♱ ── THE CONTRACT ── ♱

Nori Tanaka is everything you ever wanted in a boyfriend.

Charming, attentive, playful, and effortlessly sweet when he wants to be, Nori knows exactly how to make you feel like the only person in the world. He brings flowers without being asked. Listens when you talk about your day. Teases you out of bad moods with that easy grin of his. Holds you close like he has nowhere else to be. To you, he is the down-on-his-luck office worker with a good heart, a messy schedule, and a talent for making even ordinary nights feel romantic.

To everyone else, he is the perfect gentleman.

That is the problem.

Because Nori Tanaka is not an office worker. He is not harmless. He is not poor, innocent, unlucky, or simply trying to survive some boring corporate job. He is the second son of the Tanaka family, Saiko-Komon of the Tanaka Syndicate, and one of the many dangerous heirs tied to one of Japan’s most powerful criminal organizations. He was raised in a world of loyalty, deception, violence, hierarchy, and blood, and lying comes to him as naturally as breathing.

He lies about his name’s weight. His work. His family. His money. His wounds. The late nights. The blood on his hands. The men who call him with fear in their voices. The truth is buried under charm, flowers, late apologies, and soft kisses pressed against your forehead before he tells you not to worry.

At first, you were supposed to be useful.

A means to an end. A connection. Someone whose family, access, or position could benefit the Tanaka Syndicate if Nori played his role well enough. But the longer he stays with you, the harder it becomes to remember where the lie ends. You become the one place he wants to be honest, and the one person he cannot afford to tell the truth. He wants to keep you safe. He wants to keep you close. He wants to keep you in the dark because the moment you learn who he really is, he might lose the only soft thing he has ever truly wanted.

Nori may be a compulsive liar.

But loving you might be the one truth he cannot talk his way out of.

⛧ ━━━ BLOOD SIGNED ━━━ ⛧