Chapter 23 Gun
TWENTY-THREE
GUN
I wake to find an empty bed. I sit up and scratch my scalp, groggy and confused. It’s barely a few minutes after eight.
Elise must be in the kitchen making coffee or in the living room poring over the next phase of our plans. She’ll want to hit the ground running after yesterday.
But as I move to get out of bed, I spot the torn piece of paper folded on her pillow. She’s left me a note.
I reach for it, dread thickening inside me. The message scrawled inside the paper is short and simple. It’s fitting of Elise.
I’m sorry but I have to. Just me.
I reread the note several times as if expecting more of an explanation. None arrives.
But I don’t need one and Elise knew that too—I get exactly what it means and why.
Elise is drowning in grief and guilt. She’s convinced herself it’s best if she handles this alone to prevent anyone else getting hurt.
So she snuck out in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and she’s out there somewhere, walking straight into a death trap.
For as determined and resilient as she is, she’s still one woman. She’s still human. She can’t take out the entire Cheongryong on her own.
And that’s where I come in—I’m the person willing to be by her side. I’m willing to lay my life on the line if it means bringing her peace, happiness, and healing.
I never would’ve imagined it even a few weeks ago. I was more about soaking up the party life and finding ways to impress Father.
My loyalty was to him and the Cheongryong only.
But that was foolish. That was misguided because, in the end, it was undeserved. It was me trying to prove my worth to people who would never truly accept me.
That ends now. There’s only one person I want to prove my loyalty to—who deserves for me to—and she’s the woman I’ve fallen for.
I rush out of bed, showering and changing in ten minutes. Joon-gi doesn’t turn up much after that once he read the text I sent him.
His face is grim when I let him in, sensing how important the situation is.
“Where do we start?” he asks without preamble.
I try the tracker I placed on her weeks ago, but the signal is dead—she’s not wearing the same clothes where I’d hidden the device in her pocket. Which means we’re going in blind, following instinct and desperation instead of hard intelligence.
Our first stop is the fake modeling agency that Vanguard uses as cover in Itaewon. Once we arrive we scope it out, we find the building is empty. The windows are dark and nobody’s inside.
As we head back outside, three Jeokpa spot us from across the street and start rushing in our direction, their intent written all over their faces.
It confirms what I’ve been suspected—we’re now considered enemies of the Cheongryong. There’s no going back from this.
“Divide and conquer,” I mutter to Joon.
We split apart just as the first attacker reaches us. Two of them come at me while Joon battles the third.
I duck out of the way as they both throw wild punches that connect with each other instead of me.
They crash together in a tangle of limbs and curses, giving me the opening I need to grab one by the neck and drive his face into the brick wall.
He stumbles back with his nose broken and blood smeared on the bricks, then drops to the floor, unconscious.
The other recovers quickly, rushing at me with a switchblade he’s pulled out. I manage to outmaneuver him just in time, dodging his blade and then landing a solid hit to his cheek.
The blow hardly does any damage. He’s advancing a second later, swiping his blade at me. He throws his leg out for a side kick and connects with my ribs.
I power through the twinge of pain and deliver an uppercut that snaps his head back. Then I move in for the kill, flipping him onto his back and driving his own switchblade into his chest.
I look up in time to spot Joon collapsing to the pavement. His arm is wrapped around his stomach, his shirt soaked with blood.
Sprinting over, I’m able to interject just as the Jeokpa goes for the fatality. I deliver a roundhouse kick, knocking the switchblade out of his hands and then following up with a strike to his face.
This Jeokpa clearly has fight experience. He doesn’t go down easily like the others. We exchange brutal blows—his fists against my ribs, my elbow against his jaw—until I manage to get him in a submission hold and snap his neck with one violent twist.
Joon is sweating and bleeding on the ground, propped up by the side of the model agency’s building. I drop beside him and assess the damage.
The stab wound is deep but nothing he can’t recover from with the right medical care.
“Come on, brother,” I mutter, throwing his arm around my neck and hefting him upward. “Stay awake. I’ll take you to get help.”
Where the help is coming from is a given. It’s something I don’t even give thought.
I drive like a maniac through Seoul’s morning traffic, weaving between cars and speeding through yellow lights until I reach the hotel where Priscilla is staying.
She opens her door after my heavy banging on it. Her eyes widen as she drinks in the sight of me supporting Joon’s weight and his pale, sweaty face.
“No time to explain,” I say. “He’s in your care now.”
“But what—?”
“Take care of it. This is important. Life or death. Patch him up.”
She doesn’t have the chance to say anything else as I rush off. I’m back on the city streets, throwing myself behind the wheel.
If Elise wasn’t at the agency gearing up for her suicide mission, then that means she’s already in the thick of it.
There’re only two locations I can think of that she’d go to—my father’s private estate to confront him personally or the Cheongryong headquarters, which is full of syndicate members.
