I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how he knew that the cameras weren’t working – if he had looked into it or tampered with the cameras somehow himself – but this was all so ridiculously clandestine that I wanted to laugh. I climbed the stairs to the top floor and found an overhang that gave me a good view of the place where Yun Seo parked, waiting for him to call once he’d parked.

“Are you in position?” he asked, turning in a slow circle to look around the parking lot.

“Yes.”

“Good job. I can’t see you.”

“Apparently I missed my calling as a secret agent,” I said wryly, leaning against a concrete column as I settled in to wait.

“I pay you better than that already. Private security is the way to go.”

I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “Are you that worried about losing me to the government?”

“I’m worried about losing you all the time. If you ever figure out how talented you are, I’m in trouble.” 

I couldn’t quite put the feelings that statement inspired into words, but regardless of what they were, they hit me somewhere deep. No one had ever said anything like that to me before, and I’d never expected such a compliment from someone who had expectations as high as Yun Seo’s. Before I could think of a way to respond, I heard a car approaching and said, “He’s coming.”

“I see him. Put yourself on mute.”

“Got it.” 

I watched as Ye Kwang pulled his SUV into a space a few spots down from Yun Seo and got out. He was a distinguished looking man in his early sixties with white hair and a permanently grim expression that had carved his face into implacable lines. He looked irritated as he crossed the concrete, his presence somehow bigger than Yun Seo’s even though he was slightly shorter in stature.

“You don’t look anything like your father,” Ye Kwan said in a voice like gravel.

A smirk brushed over Yun Seo’s lips, and even from halfway across the parking lot I could tell it was forced. “He would agree with you.”

“We were close once, he and I, as I’m sure you know.”

Yun Seo nodded but remained silent.

“When I received your request to meet, I couldn’t help but wonder how much you might have inherited from your father, but after reviewing your business proposal I see little resemblance there either.”

Taking this obvious insult in stride, Yun Seo replied, “And yet you still agreed to meet.”

“I did. Do you know why?”

“I’m sure you plan to tell me.”

Ye Kwang chuckled darkly. “I know the truth about your mother.”

I straightened, pressing the bluetooth device closer to my ear to make sure I didn’t miss a word. What I knew about the Jang family could be summed up in a couple of sentences, but Yun Seo’s mother had never come up. The only detail I knew was that she wasn’t Na Rae’s mother.

“I know what she is,” Ye Kwang continued, “and I know what you are.”

Jaw tense, Yun Seo slid his hands into his pockets as if he was at ease even though I knew that kind of posture was his way of pretending to be fine when he was not fine at all. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with my proposal.”

“Your proposal? Nothing. Your proposal wasn’t worth the time I spent reading it.” Licking his lips, Ye Kwang smiled, a crack in the crags of his face. “But it gave me an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Your abilities could be very useful for me if put to proper use.”

I saw motion in the tunnel leading toward the lower levels of the garage and immediately took off at a run, trying to stick to the shadows as much as I could so I would not be seen until I was close. Two figures had stepped out of the darkness, one sneaking up behind Yun Seo while the other was flanking him to prevent him from retreating to his car. Ye Kwang backed toward his own car to stay out of the fray, continuing to smile as the first man lunged at Yun Seo from behind. 

Yun Seo must have heard him coming because he dodged the attack with a graceful sidestep, blocking a blow with enough instinctive skill that I suspected he had studied martial arts at least as much as I had. Possibly more. 

I shifted my focus to the second attacker, racing across the pavement as fast as my feet would carry me and tackling him to the ground. We rolled a few times before coming to a stop, my arm around his throat and his elbow in my side. I pinned him briefly, but he was good at using his body weight to make up for his lesser height, twisting beneath me and getting the advantage long enough to land a few punches before I could get him pinned again. 

While we grappled, Ye Kwang got away, his SUV peeling off into the darkness with a squeal of tires. Apparently he either trusted his thugs to take care of business or didn’t want to be around for the fallout if they failed. After trading several additional blows, my opponent pulled out a long knife and swiped at me. I dodged the first attack, but he was faster than I expected and his second attack landed. I didn’t feel any pain, noticing the cut only after blood began seeping into my sleeve, but I instantly became more cautious, realizing that he could easily do lasting damage if I let him get the upper hand.

