Chapter 24

Only when she was all but losing consciousness did Jun-hyeok let go of Seo-ha’s lips.

Seo-ha let out the breath she had been holding down and finally managed to open her eyes. Her clouded eyes held no focus at all.

A snort of laughter slipped out of Jun-hyeok, and he slowly licked her slightly parted lips. He did the same once to the round tip of her nose and once to her fair cheek with its fine down, and last of all he grazed the corner of her eye, where the tears had run.

“Did you forget my nickname is mad dog?”

She caught no more than a blurred afterimage, but somehow he seemed to be smiling.

She had been quite sure she’d slept deeply and woken rested, and yet Seo-ha no longer had the strength even to twitch a finger. It felt as though Jun-hyeok had carried off every last scrap of her energy. His voice, meanwhile, belonged to a man to whom nothing whatsoever had happened, fresh enough to get straight up and go in to work. Next to him she was plainly disheveled for anyone to see, a world away from that crispness. Wondering whether it all came down to a difference in experience, Seo-ha grew a little glum in spite of herself.

“You must be tired, so sleep more. I’ll stop by the hospital and then go in to work.”

That brought Seo-ha back to her senses a little, and she pushed herself up to ask.

“Why? Nothing’s happened to Karon, has it?”
“No. They say he’s charging around even though he hasn’t healed yet.”
“You gave me a fright….”

Relief eased Seo-ha’s chest at his answer. So she hadn’t imagined it: he really was in a quietly good mood. Karon must be healing fast.

“The phone Do-hee gave you — you’ve got it?”
“Yes.”

Feeling a guilty prick at the mention of a mobile phone she had forgotten all about, Seo-ha dropped her gaze.

“Use that to call your house. It’s a phone that can’t be traced.”

As ever, he had prepared for everything better than anyone could. Her face blank with bewilderment, Seo-ha nodded.

“My mother-in-law must have gone right off the rails. She looked ready to bury me.”

At that strange word, one she had never heard before, Seo-ha’s mind went blank. For a moment she couldn’t tell who he meant, and for a few seconds she could only blink.

“Just so you know. The way things are going, your husband’ll be filed as a missing person before the two families ever sit down together.”

Unfamiliar words drifted about in Seo-ha’s head. Words were supposed to register in the brain, so she couldn’t understand why her chest lurched first.

“Rest, then.”

The bed rocked as Jun-hyeok’s weight left it. Her face still vacant, Seo-ha stared up at the ceiling. Everything that had come whirling down on her these past few days felt more like a dream than the dream in which Granny Ok-i had appeared. Still, as dreams went, it was closer to a lucky one than a nightmare, and she was thankful for that.

Slowly her face grew hot, and Seo-ha covered it with both hands. She stayed just like that for a long while, unable to get up off the bed.

Jun-hyeok quietly dragged a steel chair over and sat down. He crossed his legs carelessly and shoved his hands into his pockets.

The man facing him had his hands bound with a cable tie, and the blood that had run down beside his lips had dried into a filthy crust.

“Did you think this place was some neighborhood playground?”

Jun-hyeok spoke as flatly as an office worker deciding on lunch.

“That’s why you came crawling in without a scrap of fear.”

The man hadn’t missed a word of it, and his belly heaved.

Jun-hyeok folded his arms, the picture of utter boredom. Tilting his head slightly to one side, he lifted a corner of his mouth and went on.

“In this line of work, someone at your level is a minnow that still smells of milk. Though of course having a bit of money doesn’t mean you can find yourself a proper professional either, so I suppose there was nothing else for it.”

Jun-hyeok clicked his tongue, and the man’s face twisted as though his pride had been stung.

“If you’d like to be the one to tell me who gave the order, I won’t stop you. Who knows? You might even find a way to live.”

The man screwed up his face, spat on the floor and shouted.

“Bullshit. And what am I supposed to trust?”

Jun-hyeok looked at the spit that had come within a hair of landing on his shoe, and his brows drew sharply together.

“Looks like your home training was every bit as f—ked up as mine.”

Without blinking, Jun-hyeok studied the man, who looked quite young. He rose slowly from the chair and circled him, the crisp scrape of his shoes sounding on the floor, until he stopped all at once, reached behind the man and struck his shoulder hard enough to knock him flat. The back of the man’s head slammed into the floor, and a pained groan burst out of him.

“What, you believed in money readily enough, but you can’t believe in me?”

Perhaps a mild concussion had set in; the man’s back shuddered and shook.

