Not the best look for me, I’ll admit, but desperate times and all that bullshit. Besides, it’s not like I’m lurking outside his bedroom window with binoculars or anything. I’m just... gathering intel. Doing my research. Making informed decisions about my future sex life.
Okay, fine. I’m stalking him.
The first thing I do is run that license plate. I’ve got a guy who knows a guy who works at the DMV, and for the price of two packs of cigarettes and a bottle of soju, I get a name: Yoon Suha. Registered owner of a sleek black Mercedes.
A quick internet search pulls up a business profile. CEO of Yoonsung Enterprises, some vague import-export company with offices in Gangnam. The photo is professional and very corporate. He’s wearing a tailored suit, hair styled perfectly, expression neutral and controlled. But it’s definitely him. Samesharp features, same intense eyes that looked so unbothered while watching his men beat someone half to death.
My heart does this stupid flutter thing when I see the photo. Down, boy.
I dig deeper. Yoonsung Enterprises has its fingers in a lot of pies. Shipping, logistics, real estate, nightlife. All legitimate on paper, but the more I look, the more obvious it becomes that this is a front. The company’s been around for decades, passed down through the Yoon family like some kind of fucked-up inheritance. There are gaps in the public records, inconsistencies in the financial reports, properties listed under shell corporations.
This is exactly what I thought. Crime syndicate dressed up in a nice suit.
I spend the next few days haunting internet cafés, using public computers to avoid leaving a digital trail back to me. I’m not stupid. If this guy is as dangerous as he seems, I don’t need him tracking my searches back to my IP address. I find news articles about Yoonsung Enterprises, society page photos of Yoon Suha at charity galas and business dinners. He’s always alone in the photos, never with a date or partner. Interesting.
But the real goldmine comes when I start asking around in my own circles. The underground has its own information network, and I’ve been part of it long enough to know how to tap in without raising too many red flags.
Turns out, everyone knows about the Phantom Lotus Syndicate. Or at least, everyone knows enough to be scared of them. They control most of Gangnam’s high-end operations. Gambling, prostitution, drugs, weapons. The works. And Yoon Suha isn’t just some mid-level boss. He’s the head of the whole damn organization, inherited the position from his father a few years back.
The stories I hear make my skin prickle with a mixture of fear and excitement. Suha’s reputation is brutal. He doesn’t just punish disloyalty, he makes examples out of people. There are whispers about bodies that never get found, about business rivals who suddenly decide to retire to the countryside and never come back. About the way he can make grown men piss themselves with just a look and a whiff of his pheromones.
Perfect.
I know I should be terrified. Any sane person would take this information and run in the opposite direction. But I’ve never been particularly sane, and the thought of getting close to someone that powerful, that dominant, makes heat pool low in my gut.
The hard part is figuring out how to actually approach him. I can’t just walk up and introduce myself. “Hey, I saw you beating the shit out of someone in an alley and your pheromones made me want to drop to my knees—wanna fuck?” Yeah, that’ll work for sure.
So I do what any rational person would do. I start following him.
I figure out his routine over the course of two weeks. He keeps regular hours at the Yoonsung Enterprises office in Gangnam, arriving around nine in the morning and leaving around six. Very professional, very legitimate businessman. But three or four nights a week, he makes other stops. A high-end club in Apgujeong that I quickly learn is one of Phantom’s fronts. A restaurant in Cheongdam that serves as a meeting place for his lieutenants. A warehouse in an industrial area near the river where I’m guessing they store things that aren’t exactly legal.
I’m careful. I keep my distance, stay downwind so he can’t catch my scent, wear hats and masks to blend in with the crowd. I’m good at being invisible when I need to be. Years of dodging loan sharks and angry exes have given me plenty of practice.
The more I watch him, the more fascinated I become. He moves through the world like he owns it, and I guess in a lot of ways he does. People step out of his way on the sidewalk without him having to ask. Restaurant staff practically trip over themselves to serve him. His subordinates look at him with a mixture of fear and reverence that makes my mouth go dry.
And gods, he’s beautiful. Not in a soft way, but in the way a knife is beautiful. All sharp edges and dangerous curves. I watch him smoke outside his office building, the way he holds the cigarette between long fingers, the way he tilts his head back to exhale. I watch him get out of his car, the fluid grace in his movements despite his size. I watch him laugh at something one of his men says, a cold sound that doesn’t reach his eyes.
I want him so badly it’s starting to hurt.
But there’s a problem. Actually, there are several problems, but the main one is this: there’s no way in hell a dominant alpha like Yoon Suha would ever consider sleeping with another alpha. It’s not just taboo, it’s practically unheard of. Dominant alphas are supposed to be with omegas, that’s how society works. That’s how biology works, supposedly.
Even if I could get close enough to proposition him, which seems unlikely given that he’s surrounded by bodyguards most of the time, he’d probably laugh in my face. Or worse, have his men break my legs for the insult.
I need a different approach. Something indirect, something that gets me in his orbit without triggering his alpha-on-alpha disgust response.
That’s when I start thinking about his ruts.
Every alpha goes through them, the biological imperative to breed that hits like clockwork every month. For someone like Suha, who clearly doesn’t do suppressants or any of that modern pharmaceutical bullshit, that means he needs an omega to help him through it. And given his position and personality, I’mwilling to bet he doesn’t have a regular partner. He probably just hires someone, keeps it transactional and impersonal.
Which means there’s a paper trail. Payments, arrangements, bookings.
I need Wooil.
I let myself in through the back door of Wooil’s pawn shop, picking the lock with the ease of long practice. The hinges don’t even squeak as I slip inside, closing it quietly behind me. The backroom is dim, lit only by the glow of a laptop screen, and I can hear the faint sound of something playing through the speakers.
Wooil is sprawled on his ratty couch, laptop balanced on his thighs, completely absorbed in whatever he’s watching. I take a moment to appreciate the setup before announcing myself.
“Hey.”
