As he agonized over not being able to bite through his tongue, the floor shook greatly.
“Ugh!”
Hongdo, who lost his balance, fell to the side and hit his head hard against the wall. Fortunately, Ian was lying against the wall and wasn’t badly hurt.
He didn’t know why the floor was shaking, but just having Hongdo’s touch fall away was fortunate. But a fishy taste was felt in his mouth. Terrible pain followed too.
It was because he’d inadvertently bitten down while holding his tongue between his teeth. His mouth quickly filled with blood. Cough, cough. Every time Ian coughed, red blood wet the floor.
“Ah, fuck. What the hell.”
Then Hongdo staggered to his feet. When he touched his forehead with his hand, sticky blood came away.
“Just when I was about to have some fun. Wait a little, kid. This isn’t over yet.”
Irritably wiping the blood, Hongdo opened the door and went outside. Through the open door crack, the scenery outside was visible.
Whoosh. The pitch-black sky with rain pouring down and a railing were glimpsed. The door closed quickly, but Ian finally realized he was inside a ship.
Why had he only noticed now? Between the smell of blood, the salty smell peculiar to the sea pierced through.
There was nothing in the place where Ian was confined. It was a space of about 2 pyeong. Both the floor and walls were made of wood.
Because Hongdo had stripped off almost all his clothes, the cold wood touched his bare skin. His body started trembling. Starting with muscle pain all over his body, when even his tongue got injured, heat rose in his body.
The shock of almost having terrible things done to him by Hongdo a moment ago also overlapped. Ian looked at the closed door without even being able to swallow his saliva properly.
His eyes were growing dim. He needed to stay conscious, so he needed to somehow untie his bound hands and feet so that when Hongdo returned, he couldn’t lay hands on his body, but he couldn’t hold on.
His eyelids sank down powerlessly. His face full of cold sweat was pale as if his breath would stop at any moment.
ლ
“Gal Hongdo is.”
“…I’m sorry, Executive Director. We haven’t found him yet.”
Embarrassment appeared on Jaehyun’s face as he bowed at the waist. While messing with Minjae and Nayeon, they’d simultaneously turned over all of Hongdo’s workplaces.
Chairman Tae’s funeral was being held at the moment, so Ganghyuk was stuck at the funeral home. In his place, Jaehyun and Sucheol were combing through the entire country like searching for lice with Ganghyuk’s subordinates.
“I heard he has a child.”
“…Gal Hongdo does?”
“Yes. Bring him to me.”
Ganghyuk handed Jaehyun a slip of paper with a name and simple personal information written on it. His temples throbbed. Moment by moment, the patience in his heart was burning away.
Every time he saw Minjae and Nayeon, his murderous intent wasn’t properly controlled. The information that Gal Hongdo had a hidden child was obtained from Director Kang.
Director Kang was Chairman Tae’s intelligence network. You had to consider that there was almost no information he didn’t know. So he asked Director Kang.
Since Gal Hongdo had taken his precious person, he’d like any information about him. He already seemed to have noticed that trouble had occurred between Ganghyuk and Minjae and Nayeon.
‘My thoughts still haven’t changed. This group wasn’t built by the chairman alone. My brothers and I, and you Ganghyuk, built it. Isn’t it too precious to entrust to guys who were born as the chairman’s children and have never experienced hardship?’
Director Kang had wanted Ganghyuk to become Chairman Tae’s successor from long ago. Though not his biological child, he knew better than anyone how much Chairman Tae had cherished him since Ganghyuk was young, and how much work Ganghyuk had accomplished as if to meet those expectations.
But Ganghyuk didn’t covet the chairman position of the group. Because he thought it was a position where there was more to lose than to gain. From the moment he rose to that position, the Tae siblings would use every trick to bring him down.
But even without rising to the chairman position, Minjae and Nayeon had crossed the line. The two would now realize desperately just how dangerous their momentary judgment had been.
If Minsu stepped forward to try to protect the two, Ganghyuk decided he would remove him as well. Hadn’t he already painfully realized what results came from hesitating?