“You’re the first one to get through B Zone, so I had some hopes — turns out there was never going to be anything to you.”

He muttered it half-heartedly, making no effort to hide the anger thickening inside him. Pressing down on the nape of the man’s neck, he spelled out each word.

“Laying a hand on my dog is going to be the biggest mistake of your life.”

The silence held nothing but the man’s ragged breathing. Jun-hyeok lowered his head and whispered.

“How much did Han Jun-tae pay you.”

The man’s eyes went bloodshot and his body writhed. Shifting his position to bear down on him again, Jun-hyeok went on.

“Then again, how would a greenhorn like you know that name? So remember it. Thanks to him, I’m going to wreck your life.”

Under a force that seemed to crush his very brain, the man’s vision kept swimming out of focus. The pressure behind his eyes spiked until his eyeballs felt ready to burst out of his head.

“Hyung playing filthy with somebody else’s hands is nothing new.”

At Jun-hyeok’s mutter, the man barely managed to open his mouth, and the words poured out between gasps.

“I was j-just told all I had to do was bring back the dog’s hide. Said it was the same as hunting. Said it was nothing much, a really easy job!”

Only then did Jun-hyeok let up, and he caught the man by the lapels and hauled him close, until their faces were near enough to touch.

“A nobody like you, talking about whether or not you’d skin my dog?”

Seizing him by the collar, Jun-hyeok hoisted him clean off the floor in one go. All his strength was loaded into that grip, so the man’s breath choked off again until he gagged.

“I was going to make you a present of three stab wounds to match, but you’re not even worth that.”

With that, Jun-hyeok flung him down onto the floor. The fine vessels in the man’s eyes had burst, and in the end all he could do was crawl.

“I won’t report you to the police. Prison would be a waste on something like you.”

Jun-hyeok tapped the man’s temple with the toe of his shoe two or three times, then turned his back and walked out of the room.

Park Jae-man and several of the staff, who had been waiting outside, bowed their heads to him.

“Was it just as you’d confirmed?”
“I’m sick of it.”

Short as the words were, every bit of his weariness and rage was already packed into them.

“I’ll be sending the one inside to Wrangler PMC before long. Get in touch with Nick.”
“Sorry? How’s a small fry like that going to last in a Russian mercenary unit?”
“If he dies, that can’t be helped. If he lives, he’ll turn into a human being of some use.”

The fellow ought to be grateful to Karon, Jun-hyeok thought. It was only thanks to that creature’s indomitable will that things had ended with no worse than this. Once you belonged to Wrangler PMC, you could never leave it of your own accord.

“Just get the paperwork started.”
“Hm. Understood.”

Sensing how foul Jun-hyeok’s mood was, Park Jae-man didn’t argue. He couldn’t say for certain, but it looked as though complicated family business was tangled up in this again. Honestly, it often drove him up the wall that Jun-hyeok just kept on putting up with things whenever his family was involved.

Wanting to lighten the mood that had turned heavy, Jae-man faked a cough and casually slipped in a question.

“Anyway, who is that lady, really?”
“Switch off the curiosity. Before I send you along with him.”

Was he imagining it, or had there been no joke at the end of those words, only a cold warning? Park Jae-man watched Jun-hyeok turn and walk off into the distance, then scratched furiously at his head as the weight of that lightly tossed remark belatedly came home to him.

“Ugh, Wrangler PMC — it gives me chills. That place isn’t for humans; it’s where beasts fight beasts. Time’s up, let’s get going too.”

Even at Argon, America’s famously humane PMC, he had been through hell. At Russia’s Wrangler, the fellow was as good as dead already.

Taking command of the staff under him, Park Jae-man fitted a wireless earpiece into his ear. He had a feeling today was going to be another busy day.

Having barely pulled herself together, Seo-ha changed her clothes and stepped out into the living room. She meant to take a turn around the house with Dodam; Dodam had been shut up all night in an unfamiliar room with only her for company, and he was probably feeling cooped up.

But before she had even walked the length of the living-room hallway, Kim Do-hee’s loud shout rang out.

“Whoa, whoa, Yun Seo-ha-ssi. One moment. Stay right there.”

Dodam had stopped before Do-hee even spoke, and Seo-ha had been wondering why. She kept her puzzled face turned straight ahead, as though waiting for an answer, and Do-hee explained.

“Sorry. There’s a huge amount of stuff on the floor. I tidy and tidy and there’s no end to it.”

Only then did Seo-ha glance briefly left and right, taking care not to look so far as to draw suspicion.