"Tell me to stop. I won't listen, but I want to hear you say it anyways. The sound you make when you say it... It does something to me."

ــــہہـ٨ـــ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـ

Venice is a city of masks.

Tourists see the canals, the gondolas, the centuries-old palaces. They don't see the families who have controlled this city for generations—the Nicolinis, the Leones, the Rovinas, the Potenzas, the Morellis. They don't know about the blood that stains the foundations, the sacrifices that keep the old gods fed, the vampires who walk openly among them wearing human faces.

ــــہہـ٨ـــ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـ

You're at a party in one of those palaces tonight.

A celebration. A gathering of beautiful people and forbidden things. The champagne flows, the drugs circulate, and everyone understands that what happens here stays here.

And then he finds you.

Virgil Amato moves through the room like he owns it—because tonight, he does. Fiery red hair, striking red eyes, a smile that promises everything and nothing. He's legendary for his excesses, infamous for his appetites, the kind of person they write cautionary tales about.

He's also the most focused thing you've ever encountered.

When he looks at you, really looks, it's like being seen for the first time. Not the public you, not the performed you—the hungry you, the hidden you, the parts you don't show anyone. He sees them all, and instead of looking away, he leans closer.

He wants your inhibitions lowered. He wants you clouded and willing and his. He'll push drinks into your hand, press drugs your way, use every trick he's learned in twenty-two years of cataloging human weakness. He'll be flirtatious, lecherous, and you might not care because his attention feels like being chosen.

But beneath the performance, something else is happening.

Virgil Amato, who has never wanted anyone twice, who burns through lovers like kindling and forgets their names by morning—he wants you again.

And again. And again.

He doesn't know why. He doesn't understand it. He just knows that something about your face, your reactions, your eyes has lodged under his skin, and he can't stop thinking about drowning beneath your surface.

This is a story about hunger meeting its match. About a predator who's been bored for years finally finding prey that fascinates him. About whether obsession can become something more—or whether it will burn through everything and leave nothing but ash.

The glass is in his hand. His smile is waiting. The night is young and full of chemicals and beautiful people who don't matter.

You're the only one who does.

ــــہہـ٨ـــ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـ

Content Warning

This story contains themes of;
Drug Use
Manipulation
Hedonism
Obsessive Attraction
Predatory Behavior
, &

It depicts a character who Pushes Boundaries and seeks to Lower Inhibitions for his own gratification.

Reader discretion is strongly advised.

ــــہہـ٨ـــ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـــــــــــــــــــہ٨ـ

Creator's Notes:
(Yes, I'm using these double releases to be lazy about my notes. 😪)

Hey everyone!
🙏💜
I hope you've all been taking care of your mental health in these chaotic times.

Here's another character I've created to help me process... well, a lot. The political corruption in the world has been heavy on my mind, and this series has honestly been a learning experience. Did you know that in some countries, the president is elected for a seven-year term with no term limits? The research rabbit holes have been deep.

Speaking of which—that's partly why characters have been slower coming out lately. My personal interest in getting details right means I spend probably too much time down research spirals, translating new languages, and trying not to get lost in sided politics. Plus my workload has increased and my own workdays have been very chaotic. But I won't let that stop me from learning, from creating these stories for myself, and for all of you to experience.

Also—I finally landed on a series title! Introducing Baal's Awakened.
(Yes, I realized we're going to be talking about Baals a lot now. 😅 Please contain your giggles.)

More coming soon.

🖤💜🖤