Chapter 15 #3
“You were given plenty of chances,” he says, his voice flat. “My boss doesn’t like it when people waste his time. Or his money.”
A door at the far end of the warehouse groans open, letting in a sliver of the sickly yellow light from the alley outside before it swings shut with a final thud. Footsteps echo, different from the scuffling of the thugs. They move with purpose across the concrete.
A new figure steps into the pool of harsh light where I’m lying.
He’s older, maybe in his late fifties, with a solid build that hasn’t yet gone entirely to softness.
His hair is steel-gray, cropped short, and his face has the lived-in, weathered look of someone who’s spent a lifetime making hard decisions.
He’s dressed in a simple, expensive-looking dark sweater and trousers, no flashy suit, no jade ring.
The real power doesn’t need to advertise.
He stops beside Taewoo, who immediately dips his head in a shallow bow, his obsequiousness so thick it’s almost too much. The older man doesn’t even glance at him. His eyes are on me, moving slowly from my bloodied face down the length of my bound and battered body.
“So this is him?” the man asks. His voice is low, gravelly, the kind that doesn’t need to be raised to be heard clearly in the cavernous space.
“Yes, sir,” Taewoo says quickly. “Ha Yujeong. The one who’s been skipping on his payments for months.”
The boss makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. He pulls a pair of thin black leather gloves from his pocket and tugs them on, the motion smooth. Then he kneels beside me.
He grips my jaw firmly, his gloved fingers pressing into the bruises already forming there. He turns my head side to side, his gaze assessing. It’s not a sexual look. It’s the look a butcher gives a side of beef, evaluating the cut and the marbling.
“Young,” he muses, almost to himself. “Not too bad looking, either. Or you weren’t, before my boys got to you.” His eyes flick up to Taewoo. “You told me he was a decent fighter.”
“He is, sir. Slippery. Took down three of my men before we tased him.”
“A waste,” the boss says, turning his attention back to me. His thumb brushes over my split lip, making me flinch. “All that fight, and you use it to run from a few million won? Stupid.”
I stare up at him, blinking blood out of my eye.
My mind, fuzzy with pain, claws for focus.
I memorize the lines of his face—the deep groove between his brows, the slight twist of a scar near his hairline, the cool, almost colorless gray of his eyes.
A tiny, hard kernel of victory flares in my gut, hot and bright.
I got my look. I suppress it instantly, letting nothing show on my ruined face but pain and defiance.
I work my tongue, trying to gather enough moisture to speak. My voice comes out as a shredded rasp, each word scraping my throat. “I’m going... to warn you once.” I have to pause, sucking in a breath that stabs my ribs. “This is your chance. Let me go. Walk away.”
The loan sharks around us snicker, a nervous, ugly sound. The boss doesn’t laugh. His gloved hand stays on my jaw, his grip tightening slightly. “Why would we want to do that?” he asks, genuinely curious.
I feel the manic grin stretch my torn lips again. It pulls at the cuts, and I taste fresh blood. “I have a temperamental bonded,” I say, the words dripping with a crazy kind of glee. “And he really, really doesn’t like other people damaging what’s his.”
For a second, there’s only the hum of the warehouse lights. Then the thugs burst into loud, braying laughter. It bounces off the metal rafters. One of them slaps his thigh. “He’s trying to scare us with his boyfriend!” he wheezes.
But the boss isn’t laughing. He’s still looking at me, that same assessing look in his eyes.
He finally releases my jaw and stands up, brushing his gloved hands together.
“Is that so?” he says, his voice still calm.
“Well then. We’ll make sure to call him when we’re done so he can come pick up the pieces.
” He holds out a hand toward one of his men without looking. “Knife.”
A switchblade is placed in his palm. He flicks it open. The sound is sharp and final in the quiet that has suddenly fallen. The laughter dies away.
He kneels again, bringing the blade into my line of sight.
It’s a mean-looking thing, not long but wickedly sharp.
The fluorescent light glints coldly along its edge.
“Now,” he says, his tone conversational.
“You’re going to give me the account details.
You’re going to transfer every won you owe me, plus interest, plus my expenses for tonight.
Or I’m going to start cutting it out of you. Slowly.”
He waits. The thugs hold their breath. Taewoo watches, a faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip.
