Chapter 25
Young-gi
An alert on my phone gets my attention, and I turn away from the work my men are doing to check the screen. With a frown, I realize that Kira and Tommy have left the restaurant much faster than I anticipated.
Maybe he didn’t care for the food. I have a flash of imagination–Tommy making a disgusted little face at fine cuisine, his nose wrinkled like a kitten forced to take medicine.
I get a warm, fuzzy weight behind my ribs, along with a spike of jealousy so sharp I can taste it; I want to see him make that face in person.
I want to be with him when he discovers what food he likes and doesn’t like.
I want to be the one who knows him best. I want to be the one that catches him.
I resent this business that kept me from dinner with them, but it was necessary.
“Hurry up,” I snap at my men, returning to my observation of them. “The timeline moved up. I want to be home in an hour.”
They acknowledge me by moving faster, heaving a large rectangular lid onto the crate in front of me and beginning to nail it down as fast as they can without making mistakes. We all ignore the muffled screaming and banging coming from inside.
He’s the reason we’re here, after all. He was never getting out of this, except by coming with me.
I don’t normally get this personal, this messy. I’m not an emotionally driven creature, not one to act on impulse. But this man? He messed with mine.
Once the makeshift coffin is ready, my team lifts it in tandem and I lead them to the vans we have lined up out in front of his dilapidated home.
“Get this one to zone B,” I order Yosef. “I’m going home early. It can wait for me there until tomorrow.”
As they load the crate into the back, my phone chimes again. A message from Kira’s driver pops up, which isn’t unusual. But instead of a standard status update, I get an irregular alert.
Miss Sokolov has requested an immediate meeting with you, urgently, with the company of her fiancé.
I stare at the words, uncomprehending for a long moment. They’re flat, just words, but they hold so much meaning. A chill goes through me as I realize–something is wrong.
Something happened to either scare them, or harm them.
Kira doesn’t ask for me urgently. Ever. There is no if or but about it; she never has.
And Tommy would rather eat dirt than admit he needs me.
Which means that something is very, very wrong.
Something at the dinner venue upset them, put them in danger, and they’re scared.
I’ll burn that whole fucking restaurant to the ground.
Logic threads through my implosion like a needle, a sharp, silver thought; if they were injured, the driver would’ve said so.
That should calm down my emotional reaction, but I don’t feel logical right now.
Until I know why they need to see me, I must assume that they are under some kind of threat or duress, and that makes me…
Makes me…
Furious.
“Get him packed the fuck up,” I snap. “Then move out with me, threat level two, status check on my niece and my–Tommy.”
I get a round of ‘yes, pakhan’ from my men as I respond to Kira’s driver with a fast message instructing him on where to go. My near slip of the tongue–almost calling Tommy my fiancé–is startling, but not totally unwelcome. Whatever he is to me, he’s important and likely permanent.
And now he’s in some kind of trouble, and I’m not with him to sort it out.
I clutch my phone so hard it creaks under the strain. Yosef must notice my tension because he throws the car into gear and we jump forward into motion.
“The accounting firm,” I command. “They’ll meet us there.”
“Yes, pakhan,” he says gruffly. “...Is he alright?”
And it’s telling, so damnably telling, that Yosef already knows exactly who is on my mind.
“As far as I know, they’re both unharmed.”
“Maybe he just got in a little scuffle again,” Yosef ponders. He’s the only one of my men who speaks to me so casually, but I can tell he’s trying to keep me calm. Me? Needing to be calmed down? I’ve never needed to be managed like that before.
But I don’t like not knowing what’s wrong.
“Just get us there,” I grit out. The engine revs as he presses down harder on the gas.
****************
Tommy
Thirty minutes after leaving the restaurant, we pull up to that fake accounting office, the one that hides Young-gi’s war room. I expect him to be here already, but the parking lot is dark and silent, and the building unlit. It’s ominous at night, and it’s not helping my dreadful nerves.
“Ma’am,” the driver says through the partially lowered partition. “Your uncle says he’ll be here shortly, and we’re to wait here for him.”
“Thank you, Nigel,” Kira says, but I’m not very grateful for that announcement. We just have to sit here and wait? Wring our hands and get increasingly nervous until he finally gets here and decides whether or not I’m worth all this mess? I’m already anxious enough as it is!