Suddenly Yun Seo’s opponent hit the ground with a thud and a grunt, something small and metallic shattering on the ground as he fell. Seeing his friend was out of the fight and that Yun Seo was running to my aid, my opponent glanced at both of us quickly in turn before taking off at a run. I started to give chase but Yun Seo caught me around the waist and held me back.

“Let him go,” he said, his breathing surprisingly steady as if he’d not even broken a sweat during the fight.

Panting to catch my own breath, I shook him off and paced a few steps to get myself under control. “What the fuck was that?” I demanded, annoyed that he was still so calm as if he’d known something like this might happen. “Does this kind of thing happen to you often?”

“Not often, no,” Yun Seo said, lips tugging at one corner with dark amusement as he approached me slowly, a worried wrinkle forming between his brows, “but I suspected Ye Kwang was not being transparent about his intentions.”

I looked down at the fallen attacker and saw fragments of glass glimmering in the moonlight. “What is that?”

“A syringe,” Yun Seo replied, still eerily calm. “Apparently they planned to knock me out and move me to another location. I turned it on him instead.”

Kneeling down to check the attacker’s pulse, I confirmed, “He’s unconscious but alive.”

“Sang Kyu.”

Yun Seo didn’t use my name often and hearing it on his tongue immediately caught my attention. I looked up to see him frowning down at me.

“You’re bleeding.”

He was right. Blood was dripping from my fingers now. Feeling around my sleeve to see how bad the cut was, I noticed my coat was sliced nearly from my elbow to my wrist. The rooftop was too dark to tell if the wound was just as big or if the fabric had torn and suffered most of the damage. When I tried to stand up again I wavered a little on my feet, but that probably had more to do with the shock of the situation than my injury. Yun Seo steadied me with a hand on my hip, grabbing my wrist and turning my arm toward the light to get a better look at the damage.

“We shouldn’t linger here,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket and handing it to me. “Use that to staunch the bleeding. I’ll drive.” 

Taking the jacket that I guessed was more expensive than the entire contents of my closet combined, I hesitated to ruin it, but Yun Seo pressed the fabric against my arm with a frown. 

“Hold it firmly,” he ordered as he turned toward the car and opened the door for me, feeling strange to be in a car with Yun Seo without driving. 

I was beginning to feel a little queasy now that the adrenaline was wearing off and my arm was starting to throb, so I didn’t pay much attention to where Yun Seo was headed until he pulled into an underground parking garage beneath an apartment building.

“Where are we?” 

“I have an apartment here,” he said, jumping out of the car and walking around it to open my door again as if he thought I was incapable of helping myself. “Let’s get you patched up.”

The revelation that Yun Seo kept an apartment on the side wasn’t entirely surprising considering how far the drive was from the city to his house. What did surprise me was that it had never come up before. Surely he could have had me drop him off at this location on late nights rather than having me drive him all the way home. Unless he hadn’t wanted me to know about it for some reason. 

The place was sparsely furnished and a far cry from the luxury of his house. I saw a twin bed in a connected room, blowing holes in my theory that this might be a hookup pad Yun Seo had wanted to keep secret from Na Rae to avoid her teasing. In fact, it looked more like a safe house than anything else.

“Have a seat,” he told me, pointing at the kitchen chairs before leaving the room. When he returned, he had a bowl with water and a towel along with a first-aid kit. “Take off your coat,” he instructed, taking his own jacket from me and setting it aside with no regard for the blood trail he left along the way. 

I tossed my coat over the table with a wince and gingerly unbuttoned my cuff, rolling up my sleeve to expose my injury. As soon as my arm was bare, Yun Seo caught my wrist and pulled my arm closer, shifting in his chair so that he would have easier access. His knee brushed against one of my thighs, his other leg framing mine on the outside, and I immediately felt self-conscious about how close he was, my heart pounding hard in my chest as he leaned over my arm and gently dabbed a damp cloth across the cut to clean it.

Yun Seo handled the first-aid kit as if he knew it inside and out, obviously an expert with using the supplies inside. I was certain this wasn’t the first time he’d patched up a wound here. How many times must he have been in situations like this in order to be so calm about the whole thing?

“You need stitches,” he observed with a frown.

