. "You've got me."

A breath.

"But don't mistake proximity for permission. I'm here. I'm not yours."

And with that, she picked up the shaker and started mixing his next drink. She didn’t tell him what it was. She wanted to play with flavors she assumed he liked, she was creative like that and she figured he would give her the chance to have a little fun while at work. Her hands steady, lips pressed together, heart hammering beneath her skin. She wouldn't let him see the surprise that still tugged at the edge of her calm.

He saw something in her. Fine. But she'd spent her whole life surviving without being seen. She didn't need saving. She needed the money.

Delilah continued to craft a cocktail for Adrian. She could build a cocktail like a surgeon made incisions—efficient, elegant, controlled. As she worked there were a few things about her most didn’t notice, the small things. The way her thumb twitched when she thought no one was looking. The way she kept glancing—not at him, but past him—like she was counting exits, just in case.

When she finished she slid the glass toward him, careful not to touch his fingers. Then, arms folded lightly across her chest, she leaned back, posture relaxed in the way people taught themselves to be when they had no room for softness.

“Please tell me what you think Adrian. I just wanted to see if I could introduce you to something new.” This time she smirked a real smirk.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Her response unsettled him in a way few things did. Words rarely found purchase in him these days. Most conversations blurred into white noise - a necessary part of the machine he operated but not something that left a mark. But this… this cut deeper than it had any right to. "But don't mistake proximity for permission. I'm here. I'm not yours." It lingered in the air, heavy and unmoving, a deliberate rejection that was neither cruel nor untrue—just cold in the way only truth could be.

He leaned back, watching her with quiet detachment as she prepared his next drink - some bespoke concoction that bore her signature in colour and texture before he'd even tasted it. She moved with efficiency, with a precision that suggested familiarity but lacked warmth. He didn't offer a reply right away. He had learned, often the hard way, that immediate reactions were rarely strategic. Emotional outbursts were for lesser men, for those who needed to remind others they had power because they themselves weren't so sure. Adrian had no such insecurity. Responding too quickly would have made him look fragile, like her words had landed a blow he couldn't disguise. And they had landed, undeniably so - but he would not give them the satisfaction of seeing where they hit. Better to let the silence stretch, to keep her wondering whether she'd struck a nerve or simply missed entirely.

He studied the drink once it was placed in front of him. It shimmered with an amber hue, the light catching small flecks of black within the liquid - like fragments of ash suspended in gold. Odd. Intriguing. He turned the glass slowly in his hand before lifting it to his lips. The moment the flavour hit his tongue, something shifted in him - his expression didn't change, but internally, a flicker of surprise lit up.

It was unexpected, a blend of something sharp and soft, smoky but tempered by a sweetness that took its time arriving. It caught him off guard in the best way. Rarely did things surprise him anymore. Rarer still did they impress him. He let a measured breath pass through his nose before speaking, voice even and composed, but not without a trace of appreciation.

"You have a talent, Delilah. Even if this is not your end goal, it is clear your passion for fusing flavours is working well."

Another sip. Letting the complexities of the drink linger on his tongue, he took a moment to reflect - not just on the drink, but on her. She was an enigma, a contradiction he hadn't yet unravelled. A woman who spoke in firm lines, but left space in the margins. She made it clear she wasn't his, but then again, she hadn't left either. That mattered. That always mattered. He looked back at her, calm but deliberate, his tone now tinged with something more final.

"For what it's worth, I don't buy people. Those who want to stay, they find a way to do so. Those that don't are allowed to walk away."

It was true. On paper, at least.

What he didn't add, because it was never wise to say aloud, was what happened after they walked away. He didn't chase. He didn't beg. But consequences had a way of weaving themselves into the lives of those who chose to exit his orbit. Not by design, he always told himself. Never through vengeance. But power had a gravitational pull, and those who tried to move against it often found themselves adrift - struggling to stay afloat in a city where the tide answered to him.

He never needed to burn bridges. People did that on their own. What Adrian offered was structure, protection, elevation. His reach extended through the veins of the city - venues, suppliers, permits, press. You didn't need to sign a contract with him to be affected by his influence. You only needed to try to build something in a space he already had a foothold in. If you wanted your business to thrive, sooner or later you'd find yourself at a table he owned, shaking hands with someone he paid, or depending on the success of something he'd funded. That wasn't manipulation. That was infrastructure.

