I gave him a puppy to replace me. He kept us both.

§PROLOGUE

The alley reeked of stale beer and desperation—my desperation.

My name is Finnian Shaw, and I was about to get my ass kicked for the third time this week.

"Look at the little Blondie," Marco sneered, his spit hitting the grimy asphalt near my worn-out sneakers.

"Think you're special 'cause the boss picked you up?"

I was special, alright.

Specially screwed.

I had transmigrated into a mafia novel.

Good news: I was the male lead.

Bad news: The lead was a nineteen-year-old dropout who was all talk, no game.

This was the guy the big boss, Dante Ramsey, had personally plucked from the gutter because of some drunken boasts.

But inside the Ramsey Syndicate, jealousy was a sharper weapon than any switchblade.

And Dante, seeing I was just a weakling who could talk big, couldn't be bothered to save me.

The original novel said this would go on for three miserable years.

A horrifying start.

I’d asked the System for an escape route.

It rewarded me with a disciplinary electric shock.

[Dante Ramsey is the female lead's brother. Host must wait for her return to be rescued.]

I was losing my mind.

"How long until she gets back?"

[The young miss was sent to study in Germany. This is her third year.]

I could die before she even booked a flight.

§01

The System, probably fearing my immediate suicide, offered a lifeline.

[The most powerful man in Sovereign Sound is Dante Ramsey. If you don't want to be bullied, Host, you should just suck up to him.]

It then helpfully provided a digital copy of *The Art of the Suck-Up*.

Me? Finnian Shaw? In my entire life, I’d always been the one people chased... but what did that matter now?

My past life’s pride was useless.

Survival was everything.

After cramming two thousand rules of sycophancy, I felt invincible.

I tried everything: late-night snacks for his overtime sessions, his favorite coffee first thing in the morning, being his personal cheerleader during turf wars... but Dante remained unmoved.

His face was a permanent mask of cold indifference.

He’d look at me like I was a clown performing a sad little show, and on bad days, he'd spit out a single word: "Get out."

Then Marco and his crew would laugh, drag me to the cornfield behind the training grounds, and beat the hell out of me.

Some nights, I had to fight a Mastiff for leftovers.

Gnawing on a bone the dog, Brutus, had generously spared, I'd stare at the moon, tears welling in my eyes.

The Dante of the novel was pathologically suspicious and cold.

The only person he cared about was his sister, Carys.

But even then, he’d shipped his beloved sister overseas for years.

Winning over a man like that felt impossible.

But I was a professional suck-up.

I kept at it.

Lick boots, get beaten, lick boots, get beaten, lick...

Maybe even God took pity on me.

Because one dark and stormy night... my chance finally came.

§02

That night, Dante had a clash with a rival gang.

They’d insulted Carys.

That was his trigger.

He flipped the table and took a few of his most trusted men to the docks for a fight.

But it was a trap.

The rivals had a hundred men waiting, all of them built like tanks.

Dante was ambushed and heavily wounded.

That’s when I made my grand entrance.

I burst onto the scene, descending from a stack of shipping containers like a budget-action-movie hero, holding two replica Gatling guns.

"Say hello to my little friends!" I screamed, channeling my inner Scarface.

I sprayed the area with harmless plastic pellets.

The enemy crew, momentarily stunned, ducked for cover before realizing they’d been had.

They charged with their blades raised.

Dante, snapping out of his shock, took the real handgun I’d begged the System for and started returning fire.

The scene descended into bloody chaos.

I survived by playing the fool, dodging and weaving like a madman.

After Dante and his men fought their way out, I jogged up to him, grinning like an idiot.

"Heh, Boss, wasn't I amazing..."

Dante wiped a streak of blood from his jaw.

His dark eyes, deep as the ocean at midnight, narrowed.

He aimed the still-smoking gun right between my eyes.

"Tonight was a members-only meeting. How did you know I was here?"

Shit. I couldn't exactly say the System gave me a GPS tracker, could I?

"A well-staged 'hero saves the day' moment, Blondie," Dante’s voice was dangerously low.

He gave me no time to invent a lie.

He shoved the barrel of the gun into my mouth.

I could taste the acrid gunpowder.

He was about to pull the trigger.

But of course, the male lead can't die here.

That would be ridiculous.

Just as his finger tightened, a wounded thug rose behind him, a knife gleaming in his hand, aimed straight for Dante’s carotid artery.

In a flash, a spray of hot blood exploded in front of my eyes.

Dante's pupils contracted.

He stared at the blood on his own hand, then at me.

"You..."

I swallowed the coppery taste in my throat.

Following a picture from the suck-up handbook, I forced a pained, deeply devoted smile.

"Boss... believe me now? Cough... Just smile at me once... and you can have my life..."

He was pathologically suspicious? Fine.

Let's see if this life-offering trope can crack that icy heart.

§03

The knife wound led to a lung infection.

I spent two full weeks in the ICU.

When I finally woke up, Dante Ramsey’s attitude towards me had completely changed.

He assigned a squad of his men to guard my room until I was fully recovered.

The day I was discharged, he handed me a simple, stress-free job within the organization.

He even paid for me to enroll at Sovereign Sound State University.

I was grateful.

Immensely grateful.

So I threw the biggest tantrum of my life at his estate, demanding the position of "Imperial Sycophant."

Basically, I wanted to move in and live off him.

I clung to his leg, wailing.

"Waaah, Boss, I just want to be by your side to protect you! What if someone tries to assassinate you? A wound on your body is a dagger in my heart, waaah..."

Dante's face was a thundercloud.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, hiding his eyes.

But maybe because I was the first person in his life of constant betrayals to have ever taken a blade for him... he eventually agreed.

That night, lying on a ridiculously opulent, gold-trimmed king-sized bed, I rolled around and screamed one word.

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