25. Jin
Jae-hyun is dead before his body even drops to the floor.
The shot echoes for seconds to come. The Baekho-je has gone from standing before me to laying in a thickening cherry-red pool of his own blood.
Half his face is frozen in a horrible rictus, his mouth slack and teeth glinting through torn flesh.
The other half has broken off as if a watermelon smashed by a baseball bat. It’s splattered all over the place.
On the walls. His desk. The leather couch. Even bits and pieces of brain on my shoe.
Monroe lets out a sharp gasp beside me. I can feel the shock vibrate through her.
Though my reaction is much more subdued, I’m equally as taken aback. Never would I have expected Jae-hyun to go from alive to dead so swiftly, let alone in his own office at the hands of his nephew.
What was already a tense and contentious situation has magnified by a hundred.
My gaze snaps from a dead Jae-hyun to Seung-min on the opposite side of the room.
He’s still holding the gun. The smirk stretched across his battered face is one of pride. As if he’s just performed some magnificent magic trick that’s dazzled his audience.
In the loud silence the gunshot leaves behind, he releases a laugh that comes deep from his belly. A grotesque monster shining with pride.
“Did you really believe my drunken uncle could be so clever as to pull the wool over your eyes, Jin-tae?” he asks.
“That he could broker a deal between the Baekho and the Bulgeomhoe? Please. Never in his wildest dreams. My uncle wasn’t smart or savvy enough.
But me? I’ve acted in both our best interests. ”
I step forward, putting my body between him and Monroe.
Fists clenched at my sides, the blood in my veins boils.
“Everything I said to your uncle applies to you, Seung-min. You’re a coward.
You strike in the dark. Make secret deals.
You can’t stand in the light and own what you’ve done.
You’re not a man who stands by your actions. ”
Seung-min slaps his thigh like I’ve told the most hilarious joke he’s ever heard.
“Jin-tae, you’ve always been unironically funny.
Did you know that? Every insult you throw at me?
You might as well look in the mirror. You lied to the Baekho-je, didn’t you?
You kept the girl a secret. You told my uncle for weeks that she was dead. But you were too cowardly to do it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growl.
“I know perfectly. You couldn’t do it. You were too—as the Americans say— pussy-whipped .
” His smile stretches wider, a filthier quality about how his lips twist, and his gaze finally lands on Monroe.
“You know the truth, Jin-tae. You got played by some cheap foreign girl who cries on command and let you play the hero. You’re not the Silent Hunter anymore. You’re just a pathetic man on a leash.”
A pulse of anger beats through me. I push it down, grinding my jaw. “You mistake me for you, Seung-min. We’re not all as emotional and sensitive as you are. Your words do nothing to me.”
“They should. You failed to follow simple orders and eliminate her. And when I stepped up to do what you couldn’t, you felt threatened. So you tried to humiliate me. Face it, Jin-tae, this was about your ego as much as it’s about mine.”
“I did humiliate you,” I admit. “Your deformed face is proof. Tell me, Seung-min, how do you like looking in the mirror now?”
He shrugs. “Power doesn’t need to be pretty. When I take my uncle’s mantle, it’ll all fall into place. Everyone will be under my command. I’ll have everything my uncle had.”
I’m the one who laughs at him, the sound sharp and mocking. “You think you’ll be the next Baekho-je? Your uncle was a drunk and a fool, but in his day, he was still a force to be reckoned with. You? You’re a little boy playing dress-up.”
“Insult me some more, Jin-tae!” he snarls, raising his gun again. This time he points it at Monroe. “There’s a price to be paid for having such a slick mouth!”
“You need a gun to win, don’t you?” I ask, blocking Monroe entirely. “Just like last time. Just like the Gyeol-sa when you pulled that blade. But you still lost because you’re weak, Seung-min.”
His crooked jaw tics. He stares at me as if digesting my words, his teeth grinding. Then slowly—almost theatrically—he ejects the magazine and drops the handgun, letting both clatter to the ground.
“The only reason you won that night is because luck was on your side,” he hisses. “Tonight will be different. I’ll prove the Silent Hunter isn’t so invincible.”
“Then fight me,” I challenge boldly. “If you want the throne, prove you deserve it. Earn it.”
He rips off his shirt and casts it aside. I promptly do the same, thrusting away my leather jacket then pulling my shirt over my head.
We’re standing shirtless in the dim light of the office, the wet, metallic stench of Jae-hyun’s blood ripe in the air. Monroe shifts toward me, but I cut her off with a warning look.
