like a tunnel
with no light

I didn't have the strength to kick down another door, so when I came across the first room, I had to shoot the lock open.

Thankfully, the corridor seemed empty, so no one rushed in at the noise. But then, maybe that was kind of counterproductive, since I was supposed to be gathering the mob's attention. When I entered the room, I found that it didn't matter, even though the only person inside the room was the person I'd least expected to see.

The escort girl from the casino stood in front of me, eyes wide. She clearly hadn't been expecting to see me, either—her face was wiped clean of any makeup, though I could see a bit of bruising at her collarbone and the corner of her mouth. She was wearing plain clothes, her hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, but the look that flashed in her eyes was frightened and wary. This probably wasn't the first time she'd been surprised by a visitor.

"What are you doing here?" she asked sharply, and I recoiled. The knife was still gripped in my hand, but my grasp on it loosened when she spoke. Her lips were flattened, and she looked sharp and aware—like she knew something, knew who I was, and expected me to know the same. "Why are you in this building?"

"I..." I stopped short. My lips parted. The last time I'd seen her, I had been teary-eyed and a blubbering mess, the wound of my father's death still fresh. Now the wound was festering, and even though the emotion that filled my heart was ugly, I still remembered every detail of the encounter vividly.

The night was imprinted into my mind, from the blonde escort helping me find Taeyong to my inability to help him in return. That night had been a night of conflicting emotions, none similar, and all rising to the surface like lava in an active volcano. The deathly pale expression Jun had donned when I'd threatened to kill him, the blood spattered over my face after plowing through so many men with a baseball bat, the brokenly vulnerable look in Vernon's eyes.

"You have to go," the girl said, breaking me out of my thoughts. Her eyes were narrow, giving the impression that they were slitted, and she had thin lips and pointed features like a fox. The same feeling nagged at me—familiarity, dread, doubt. "Or they'll find you."

"It's okay." My voice sounded hoarse to my own ears. I wanted to reassure her, but it felt like I was the one who needed reassurance instead. "I need them to find me."

"But then they'll do things to you," she said. I met here eyes: they were brimming with emotion, empathy and pity and devastation. How do you know who I am? "Bad things. Like the things they did to me."

"I'll be fine," I said, though worry gnawed at me. I knew I couldn't leave her a second time, not after everything that had been running through my mind after leaving her for the first time. But the question was, how? How could I sneak her past such thick reinforcements, the entire force of the clan? And even if I did, where would I go then? "I have a plan. And I can—I can get you out, too."

"No, you can't." She looked sorrowful as she spoke, like even the last ember of hope that would have blazed up at my promise had long died. No hope flashed in her eyes, not even a bit, not even for a second. "They'll find you again. They always do, don't they? They always do."

I took a staggering step forward, and she watched me come towards her with sad eyes. She couldn't have been more than seventeen, but her eyes held untold experience. "How do you know that?" I whispered. My hand reached up hesitantly, wanting to reach her face, but there seemed to be a force field between her body and mine, pushing me back. "How do you know who I am?"

"Of course I know who you are," she said, looking surprised. My fingers stayed a few inches away from her face, but she raised her hand, raised it to meet mine. I watched our hands join, our fingers laced together, amazed at the warmth that opened up in my chest like a flower. "You're my sister."

My head whipped up towards her. "I—what?"

"And that's enough family bonding for today," said a bored voice from behind me. I spun, fingers tightening around the girl's hand, and found Minho at the door, a smug look on his face. His face still seemed pretty banged-up, bruised around the eye and mouth, and I remembered with satisfaction Vernon punching him repeatedly in the casino. "Take her."

The two men on either side of him moved inside, and I took a few seconds to get a good look at them. One of them was the bleached-blonde from the first encounter, whose name I remembered. Seoho. The other was Hyojong, dark amusement glittering in his beady eyes, matted blonde hair falling into his eyes. Neither of them wore any kind of armor. Good.

I clamped my injured hand around the dagger and my waist and seized it up, throwing it with as much force as I could muster. They probably hadn't been expecting me to be stupid enough to fight back, because Hyojong was too surprised to dodge. The knife's blade sank into his chest.

It was only a few inches deep, but my aim was true, and it did the job. All of us paused, as if frozen in time, and watched, paralyzed, and he stared at the knife and reached up to pull it out of his chest. Blood streamed from the wound, wetting his shirt, and the knife clattered to the ground. Hyojong looked up, staring at me in amazement, and opened his mouth, only for blood to bubble up. He staggered forward—I didn't move, morbidly fascinated—but he never reached me, instead collapsing to his knees, and then his face, on the floor.

That snapped Minho back to his senses. "Take her!" he screamed, and I pushed the girl back, standing in front of her defensively.

