“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, youhaveto!”
Young-gi grabs the envelope and my stomach lurches, heaves, flips around inside me. I can’t decide if I want to see his face when he looks at those pictures. I don’t know what would be worse: him being disgusted by them, or him being ashamed at his little experiment getting caught on camera. Will he be afraidof the backlash that rumors of his flexible sexuality might cause him? Will he deny it? Will he deny…me?
But a sudden sound, suspiciously similar to a scream, gets my attention. I lean over to peer around Young-gi’s broad shoulders and freeze, confused.
The other two cars must have been full of bratva underlings, because a squad of six is carrying a long, rectangular crate between them, hustling it out of the back of one of the vans and toward the accounting office. It’s a strange thing to be carrying, large and unwieldy, unlabeled and made of plywood. What could possibly be inside?
Then I hear the sound of screaming again–muffled, like someone’s mouth is covered or gagged–and some thumping sounds.
My head tilts, my eyes lock onto the box, and I realize–
“Holy shit, Young-gi, is somebody in there?”
But he’s staring at the photos of us, and my words go unanswered. My stomach drops and my heart pounds and I can’t decide between looking at him or the box, so I bounce back and forth, fidgeting anxiously.
“Is there someone in where?” Kira asks, but I quickly spin her around and start bundling her back into her car.
“Nothing, no one, I’m being crazy,” I say quickly. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it, Young-gi is gonna fix the picture thing and nothing else is wrong, okay? You should go home, okay? Okay, bye!”
“Tommy!” She smacks my hands a bit, little baby slaps that don’t hurt at all, but after she gets a glance at the men disappearing inside with the person-sized crate, she suddenly stops and lets me herd her to the car. “Oh,” she murmurs, going pale. “Um, yeah, maybe I should…go home. Mm-hm.”
“Yep!” I gently guide her into the car and shut the door behind her. “Bye!”
Her driver must get the hint, or maybe he’s uncomfortable with what he’s seeing, too, because the car is quickly shifted into gear and lurches out of the lot. Once it’s out of sight, I whirl on Young-gi, ready to give him a piece of my mind.
Only to freeze a second time.
My mouth drops open in confusion. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Setting my screensaver,” he murmurs as he uses his phone to snap a picture of one of the blackmail photos.
Setting his…
“I–you! I–fuck!” I snatch them all away from him and storm toward the office. “You’re such a fucking psycho freak!”
“Are you asking for a spanking, Tommy?” he replies, following close behind me. I shiver hard, because maybe I am? I don’t fucking know. I mean, if he’s spanking me, he still wants me around, right?
“No!” I snap, probably lying. I slam through the office doors and kick my way through the fake closet, following the sounds of men grunting as they carry the human-sized box.
In the war room, I watch them set it down on the floor roughly, and they brush themselves off like this is just another day for them. It’s chilling, and psychotic, and unreal.
“What the fuck, Young-gi?!” I demand, waving at the box. “What the actual fuck is going on here?”
“I was working when I got the call to meet you,” he says, deadpan, as if that explains everything and is totally reasonable.
“You–ugh, I, what… What do you mean, working?!”
He looks me over, takes in my tense shoulders and my twitching eyes. His stare is patient, hungry, familiar. It’s annoying how fast I start to relax under it, like that was what I needed all along.