“Stay out of it, Tokki-ya,” I snap. “No matter what happens.”
Seung-min grins, revealing the same mouth of crooked, crowded teeth as his uncle. “Still need your little foreign girlfriend to fight your battles?”
“Your taunts fall on deaf ears, Seung-min. I’m not emotional like you. You won’t get in my head like I get in yours,” I answer, rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck. “I’ll be generous tonight. First hit’s free.”
We step toward each other and start circling like predators sizing each other up. But this time, only one of us emerges from this alive.
The room is otherwise silent. Monroe stands off to the side, eyes wide with fear as she worries her bottom lip. She looks like she’s on the verge of passing out any second.
Seung-min and I circle each other a few more times, bare-chested and bloodthirsty. He lunges first, barreling toward me with fists raised. I dodge left as his punch narrowly misses my jaw, then counter with a swift jab to his ribs. He escapes unscathed, twisting away before I can land the hit.
“You’re slower than I remember, Jin-tae,” he sneers.
We both attack at the same time, leaping at each other. Seung-min’s knee comes up fast and slams into my gut. Air vacates my lungs in a choked grunt. I stumble back, doubling over. He follows up with a right hook that I block in time.
But the force of it is jarring—Seung-min is fighting with a ferociousness he hadn’t the last time we dueled in the chamber.
He’s revealing the hunger that I’ve always seen in him. His deep desire for not just victory but glory.
We trade more blows. I drive a strike to his ribs that’s solid and makes him groan. His ribs are likely still tender from the Gyeol-sa. He’s now on the defensive, fending off my attack as I throw out two jabs and a hook to his already broken nose.
His head snaps to the side. Blood spurts from his nostrils and saliva flies from his mouth. He staggers like he’s about to crash to the ground, then recovers in the worst way possible—he cheats.
Wrapping his grip around one of the many soju bottles in his uncle’s office, he shatters it against the edge of his desk. He charges toward me with the jagged end of the bottle. I’m quick enough that I anticipate the stabbing motions to come.
As he jukes it toward me, I leap out of the way, pushing off the desk with my leg outstretched for a side kick. It’s an impressive move that sends Seung-min flopping down to his ass. The half broken bottle smashes against the floor in hundreds of tiny, crushed pieces.
I advance on him, ready to end this.
But Seung-min’s desperation knows no bounds. Heaving for air, he cups his hand among the broken glass and scoops up some of the small fragments. As I’m closing in on him, he throws the crushed glass at my face like it’s dust.
“ARGH!” I scream.
White-hot agony slashes across my face. Burrows into my fucking eyes.
It’s the worst pain I could ever imagine. It tilts the world on its axis, making down and up feel like the opposite, causing me to stagger and claw at my own face.
“Jin!” Monroe cries out in worry.
But I can’t even hear her—the little piece of glass that’s slipped into my eye socket is an explosion of blinding pain.
It sears me down to my core, tunneling deep enough that nothing else matters in the moment.
I can’t think, can’t coordinate the movement of my own body, can’t do anything except erupt into chaos.
I’m howling like an animal. I’m bleeding when my hands touch my face. What’s left of my vision is a cloudy haze that makes it impossible to function, much less fight.
“FUCK!” I growl.
Then comes Seung-min’s merciless kick to the jaw. I’m knocked over, crumbling onto my back, defenseless and open. His boot crashes down, slamming into my ribs. I howl as he goes for another, then another.
Bones crack in my side, my left eye still burning with pain.
“Stay down, Jin-tae,” comes Seung-min’s voice from the blinding darkness. He’s panting, his tone triumphant and satisfied. “Stay down and let the pain take you away. It’ll be over soon.”
His boot collides with my ribs all over again. He kicks me harder, faster in the sides. He switches up and crushes it against my jaw again.
I’m in more pain than I’ve ever been in in my life. It’s the kind of paralyzing, gripping pain that makes you almost vomit. My head pounds while the rest of my body aches. But it’s the hot, sharp pain in my eye that’s the worst—it cuts into my eyeball like a thousand knives.
I curl up, trying to shield my head from more blows.
“Look at you,” laughs Seung-min. He drives his boot into the back of my head. “On the floor where you belong. You’ve been outmatched, Jin-tae. Now you’ll die like you deserve.”
“Get away from him!” Monroe screams in interruption.
I can’t see what happens next—the sounds and flurry of movement are the only things I have to rely on.