Nocturne

Prologue

Night made liars of everyone.

Under chandeliers and champagne light, every smile looked softer than it was, every hand on a waist looked gentler than it meant, every compliment sounded like a blessing if you did not listen too closely. The ballroom shimmered with wealth so polished it almost resembled kindness.

Y/N had learned, over the years, that beauty was often just violence in better lighting.

She stood by the window with one hand resting over the curve of her pregnant stomach and the other wrapped around a glass of sparkling water she had not yet touched. Her black dress was expensive enough to satisfy the room, modest enough to satisfy Jungkook, and beautiful enough to make strangers assume she was happy.

She had smiled all evening.

She had smiled until her cheeks ached.

She had smiled while men congratulated her on the baby as though they were applauding a performance they had funded.

She had smiled while Jungkook moved through the ballroom without looking for her once.

She had smiled because that was what wives like her did.

At least, that was what she had been taught.

By the time she reached the window, the music had started to feel far away. The city outside stretched beneath her in a thousand fractured lights, cold and glittering, a world that kept moving no matter how tightly she held herself together.

She should have felt proud.

She was married to one of the most powerful men in the room.

She was carrying his child.

She was wearing the right dress, standing in the right place, saying the right words.

And still, all she could feel was the quiet humiliation of being beside him and somehow still alone.

"You look tired."

The voice came from her left, low and composed, with none of the false warmth that filled the rest of the ballroom.

Y/N turned.

The man beside her was unfamiliar and impossible to ignore. Tall. Dark suit. Controlled presence. The sort of face the room would remember even if it tried not to. There was something severe in him, something measured, something that suggested power had never been handed to him gently.

He held out a glass of water.

"I noticed you weren't drinking," he said.

Y/N stared at the glass for a beat too long before taking it. Their fingers brushed once.

That brief touch did something strange to the air.

She should have stepped back.

Instead, she found herself asking, "Who are you?"

One corner of his mouth shifted, not quite a smile.

"Kim Taehyung."

The name landed with weight.

She knew it. Everyone did.

And yet standing in front of him, hearing him speak like this, with no performance and no appetite for small talk, he seemed less like a man from the headlines and more like a blade left resting on velvet.

Y/N lowered her gaze. "I know who you are."

"I assumed you might."

He looked at her then, properly looked, and something in his expression changed just enough to make her uneasy.