Detective Dylan Hale tugged his leather jacket tighter against the late-night chill before stepping up to the nightclub's glowing entrance. The neon stag over the door—antlers blazing in a flickering halo of blue—buzzed faintly in the humid summer air. The Silver Stag. Subtle as a sledgehammer.

To the casual eye, it was just another packed gay nightclub in downtown: overpriced drinks, booming music, half-naked men writhing like they'd forgotten gravity existed. To Dylan, it was something else entirely—one of the rumored fronts for the Callucci crime family. A place where contracts were signed in shadows and cash flowed faster than vodka.

Inside, the air was hot and damp with sweat, cologne, and the faint metallic tang of spilled beer. A wall of sound hit him—low, grinding synth laced with a bass that rattled teeth. Lights strobed across the dance floor, turning the crowd into a churning sea of bodies and glitter. A server slid something into his apron before vanishing behind the bar. A table stacked with untouched vodka bottles—money spent, no consumption required.

Dylan angled toward the bar, weaving through bodies with practiced ease. His eyes moved constantly, cataloging everything while forcing his shoulders to relax into a casual stance. "Whiskey. Neat," he shouted to the bartender over the music.

The glass landed in front of him, cool and amber under the neon glow. He raised it halfway to his lips, gaze drifting—and that was when the case dissolved like smoke.

The man stood halfway down the bar, and Dylan's seasoned composure fractured like cheap glass. Every line of him was art—the dangerous kind you weren't supposed to touch. Dylan's pulse stuttered. For one treacherous heartbeat, he forgot about the Calluccis, the job, everything except the stranger who had just made him feel something he hadn't in years.