Still, he never forced compliance. People stayed because they saw the value in staying. Because his empire wasn't just built on power - it was built on mutual benefit. On results. On protection from the wolves that circled the city's edges, dressed as investors, competitors, regulators. He didn't need to own people. Ownership was crude. What he offered was security in exchange for alignment. Stay, and thrive. Go, and hope you'd learned enough from your time under his umbrella to survive the storm outside.

And Delilah? She intrigued him precisely because she hadn't committed either way. Her presence was a deliberate choice, even if it came with distance. Even if her words formed walls. Her autonomy wasn't a threat—it was a test. Adrian didn't mind waiting. He never rushed the answers he knew would come eventually.​

 

[Kita-san]

She didn't look at him when he complimented her. Didn't need to. The flicker of a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth—gone as quickly as it came. She rinsed the jigger and set it back in its place with a quiet clink.

"It's not passion. It's precision," she said. "And boredom, if I'm being honest."

She glanced at him then, eyes steady, cool. Not cold exactly, just… detached. Like someone who'd learned to measure people before deciding whether they were worth warming up to.

His words settled between them like dust, too carefully placed to be casual. She could hear the edges he'd sanded off before saying them out loud. And she could feel the weight behind them—what wasn't said.

"Those who want to stay, they find a way."

She exhaled through her nose, almost a laugh. Almost.

"That sounds like something a man says when he's used to people orbiting him."

There was no venom in it. Just a statement. Observational. She wasn't trying to wound him, but she wasn't dressing it up either. She leaned on the bar, arms folded, finally looking at him—really looking. He was still hard to read, but she was starting to see the outlines. The calculations. The restraint

"So you don't buy people," she echoed, tone dry. "But you do build the kind of world where you make it easier for them to depend on you than not. Is that what I’m understanding? Please tell me if I’m wrong.” She said and placed her hands on her hips. It was a casual position for her. She wasn’t flirting nor did she have an attitude. This was just Delilah. This could be very clever or predatory. Haven’t decided yet. She thought.

Then came the shift—subtle, but real. Her posture relaxed just slightly as she stared at him. She reached for the bottle she'd used earlier, poured a half-ounce into her own glass, no garnish, no flourish. She took a sip. Silence, but not the hostile kind.

"Where'd you learn to talk like that?" she asked after a beat. "You sound like a man who's been through war, but your hands are too clean. Was it business school? Courtroom? Pulpit?" She teased and took another small sip of alcohol. She figured he wouldn’t mind. She was stuck with him until her shift was over so she might as well try to enjoy it.

“You said you use to be in my shoes before. What do you mean by that?” It was clear she was more open to hear about him than to talk about herself. “Im assuming you weren’t always Thee Adrian Wolfe.”

She tilted her head just enough to let the question hang with real curiosity.

"You don't speak like someone who started with power. You speak like someone who had to learn how to make people listen. That's different."

It wasn't flirtation. It wasn't even warmth, not exactly. But it was interest. And in Delilah's world, interest was as close to an open door as anyone got

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

"So you don't buy people, but you do build the kind of world where you make it easier for them to depend on you than not. Is that what I'm understanding? Please tell me if I'm wrong."

If someone in a boardroom had dared to speak like that - so frank, so unvarnished - they'd have been shut down before the sentence had even fully formed. There would've been polite nods, carefully blank expressions, and then swift, strategic moves to exclude them from further influence. That kind of talk didn't survive long in the curated ecosystem of corporate diplomacy. Brutal honesty was a liability in business. It made people nervous. It threatened control.

But not here. Not with her. She hadn't earned his respect through status or pedigree. Not through careful adherence to social hierarchy. No. She had done it by speaking without fear, by aiming right for the marrow of what mattered. There was no mask on her. And that, ironically, made her far more dangerous than most people in suits and power ties who tried to play the same game. She hadn't earned the right to speak to him like that - not by society's standards, not by business norms - but she had claimed it anyway.

