He nodded toward the living room, where a dentist was teaching a librarian how to play craps using only body parts as dice. “You fit right in. You played Jenga with a trauma surgeon and didn’t flinch when the tower fell.”

“First time?” he asked.

The rules were simple. Each round, a game was drawn from a vintage leather box: Jenga, strip poker, a custom deck of cards where the suits were replaced by silhouettes. But the twist was always the same. Every loss stripped away a layer of pretense. Every win earned a token—a small brass key—that unlocked a “side quest” with another player.

“Welcome to Game Night,” purred a man named Marcus, the host. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and nothing else. “We don’t play Monopoly here, Jessica. Too much risk of actual violence.”