“What?”
What the hell is Bulgom saying right now?
“No matter what threats were made, we should never have kept this from you, hyung!”
“Hyung! No matter how angry you are, please don’t abandon us!”
“We’re sorry!”
Bulgom, Mangchi, Gamja. All three slammed their foreheads to the floor as if in ritual penance and bellowed.
I couldn’t easily make sense of what I had just heard. Part of it was my own stupidity, but the content itself was riddled with errors.
The boss of the Gangho faction I belong to…… so Director Kang Jaeho is my boyfriend Jaeho sitting right over there? That doesn’t make any sense. They’re not the same person — they have to just be people with the same name. I had already confirmed that.
Or had I……?
“Gack!”
The moment I started doubting myself, the men standing behind me all choked at once and crumpled to the floor. Even the three who had willingly bowed their heads were trembling, unable to lift their upper bodies. And all three of them were betas. The only ones in this hospital room still holding their heads up were me and Jaeho.
Those three who had fought tooth and nail to stop me from getting here. The familiar-faced gangsters standing guard inside and outside the hospital room. The man’s composed demeanor — looking only at me without a trace of alarm even while surrounded by hulking figures in black.
The puzzle I thought I’d completed just moments ago had actually just been pieces forced in by brute strength. But the more I looked, the more everything fit together seamlessly without a single gap.
My beloved Kang Jaeho might be…… “that” Director Kang……?
My head felt like I’d taken a blow to it, and the first thought that managed to surface through the haze was — it seemed like my boyfriend was flooding this room with pheromones.
“Pull back your pheromones.”
“Mm.”
The moment my suspicion — the one I had desperately hoped wasn’t true — was confirmed. Like magic, everyone’s airways opened at once, and all around I could hear people choking and gasping with flushed faces.
“No way……”
I didn’t want to believe it. Director Kang Jaeho and my boyfriend could not be the same person. It shouldn’t be possible, and it shouldn’t be allowed to be. It didn’t make sense to begin with. The Director Kang who interfered with my business at every turn being Jaeho — the man I sleep with every day……
I kept denying it, but if it wasn’t the case, then there was no reason for him to be using pheromones to attack others.
“But then why am I the only one——”
Why am I the only one who’s fine?
Even as a beta, it shouldn’t be possible to be completely unaffected by pheromones carrying an alpha’s aggression. You can’t smell them, you can’t see them — but when it came to an extreme alpha’s pheromones, that was a different story. That’s why it had been so hard to suspect him. Because I felt nothing at all.
“That’s because I’ve been coating Gang in my pheromones.”
“What?”
He approached me where I stood, dumbly gaping. The man reached over and yanked the IV needle from his left arm without a second thought, and blood welled up. I winced without meaning to — but it seemed like I was the only one who cared about that. His gaze stayed nailed to me and nowhere else.
“I’ve soaked you in my pheromones, so you’re safe. I’d never let you get hurt.”
The voice reaching my ears was nothing but sweet, completely at odds with the situation. I glanced away to avoid his gaze, and he wrapped both arms around my waist.
Our lower bodies pressed flush together, and I tried pushing at his forearms and chest — but the man was immovable, as if he’d turned to steel. We had pressed skin against skin more times than I could count, yet for a moment he felt more like a stranger than anyone else.
“Since exactly when……”
“All three years?”
He stroked along my side and down my spine as if tracing a line — knowing full well I was trying to pull away but pretending not to notice — and my body gave an involuntary shudder.
“Is this…… is this real?”
“Is what real?”
“Are you really that Kang Jaeho……?”
Tell me you’re not. I’ll believe you if you say so. Just say the word.
I wished he would shake his head the way I had been. But regrettably, the man smiled and gave a single nod.
“Yeah. You caught me.”
Because of them.
The words that followed made every hair on my body stand on end. I had no choice but to accept it. That the man I had loved with everything I had for three years was, in fact, Kang Jaeho — the boss of the Gangho faction, notorious throughout this world for being utterly ruthless.
Insane…… I was dating the boss of the Gangho faction? Ha — for real?
I’m screwed. In every sense of the word, I’m screwed. Professionally and personally.
“Then…… did you know who I was too? What I was doing?”
Whatever he read from my desperate eyes, he answered with a wide, open smile.
“Saying you were a newcomer to the workforce wasn’t exactly wrong, was it? You do have to go into the office. Sometimes you work overtime. And…… you dress the part.”
He said it in that same calm, unhurried voice of his and buttoned the shirt I had undone in the car — all the way up to the collar.
He knew everything.
The humiliating one-man show I’d put on in this hospital room was nothing. Compared to the three years of performances I’d put on in front of this man.
This man had been the very image of the princess I had dreamed of since I was a child. Because it was he who had found me collapsed on the street when I was nineteen and kept me alive. So it was only natural — utterly inevitable — that I fell for him the moment I laid eyes on him. I chased after him relentlessly, begging him to go out with me, until the year I turned twenty, when we finally started dating. After that, with no real problems to speak of, we had even moved in together and coasted along happily to the present day.
And now I find out that the two of us — the protagonists of what seemed like a fairy-tale love story — were actually in a relationship built entirely on lies.
Something bubbled and seethed inside me. I had obviously been deceiving him too, so there was no real moral high ground — and yet I felt completely blindsided. Without even knowing it, I had been in an intra-organization relationship all along.
I thought this was a melodrama. Turns out it’s a con.
The man still held me in his arms, rocking me gently even as I gave no reply.
“What’s the matter? Were you that shocked? Hm?”
He pressed little kisses to my forehead, soothing me — and I pulled back in quiet defiance. Then, once he let me go without resistance, I put my hands on him. I ran them over him, checking from his shoulders down to his chest, stomach, sides, arms, thighs, calves, and ankles — and only when I’d finished did I speak.
“Doesn’t look like anything’s seriously injured. You seem fine.”
Far from being hurt, the body I felt through the thin hospital gown was solid and powerful, like a weapon. A frame imposing enough even when clothed.
The man watched me quietly with a still expression, as if taking measure of what I was really thinking behind my stiff, clipped words.
“Good. I’d feel a little bad leaving someone who was actually sick.”
I stepped back two paces from him, lifted my eyes to meet his, and made my declaration.
“Let’s have some time apart. Or rather — may I, Director?”
Added to the list of mister, darling, boyfriend, babe, and Jaeho — one more title joined the collection.
The first fight and the first declaration of a cold war in three years together.