For the first time, the person he’d taken into his heart was in danger. Because of him, no one else.
Hongdo had stolen a precious person from Ganghyuk. To find Ian safely, ordinary methods wouldn’t work. He already harbored evil intentions toward Ganghyuk.
So he had to do the same. If he laid hands on Ian, Hongdo would also have to pay the price. The same went for Minjae and Nayeon inside there.
Ganghyuk’s face as he returned to the funeral home was utterly cold. His fingertips were growing cold. The plum blossom scent flickering at the tip of his nose constricted Ganghyuk’s breath at this moment.
ლ
“Executive Director Tae, let’s talk for a moment.”
As if withdrawal symptoms were coming, Minjae rubbed his nose repeatedly with the back of his hand and spoke to Ganghyuk. Ganghyuk, who had been greeting mourners together with the directors, moved along with Minjae.
Bongseongsa was currently in chaos with guests who had come to pay their respects to Chairman Tae.
Not only were wreaths sent by political and business figures lined up endlessly, but directors of Taehyun Group as well as their staff were standing in black suits as if guarding Chairman Tae’s final path, giving it a slightly different atmosphere from other funerals.
Some of the guests walking up to the main hall where Chairman Tae’s portrait photo and mortuary tablet were placed couldn’t even properly make a cough, crushed by the atmosphere.
On one side, chefs wearing aprons were diligently making food, and in the wide yard, tents were lined up in a row, serving a hearty meal to guests who visited the funeral home.
Minjae led Ganghyuk to a secluded location, passing through people coming and going. Even while walking, he kept looking around continuously, looking anxious like someone being chased.
Finally arriving at a deserted place, he immediately turned to face Ganghyuk. Seeing anger blazing in the eyes directed at him, Ganghyuk silently took out a cigarette from his pocket.
“Will you have one?”
The voice offering one to Minjae while holding a cigarette in his mouth was the same as usual. Minjae, who shook his head, immediately brought up the main point.
“Take down the article right away, and bring back the shares you took from me. If you don’t, I’ll pour your omega into a drum with cement right now and throw him into the East Sea.”
The tip of the cigarette hanging from Ganghyuk’s lips, unlit, trembled. He’d expected it, but Minjae had confessed. On top of that, he’d given the hint of the East Sea.
Just how stupid did one have to be to commit such acts without thinking of the consequences—it was reaching the point of being amazing now.
“Do I look funny to you? Does it seem like empty words?”
Seeing the crooked smile hanging on Ganghyuk’s lips, Minjae glared with bloodshot eyes and took out his phone. He showed Ganghyuk the photo Hongdo had sent a moment ago.
Ian was nakedly captured bleeding from his mouth. At that moment, reason in Ganghyuk’s mind snapped.
Crack! A tremendous sound rang out as Minjae fell face-first to the floor.
“Kkeuhuk……”
Saliva mixed with blood stretched down in a long line. Several teeth that had been implanted not long ago fell to the floor.
When he shook his head, unable to understand what had just happened, another shock was delivered.
In just two blows, the focus disappeared from Minjae’s eyes. Ganghyuk, who’d bent his knees to sit, grabbed the hair of Minjae who couldn’t pull himself together.
Ptui. Ganghyuk spat the cigarette he’d been holding in his mouth onto the floor. The cigarette turned red in the pool of blood Minjae had spilled.
“I should have done this from the start. I shouldn’t have just let you go back then.”
The phone Minjae had dropped from his hand rolled across the floor. Looking at the screen that had turned cloudy with sand on it, Ganghyuk tilted his head back and let out a long breath.
Uncontrolled pheromones explosively burst out. Hit directly by the dominant alpha’s pheromones at close range, Minjae twisted his body in agony.
“Kkeu, heu, uu……”
“Why can’t you understand when I speak nicely? If your head is bad, you should at least be quick-witted……”
Minjae’s pupils rolled back. The pheromones of a fellow alpha shook Minjae’s bodily rhythm. The sight of his limbs flailing in the pain of his organs twisting looked as pathetic as a squid on a grill.
“Where is Ian right now?”