“Surely it’s not that bad,” I protested, trying to turn my arm enough to look at my injury but it was on the outside of my forearm and difficult for me to see. 

“I can take care of it, but it will hurt. I don’t have any way to numb the pain.”

I sighed. “Why didn’t we just go to a hospital?”

“Because they’ll be checking area hospitals for injuries like yours. They’ll want to know who you are and that will make you a target. I don’t want to put you in any more danger than I already have.”

“Sir, who are these people, really? Why are you even trying to get funding from them if they’re so dangerous?”

Yun Seo returned my gaze in silence for a long time, his eyes unfocused as if he were weighing a decision in his mind. “You’re safer if you don’t know the whole truth,” he said finally, standing up and walking across the room to rustle around in one of the kitchen cabinets. He returned with a tumbler and a bottle of expensive whiskey. He pushed the glass toward me. “It won’t numb the pain, but it will make you care about it less.”

“Sir,” I began again.

“I’m trying to protect you,” he interrupted. “No one who works for me knows the whole story. In Ho probably knows the most, but he has also been hurt the most by the Gihoe Society. He doesn’t have anyone left to lose.”

“Does Na Rae know?”

He started digging through the first aid kit for more supplies. “More than I’ve told her, I’m sure. I’ve never been able to hide much from her no matter how much I try. Luckily, she keeps herself removed from most danger. I’ve made our house the safest it can possibly be.” Pulling on disposable gloves, he threaded a curved needle and disinfected it. Looking me in the eye, he gave me a steely look as he said, “I need to do this or your wound won’t heal properly.”

I knew I could refuse and choose to go to the hospital instead. Yun Seo would let me go even if he disapproved, but I trusted that he knew what he was doing – and that he was right about me being in danger if I went there. I was irritated that he had made choices along the way to put me into this position, but I also knew that there were many points at which I could have asked more questions or refused to participate in activities I knew were not completely above board. 

Reaching for the whiskey, I drank it down in one burning draft and then nodded at him. “Go ahead.”

He leaned forward and got to work while I gritted my teeth against the pain, gripping the edge of the chair with my free hand and trying to focus on Yun Seo’s face rather than what he was doing. His absolute focus was impressive and the way he held my arm with his other hand to keep it still was surprisingly gentle despite the firmness of his grip. I wondered how he had learned this skill and how often he must have practiced it on himself to be so efficient. Thinking back to our first meeting and my impression of him as a coddled socialite, I realized I had been fooled by his persona just like everyone else. Yun Seo was so much more than he appeared, and every time I thought I was beginning to map his edges and understand him fully, I discovered that there was one more layer to peel away.

“There,” he said quietly as he knotted off the last stitch. “Done. You handled that well.” I couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride well up in my chest at the compliment, but I tried not to let it go to my head. “Have you ever had stitches before?” he asked.

“A few times.” I watched as he began the process of medicating and wrapping the wound in gauze, thinking about the little cuts and bruises I’d gotten during fights at school. Even my injuries wrecking my bike had been nothing like this. 

“Then you know how to take care of it?”

I nodded, thinking that the principle must be the same no matter the quantity of stitches. 

He offered me a few extra bandages and a container of disinfectant. “I shouldn’t have asked you to back me up tonight,” he said, meeting my eyes again with an unusually vulnerable expression on his face, somewhere between worry and regret. “I usually bring someone else I know, a police officer. He’s been trained for those kinds of situations, but he was busy tonight and I honestly didn’t think Ye Kwang would be so bold.”

I realized he was apologizing, and I found this so surprising that I didn’t know what to say at first. “I’m fine,” I said after an awkward pause. “But I am reconsidering getting into the bodyguard business.”

The shadow of a smile crossed his lips. “You can stick to the escort business instead.”

“Escort?” I scoffed, my face flushing even though I knew he didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant. “You’re talking about your sister, aren’t you?”

Shrugging as he stood up, Yun Seo said, “Na Rae’s only been the victim of attempted kidnapping once, so carting her around to museums should be fine.” His casual tone belied the warning signs in his words. What was he up to behind the scenes for both him and Na Rae to be in that much danger?

I bit my lower lip. “Are you ever going to tell me what all of this is about?”

“Probably not. If you’re lucky.” Yun Seo drew a deep breath and released it through his nose. “Let’s go. I’ll take you home.”