I let my head fall back against the concrete.
The cold seeps through my hair. I look up at the shadowed ceiling, at the distant, dusty lights.
Every part of me hurts. The cage is a dull, heavy ache.
The piercings burn. My ribs are a cage of fire around my lungs.
But beneath it all, beneath the fear and the pain, there’s a weird, clear calm.
This is just another kind of game. An uglier one.
“Do your worst,” I whisper, then louder, my voice gaining strength from the sheer absurdity of it all. “Do your worst.”
The boss sighs, a sound of mild disappointment. “Pity.”
He moves quickly. He doesn’t hesitate. He rolls me, grabs my left hand, yanking it away from my body as far as he can with my hands still bound. His grip is iron.
The blade touches my palm, just below the base of my fingers. For a heartbeat, there’s only the pressure. Then he drags the knife across.
The pain is blinding. It’s not the deep, throbbing ache of a bruise or the sharp shock of a broken bone.
This is a bright, searing line of pure fire, etching itself into my skin.
I hear myself scream, a raw, animal sound that tears out of me and echoes in the vast space.
My body arches off the ground, back bowing, every muscle locking tight.
The zip ties cut into my wrists and ankles.
He holds my hand down mercilessly, the knife moving steadily, deliberately, from my palm up toward the inside of my forearm.
It feels like he’s peeling me open, like he’s drawing a map of agony in my flesh.
He finishes the cut and pulls the knife away.
Blood wells up immediately, dark and shocking red against my skin, spilling over the edges of the wound and dripping onto the concrete.
The pain doesn’t stop; it pulses, hot and vicious, with every beat of my heart.
I’m panting, my vision swimming, tears mixing with the blood on my face.
The boss leans back on his heels, watching me. He reaches out and wipes the blade clean on the leg of my jeans, leaving a smeared red streak. “Let’s try it again,” he says, his voice still that same, calm, reasonable tone. “The account. The password.”
I shake my head, a tiny, frantic movement. I can’t speak. My teeth are clenched so hard I think they might crack.
He nods, as if he expected nothing else. He shifts his grip, turning my hand over to expose the back of it. The knife comes down again.
The blade touches the back of my hand, a cold promise of more fire. I brace for it, my whole body going stiff, my teeth grinding together so hard my jaw feels like it might splinter. The scream is waiting in my throat, clawing to get out.
It never comes.
Instead, the world explodes.
The sound hits first—a deafening, shattering roar that isn’t one gunshot but a dozen, all at once.
The heavy metal doors of the warehouse seem to disintegrate, blasted inward on a storm of splinters and twisted metal.
The noise is so immense it swallows everything: the thugs’ breathing, the boss’s calm voice, even the frantic pounding of my own heart.
Shadows move in the chaos outside the doorway, then resolve into figures pouring through the wreckage. They move with a purpose that’s terrifyingly familiar. They move like a single organism, spreading out, flowing into the warehouse.
The loan sharks freeze for a single, stupid second.
Then panic erupts. Taewoo shrieks something unintelligible.
The thugs holding me down let go, scrambling for weapons they don’t have time to draw.
The ones by the doors are the first to go down.
I don’t see precise hits; I see a blur of violence.
A man’s head snaps back from a blow that sounds like a baseball bat hitting a melon.
Another is lifted and slammed into a stack of crates with a crunch that makes my own bones ache in sympathy.
It’s not even a competition, it’s an all-out dismantling.
I recognize the ruthless brutes immediately. I’ve memorized enough of their faces and the way they fight to know it on sight. Seeing them now, turning their focused violence on someone else, is a surreal and dizzying relief.
A wet, bubbling laugh escapes my lips. It hurts my ribs, sends a fresh spike of agony from the cut on my hand, but I can’t stop it.
I cough, blood and spit flecking the concrete under my cheek, and the laugh turns into a wheezing sound.
My lips feel cracked and swollen, but they curve upward anyway, a smile that probably looks as deranged as I feel.
The loan shark boss jerks upright. The knife clatters from his gloved fingers, the sound tiny and insignificant against the backdrop of breaking bones and guttural shouts. He doesn’t look bored or calculating anymore. He looks like a man who just heard the floor drop out from under him.
And then he walks in.