Fuck this. I hop out of the car.
“Tommy, wait!” Kira scrambles out after me, our voices the only sound in our corner of the night. I’m not running or anything, so she catches me quickly and grabs my arm. “Where are you going?!”
“I just need some air.” She hits me with a disbelieving stare and I sigh. “Alright, fine, I don’t want to wait here just for him to come get rid of me.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” she insists, holding me tight and looping her arm through mine. “He’s going to fix it.”
“I don’t need him to fix anything for me,” I huff, but I let her pull me back toward the car, so we end up leaning against the side of it together, our arms linked between us. “I don’t need him at all.”
“I–you–” She opens her mouth a few times, her brows deeply furrowed, but eventually stays silent.
We stand there together while the driver nervously watches us, the whole block feeling abandoned and quiet.
I can see the city lights not far from here, boxing us in, but we’re in one of those districts with older buildings that all close down in the evening.
The city might never sleep, but certain neighborhoods definitely do.
“You really think he’ll fix it?” I finally ask.
“I know he will.” She sounds confident, but I’m not so sure.
“It’s my fault. He’s gonna be so pissed.”
“No, he won’t. It’s not your fault. We’re going to stick together and take care of this.”
I chew on her answer for a minute. Eventually, I turn my head and look down at her. She meets my eyes in the darkness, unafraid.
“Kira, why do you even care? Why do you want me to stay? I’ve been nothing but trouble.”
“I…” She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen my uncle look at anyone the way he looks at you.”
“You didn’t even know he was gay until a few minutes ago,” I call out her bullshit, trying not to get dizzy from the butterflies rioting in my stomach.
Her little scowl makes me laugh and she elbows my side hard. “I didn’t know he felt that way about you! But I thought he was taking you under his wing as his, like, protege or whatever.”
“Oh my god,” I scrub a hand down my face. “Seriously?”
“What? It’s possible!”
“So you thought what? That I was just his mini-me?”
“Well…” She shrugs innocently. “What else was I supposed to think when he bailed you out of jail and then basically told me you were staying with him indefinitely? He wouldn’t do that for just anybody.
You have to be special to him somehow. And he’s never been into anyone before, let alone a guy! So how was I supposed to know?”
“He’s not into me,” I deny, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, because I literally can’t believe in a good thing for myself, it’s physically impossible. “He’s just like, bi-curious or something. Experimenting.”
“Wow,” Kira draws the word out, emphasizing her incredulity. “Are you seriously ‘it’s a phase’-ing my uncle right now? That’s not very LGBTQ ally of you.”
“Um, excuse me?! I’m literally gay! I don’t need to be an ally!”
“Wow.” She draws the word out again.
“Why are we arguing about this right now?”
“You started it!”
I roll my eyes, and she huffs, but our arms stay linked and we aren’t yelling or anything, so I guess we’re not really upset.
I’ve never really been one to bicker; I usually jump straight from being a brat to punching people, but this?
It feels almost comforting. The nerves simmering inside me aren’t forgotten, but feel more tolerable with this gentle distraction, and waiting for Young-gi to show up and decide my fate feels less horrible.
“You know, you’re alright for a rich girl,” I say suddenly, feeling fond of her.
“Oh, shut up, Tommy,” she groans.
Before I can tease her any more, or bicker with her again, we both flinch at the nearby sound of tires squealing on tar. I straighten in front of her protectively as three large black vehicles barrel around the street corner and jump the curb, all of them circling around our town car.
“It’s my uncle,” Kira reassures me, her small hand on my back.
Sure enough, the closest car barely stops before Young-gi throws the door open and explodes out of it. His eyes run over us like he’s looking for injuries, and he comes at me full speed, unavoidable, like a fucking train.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” He halts right in front of me, like an inch away, emanating waves of warm, protective, possessive anger. And shit, maybe he does have a thing for me–
Nah, don’t get ahead of yourself.
“It’s nothing,” I bristle, trying to brush my problems under the rug out of habit.
“Someone is blackmailing Tommy!” Kira interjects, squirming around my protective stance to thrust the envelope at her uncle. “You have to take care of this, you have to!”