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“Or maybe we need to finish this once and for all. The job you failed to complete.”

I step forward, inserting myself between them. “I know it was you. You’ve known all along.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jin-tae,” he snarls, spittle flying. “But my patience has run out. Enough foolishness. Kill her now, or there will be repercussions.”

My lips curl into something like a cruel smile. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out about the Bulgeomhoe? That you hired them to sabotage me?”

His face twists, reddening even more. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You had them torch my apartment. You had them come after Monroe this afternoon.”

“The Bulgeomhoe and the Baekho aremortal enemies!” he bellows. “How dare you believe we would form an alliance—and for what? You? Ha! You overestimate your importance, you arrogant bastard.”

I step closer again. “You’re a coward. A coward who won’t own up to his dirty deeds. So I’m going to make you.”

He stares at me like I’ve grown horns. “You really are crazy. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this ends now. I never hired the Bulgeomhoe.”

“No,” comes a calm yet scathing voice. “But I did.”

All three of us whip around, facing the door.

Seung-min stands in the doorway, a grotesque shell from the last time we met. One of his eyes is swollen shut, the lid red and puffy, like old fruit left in the sun too long. His jaw protrudes unnaturally, cocked to the side as though the bone has been permanently dislodged. His nose looks broken in two places.

But none of that stops his lips spreading into a crooked jackal’s grin.

Jae-hyun’s mouth drops open. “Seung-min? Nephew, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” snaps Seung-min as he steps fully into the room, “that I’m tired of waiting. Tired of watching you rot in that chair with a drink in one hand and your dick in the other. All you do is drink like a fish and watch porn films all day. You’re weak. You’ve made the Baekho Pa soft.”

Jae-hyun blinks, thrown by the accusations from his own nephew. “What have you done?”

“I’ve made decisions,” replies Seung-min, lifting a gun from the inside of his jacket. “Decisions that are best forme.”

He takes aim and squeezes the trigger all at once.

I grab Monroe to pull her down, but he wasn’t aiming for either of us. His bullet cracks through the air and hits its intended target—his Uncle Jae-hyun, the Baekho-je himself, his head jerking back as the bullet blows half his face off.

25.Jin

Jae-hyun isdead 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.”