And what was more surprising - what was more telling - was that he hadn't rejected it. He watched her as she busied herself, her hands moving over the drinks station with mechanical precision. She was dressed in that absurd outfit. Cheap fabric, sequined embellishments, a costume that almost mocked the idea of dignity. The garish jewellery was plastic, the kind that snapped under pressure, and the makeup was layered on so thick it nearly obscured her entirely. And yet, he no longer saw any of it.

The surface noise had faded. All the cheap theatrics imposed on her by someone else's idea of entertainment - he saw right through it now. She wasn't just the girl in the costume. There was something more - far more. She was standing in front of him, wholly herself, unapologetically present. And in her words, in her sharpness and poise, she had managed to cut through the space between them in a way that very few ever had.

She reminded him of himself. Not now - now he was seasoned, methodical, armed with the armour that decades in business had required him to construct. But once, fifteen years ago, maybe twenty, he had been just like that. Younger. Hungrier. Unfiltered. And yes, bold.

"Where'd you learn to talk like that?"

It wasn't really a question. It was more of an observation wrapped in curiosity. And yet, as soon as he heard the words leave his mouth, it struck him how unusual it was for him to even ask such a thing. Normally, he didn't care where someone got their voice - he cared only about how they used it. But with her, something was different.

She'd flipped a switch inside him that he wasn't expecting. And just like that, the lens had turned back on him. For the first time in a long time, he felt it: the sensation of being on the receiving end of someone else's scrutiny. A gaze that didn't fawn or flatter, but assessed. Evaluated. She wasn't trying to charm him. She wasn't trying to impress him. She was trying to understand him. And he wasn't sure whether to respect it - or fear it. He gave her a piece of the truth. Not all of it. Just enough.

"I come from very humble beginnings. A broken home, a tough neighbourhood. I learned from a young age that in order to survive, I would need to fight. Not necessarily physically, but mentally. That fight - has been ongoing for thirty years. People respond to tone, to attitude. Never words. The words are the message. The tone and attitude are the message carriers."

He let the words hang between them, like a drawbridge lowered just far enough for her to glimpse a part of what lay on the other side. A fraction of the story. A calculated offering.

Because although she intrigued him, fascinated him even - he wasn't about to unravel himself for her. Not yet. There was still too much he didn't know about her. She wasn't just a curious mind in a gaudy uniform. She was something else entirely. Something he couldn't quite place yet. He'd dealt with countless personalities over the years - executives, strategists, politicians, con artists. Most of them played at transparency, but very few ever achieved it. And here she was, in an environment where she had nothing to gain by provoking him, saying things others wouldn't dare.

He wasn't flattered. He was intrigued. And in his world, that was far rarer—and far more dangerous. So he held the rest of himself back. For now. She'd have to earn the rest.​

 

[Kita-san]

Delilah didn't respond right away. She paused mid-motion, fingers curled loosely around the neck of a bottle she hadn't yet poured from. She wanted more to drink and had turned to face the cart. Her back was to him, but her head tilted just slightly to the side—not enough to offer him her full attention, but enough to make it clear she'd heard him. Heard every word.

She was still behind the mask, of course. The thick lashes, the heavy eyeshadow, the sparkle on her skin catching the low light like a parody of allure. But her stillness gave her away. That slight shift in weight, that nearly imperceptible breath drawn and held—it all betrayed a sudden attentiveness, the kind that couldn't be rehearsed.

Finally, she turned. Deliberately. Her heels clicked softly across the floor as she closed the space between them, a slow, measured pace that matched none of the rhythm she'd shown earlier. The exaggerated sway of the performer was gone. What approached him now was quieter, cooler. More real.

She sat beside him.

Not too close—just enough to make a point. To be intentional. She smoothed the hem of her short, glittery dress down over her thighs with the detached precision of someone far more aware of optics than she let on. And then, only once the silence had stretched long enough to become slightly uncomfortable, she spoke.

"Humble beginnings," she echoed, voice low. Not mocking, not quite. But not accepting either. She leaned back against the cheap upholstery, eyes scanning the room like she needed to remind herself of the setting. "That's convenient. Everyone important says that at some point. Makes it easier to justify the blood on the floor."

She didn't look at him—yet. She let that sink in, allowed the air to grow heavier with the implication. Then, finally, she turned her gaze on him. Her expression unreadable. Not hard, exactly. But fortified.

