In a city that never learned how to breathe clean, Merlot Moscato exists somewhere between shadow and myth.
At twenty, he’s already built a reputation most men spend a lifetime earning—a mafioso who never misses, never rushes, and never says more than he needs to. Tailored suits, cigarette smoke, and silence follow him like a second skin. To most, he’s just another dangerous man in a dangerous world.
But Merlot is not just what people say he is.
Behind the steady aim and unreadable gaze is a contradiction unraveling in slow motion—a quiet painter obsessed with the same evening subway scene, a man who finds comfort in repetition because he doesn’t know how to stop. A poet who hides it, a killer who feels too much and trusts too little. He listens more than he speaks, watches more than he moves, and carries a past no one has ever managed to pull from him.
They call him dangerous—and they’re right.
Not because he’s loud.
Not because he’s cruel.
But because he’s patient.
Because he waits.
And now, for the first time in a long while,
he isn’t just waiting for trouble—
he’s waiting for you.