Both are insane, but I opt for the former over the latter.
Knowing Elise, she’d want to take my father out first; she’d want to at least make sure she ended the man responsible for her dad’s death and KD’s too.
I arrive at my father’s estate with tires screeching against gravel, not even bothering to park properly as I abandon the car and rush toward the imposing entrance.
The household staff—the gajeongbus and other employees on my father’s payroll—shout at me in Hangul. I barrel past them, paying no mind to their protests that my father requested alone time in his office.
Skipping up the staircase two steps at a time, I quickly make it to the second floor.
Normally, it’s required that any visitors knock first and wait for permission to enter.
But I shove the door open and rush inside without doing either.
The scene I’ve anticipated unfolds before me—Elise with her weapon trained on my father, her face clenched in misty-eyed fury. Father stands behind his massive desk looking much more mild-mannered and unconcerned.
She must’ve snuck in somehow to confront him. But he couldn’t seem less worried. His gaze settles on me as I burst in the room like he’s expected it all along.
“Get out!” Elise yells at me. She never takes the gun off my father. “This doesn’t concern you!”
“It concerns me as much as it concerns you, feline.”
“Gun-woo, so this is your girlfriend? I should’ve figured. You two were play pals once.” Amusement twinkles in Father’s eyes as he reaches for a bottle of soju and pours himself a drink. He adds a couple ice cubes.
The sound of the ice clinking against the crystal class is enough to drag me backward through time.
I’m under his desk, wincing with my hands over my ears as men yell at each other. Their voices are full of rage and bitterness.
It’s scary and I wish they would stop. I wish they’d go back to laughing like they used to.
There’s a sniffle on my left that makes me glance over. Crouched next to me is a little girl, cheeks shining with tears. She’s hiding with me, hands pressed over her ears too.
She has brown skin and curly hair and stares at the men’s legs from where we hide under the desk.
I want to tell her it’s going to be okay. They’re just mad at each other; they’ll go back to being friends soon.
But then door opens and a third person enters, their footsteps heavy against the hardwood floor. The voices only seem to grow louder.
More screaming. More anger and accusations—
The memory ends as abruptly as it began. I’m dropped back into the present, blinking out of the flashback as my head throbs with the familiar pain that always follows these episodes.
Father notices at once and asks me in Hangul, “Is your head troubling you again? That’s regrettable. I didn’t mean to crash the car that night, but we were fleeing before the police arrived.”
I look to Elise and find her face deep in thought, like she’s straining to remember details that hover just beyond her reach.
It seems to be slowly trickling in for her that we’ve met before. That we were play pals and she was there when it happened.
A common response to childhood trauma that severe.
“Tell us about that night,” I growl, hands balled into fists. “Come clean, and then Elise’ll decide what you deserve.”
He shakes his head and switches to English.
“But I’ve already given Elise all the evidence she needs.
I sent you a videotape of that night. It has security footage of everything that happened.
I’ve kept it under wraps for years once I paid off the police and they marked the case as unsolved.
I guess… I always expected this day would come. ”
Elise hasn’t lowered her weapon, the barrel still trained on his center mass. “You’re lying.”
“Then who else would have sent it to you?” he asks, smirking as he takes his first sip of the soju. “Do you know I’ve known you were Black Silk for a very long time now? It’s actually thanks to Gun-woo.”
My stomach drops and I almost echo what Elise has said—that he’s lying.
“Weeks ago, Gun-woo told me Black Silk was a woman named Jamie. He thought he was protecting you by giving me the fake alias instead of your real name. But really, Gun-woo didn’t realize how significant the name Jamie is.”
Elise lowers the gun slightly, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s my middle name. But I use it because it was my father’s name.”
“Exactly.” My father’s smirk widens. “A woman named Jamie trying to assassinate me? Then when I saw you that night at the karaoke lounge, I knew for sure. You know, you resemble him. A much prettier version, but you look like him.
“Chingu-ya Jamie was my best friend. We had many good memories together. We were business partners who flourished and made lots of money. But we were also two men with a lot in common. Former military and business minded. Both looking for savvy ways to use our skills and give our children better lives than we had. It saddened me when he was murdered.”
“I bet you were sad when you murdered him!” Elise screams, raising the gun again.
“You have it all wrong. I didn’t kill him. I never would, no matter the betrayal. It was—”
But then he starts choking, interrupting himself. His face contorts with sudden agony. The glass of soju slips from his fingers and shatters against the floor, crystal fragments spreading across the hardwood.
His face turns red, then purple, as he gestures frantically at his throat, sputtering the same word over and over: “Can’t... Can’t... Can’t...”
I realize he can’t breathe and rush toward him, but it’s already too late.
My father slumps forward, slamming into his desk, knocking a pen cup and lamp over on his way down. He crumples to the floor, his eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling.
Dead.