"Was it really broken? Or just inconvenient for the version of yourself you wanted to become?" Her eyes flicked over his suit, his hands, the careful way he held himself like a man who measured everything—including the silence between words. "People say 'broken home' like it gives them moral credit. Like it explains the sharp edges they keep. But sometimes it's just a story that fits well in a room like this. One where no one asks too many questions."

Delilah knew what a broken home was, she dealt with it since she was little and is still dealing with it. She watched him now, openly. Not with reverence or awe, but with the cool curiosity of someone cataloging his reactions. Noting every twitch, every delay. There was something surgical in the way she peeled back his words.

"You talk about fighting. Survival. Message carriers," she continued, almost gently now, but the softness was strategic. "So who were you fighting, exactly? The neighbourhood? The mirror? Your father?"

It was a gamble. She knew it.

She knew men like him didn't like having their own tactics used on them. Especially not by women like her—dressed in rhinestones and red lips, the kind of packaging people didn't take seriously until it was too late. But she wasn't trying to provoke him. Not really.
She wanted to see what kind of man sat beneath the mythology.

"And if you had to learn all that just to survive," she said, folding her hands in her lap with deliberate grace, "who taught you how to win?"

She didn't smile. Didn't blink. The wall was still up—sturdy, steel-reinforced, laced with old scars and well-rehearsed deflections. But she'd cracked the window open just enough to let the air shift. Enough to say: I'll give you something real if you do the same.
But not before. Not first. Not ever.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian watched her as she sat down - not directly beside him, but close enough that her presence shifted the air between them. There was an energy to Delilah, a kind of defiance laced with grace, something that both unsettled and intrigued him. She didn't just look at people; she saw them, with a gaze sharp enough to cut through posturing and pretence. And when she turned that gaze on him, it didn't feel like judgment. It felt like a challenge. Not the kind that begged for confrontation, but the kind that asked whether he had the courage to be honest.

Most people who challenged him were dismissed with a glance. In his world, authority was armour. Boundaries were respected, or else reinforced. And yet with her, that instinct to retreat behind the polished rhetoric and measured reserve faltered. Delilah wasn't testing his authority - she was asking something deeper, something truer. And Adrian found, to his quiet astonishment, that he didn't want to shut it down.

There was something in her eyes. Beneath the bravado and beneath the fire, there was a depth that could only come from having lived through something that left a mark. He recognised it the way a soldier recognises another by the wear of their silence or the heaviness in their posture. This wasn't about trauma worn as theatre. It was something else - an integrity born of survival. She knew what it meant to go without, to feel like the walls of your home were made of eggshells and shadows. And she wasn't just carrying her own history. She carried it like a torch, not a weight, to call out those who wore suffering like a costume, using it as a currency in rooms where it had no business being manipulated.

It would have been easier to push her away. To say it was none of her business. To remind her of who he was and where the line should be drawn. But Adrian knew that people like her didn't ask for permission to care. And that people like him, who had grown tired of being understood only in pieces, sometimes needed to be seen fully, even if it hurt. So he did what was rare for him. He let down the walls.

"My father left us when I was ten. I watched my mother work herself to the bone just to keep a roof over our heads. But that was all we had. There were days when she didn't eat so I could. Days when she'd send me to school with a smile on her face and nothing in her stomach, because that's what mothers do when the world forgets they exist. My fight is against that life. I hated feeling powerless."

He didn't speak it like confession. It wasn't a plea for sympathy. It was simply truth, laid bare between them, offered like a bridge rather than a shield. So much of his life had been lived in response to that powerlessness. His ambition, his caution, even his quiet ruthlessness - it all stemmed from those years of watching his mother wear herself down to keep them afloat. He had grown up learning how to fix things before they broke, how to speak softly but with impact, how to wield silence like a scalpel when words would give too much away.

"Who taught me how to win?" he said aloud once, almost to himself. "Life."

He hadn't meant to add more, but the words came anyway.