Seoho advanced, his eyes cold and unemotional, knife drawn in front of him. I tightened my hands into fists, and lashed out at him with my hunting knife, but he was quicker. Then Minho was on my other side, kicking my legs out from underneath me—again—and I landed painfully on my back. The girl was screaming, and I fought as much as I could, but they already had a firm grip on me, and were dragging me out of the room.

My eyes found hers as they hauled me out. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see others running up to help them, but I resisted as much as I could, my nails dragging against the hardwood floor and buying myself as much time as possible. The girl had gone white-faced, but she was silent, staring at me like she was watching a sad movie she couldn't interrupt.

"Your name," I gasped, voice so quiet I wasn't sure if she had heard me. "What is your name?"

But she did. She heard me, and for a moment, a defiance crossed her face, grim determination and an audacious curl to her lip.

That's when I realized that the look on her face reminded me of Hyunjin—and myself.

"Yeji," she said, in a voice so calm that it was barely audible, but I heard her. I heard her loud and clear before there was a sharp pain at the back of my head, and my vision turned black.

──────

When I came to, it felt like only a few seconds had passed. And only a few moments had, because there was no blood dripping on the floor, which meant my bleeding arm hadn't yet exhausted its bandages.

I was on my knees, wrists tied on either side of me to wooden posts so my arms were raised on either side like I was welcoming someone with open arms. The rope's material was coarse, and the smallest movements grated on my skin, my wrists aching from the force of the binds.

I looked around the room. It was small, and bare of any other furniture, with bare stone walls and floor and dull yellowish lighting that reminded me of a cheap diner in Daejeon where the bikers used to hang out. The pack. What I wouldn't have done to have even them with me at that point.

"And she finally awakens," someone drawled, and Minho's face appeared in front of me. He was leaning to reach my level, a sneering smile on his lips. He was clearly pleased about the outcome of the struggle, regardless of Hyojong's death. "Was it nice meeting your sister?"

My upper lip pulled back into a snarl, and I bared my teeth at him. Oh, how badly I wanted to take a swing at him, but whoever had tied my up had done a pretty good job of it, and I was helpless. "Don't talk about her."

"Even if I didn't, there's nothing you can do to stop me from doing things to her. Bad things," he said, mimicking her tone from earlier. It was clear that he had listened to more of the conversation than I'd realized. "Face it, Hwang. You're tied up in our den with none of your little team aware of your whereabouts, and no one's coming to help. You lost."

He rocked back on his haunches, narrowed eyes and cruel smile. I knew I could speak, but my mind was so clouded over with rage that I couldn't even begin to form coherent sentences. I had bitten the inside of my cheek when I'd been knocked out, and I could taste the blood in my mouth, the bitter-penny taste of it mixed with the coppery taste of panic. "Where's the heir?"

Minho raised his eyebrows. Up close, his bruises looked even more gruesome, and I felt even prouder when I thought back to when Vernon had laid into him after he'd almost carved a butterfly into my face. "You still don't know who he is, huh?" Minho asked, and it took a few moments for me to realize he was talking about the heir. He reached up, tracing the scar on my cheek with his finger, the scar he had give me, and smirked. "Not surprising. Barely anyone knows who he is, with that handy little printed lie he carries around. It won't be long, though, until you realize who he is. And I'd love to see your face when you do."

"Fuck you."

His face twisted, and the back of his hand—the one with the butterfly ring—snapped across my face. I felt the sting on my cheekbone where his ring had dug in, sharp and aching, my face whipped to the side from the force of the hit. Then I turned my head slowly and spat the blood in his face, and he recoiled, dropping his hand from my face. Minho wiped the back of his hand over his face and glared at me, a look so genuinely deranged that for a moment I felt the familiar twinge of fear.

"Bitch," he hissed, then got to his feet. I glared up at him defiantly, but then he pulled back his foot and kicked me in the abdomen. I doubled over from the pain, my vision turning hazy and red. "You're just making me look forward to the whipping even more. Because I'll enjoy it, stand on the side and watch you choke on your own blood when he does it, when your t-shirt is torn and bloody and your skin lined with red—"

"Stop."

I looked up, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Minho stopped abruptly, looking in the same direction as I was. At the man at the door, the one who had told him to stop.

For a moment, I could only stare. His presence there was so bizarre, so strange, so fundamentally wrong that my brain couldn't register it. And Minho had actually stopped when he'd asked him to—how? How was that possible? I stared, shaken, confused, so sure that this was a mistake, a misunderstanding, so impossible that I almost believed I was hallucinating.

Had he come...to help? But how? How had he shown up? How had he known where I was? How was he alive?

Then the man smiled, and my heart plummeted.

──────

last chance!

any guesses as to who the heir is, any ideas, any half-baked theories, drop 'em all here. because this is the last chapter where secrets are still kept hidden, and you'll be hit with all the revelations once they start happening.

and a warning: the last few chapters will be very intense. so hang on for dear life.

love,
Manx.