Jake’s POV
The stench of sweat, blood, and cheap perfume lingers like a fog in the air, thick and cloying. The kind that clings to your clothes and creeps into your skin. The kind you stop noticing when you’ve lived in hell long enough.
My kingdom is rotting—but I’m still king.
Cards slap down hard on a blood-stained table to my left. Laughter erupts. One of the girls giggles too loud, drunk on vodka and self-loathing. Another one’s crying in the corner, mascara running down her neck, cigarette ash on her thighs. No one comforts her. No one notices. They’re used to it.
They all pretend this is a party, but it’s a graveyard of broken things.
And I sit in the center of it all. Throne of steel wheels and leather straps, a cane balanced across my knees like a f*****g scepter. A living cor