"It's our greatest teacher and our cruellest punisher. It shows us exactly what we're made of - but only after it's stripped us down to nothing. You don't learn how to win from books or speeches. You learn it when the electricity gets cut off in the middle of winter. When you see your mother's fingers go numb because gloves were a luxury. When the only way out is forward, and the only map you have is instinct. That's when you learn. You win by enduring. You win by refusing to be defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you. And you don't brag about it - you carry it like a scar that doesn't need to be shown to be understood."

That was the truth of it. His version of survival wasn't glamorous. It wasn't the stuff of novels or made-for-TV heroism. It was quiet. It was cumulative. It lived in the way he always paid bills the day they arrived, the way he never let the fridge go empty, the way he triple-checked the locks every night even now, in a house that no one could touch. It lived in his refusal to be pitied, and in the pride he took in being a man who could be depended on. Who built his strength on foundations no one ever saw.

He hadn't expected to say so much. But in that moment, sitting close enough to Delilah that he could feel her quiet attention, it didn't feel like too much. It felt necessary. And maybe he had needed someone to hear it. Not fix it. Not sympathise. Just hear it.​

 

[Kita-san]

What he said had knocked something loose in her. Not because it was dramatic. Not because it was carefully crafted. But because it wasn't. There was no flourish in it. No performative damage. Just fact. He'd said things most men like him wouldn't admit in a thousand-dollar suit. She respected that.

And it surprised her.

Not because she thought he was lying about his past—no, she believed him. But because she hadn't expected someone like him, with that tightly tailored voice and executive posture, to remember what hunger felt like. To understand what it meant to look at your mother and know she'd give you her last bite without a second thought.

Delilah had never known that kind of sacrifice.
She slowly turned her head to look at him, her brow furrowed, but not in skepticism. It was more like she was still working something out.

"Your mother went without for you," she said, her voice still simple with no real emotion. "Mine didn't." Her throat tightened around the words. She didn't blink.

"My father left when I was 7. That’s when she went down hill. She drank. That was her way of dealing with life. Still does. Numb it before it could cut any deeper. I'd come home and find her passed out on the floor, sometimes with the front door wide open, sometimes with the stove still on. Half the time I didn't know if she was asleep or if she was…" She let the sentence trail off. "She’ll go on these benders for a few days and I just have to deal with it…Anyway. I learned not to ask."

Her lips pressed together. She wasn't someone who cried, but even speaking the memory made her feel raw in a way that made her want to chew glass just to steady herself.

"I used to steal food because she'd spend it on vodka. It then got to the point where I would hide her wallet, her ID and I would take the money from her so she couldn’t spend it."

She looked over at him again, her voice still flat. Matter-of-fact. "I raised her. I was eleven years old the first time I lied to a social worker so they wouldn't take me away from her. Said everything was fine, just fine. Said she was doing her best." A bitter smile touched her lips. "She wasn't and I was naive for not telling the truth. I should have let them take me but now…I feel responsible for her. I developed this mindset that if I don’t do it no one will and something bad will happen to her.”

The pause that followed wasn't empty. It thrummed with unsaid things, but Delilah didn't flinch from the silence. She'd lived in worse. Grown up with worse.

"I don't know what it's like to have a mother like yours," she said finally, "but I know what it's like to have to be the adult before your body's even done growing. I know what it’s like to be angry at the world but then turn that angry into something positive. Determination, hard work…” She shifted slightly and roughly ran a hand through her long hair. She realized she had been talking about herself a little bit too much so she decided to ask him another question.

"So I'll ask you something," she said, leveling her eyes at him now—clear, direct, almost clinical in how precisely she aimed the next question. "When you lie awake at night in that nice house with all your bills paid and no one left to save… do you ever ask yourself what's left? Do you ever wonder if this is really it for you? You said you fight so you don't feel powerless. But power doesn't keep the dark out. Not really. So I want to know… What does winning look like for you, Adrian? Not in boardrooms. Not in strategy decks or PR headlines. I mean you. Alone. When no one's watching.” She looked at him wondering how he would answer. She knew he wasn’t married, didn’t have kids. She wasn’t sure if he was truly happy with his life even though he had ‘made’ it. “Are you truly winning?” She asked.

There was a vulnerability tucked inside the questions—carefully masked, but present. She wasn't just interrogating him. She was searching. For what, she wasn't sure yet. But maybe, just maybe, it was something they both wanted to find.