NCT Ten | Mafia

The Real Raw Truth

AN: OKAY!!!!!!!! After this chapter, I have no idea what to write............ jeez..... my idea is literally run out.. yeah like run away from me, wow great heha. okay let me know how it gone so far. I will be so appreciate, if you guys do that :)

Layla's PO.V

There'sa feeling when lights are flashing in your face. When people you barely know call out your name like you're best friends. Where it starts to feel like a dream. It makes things easier to handle. Going through a party with a cool half-smile on my lips.

It's the same thing I do now, when I realize why Ten has come for me, why he brought me here.

"What makes you think I know anything?" My voice comes out weirdly calm. There's a panic inside me. A full-scale Big Bang explosion, ending everything that came before. On the outside I must look the same, but on the inside everything has changed.

"Because you told me yourself," he says, nearly growling. "I called him Bambam, but you called him Bambamkoumpl."

Fear whooshes in my ears. "When?"

"When you were fuck-drunk."

I flinch at the harshness of his words. At least I know how much I revealed to him. When we were in that cottage, when he touched me. How had I let something so important slip? But I was so impossibly relaxed. I learned early on to never let down my guard, with anyone. Not for the cameras or the society mavens. Not even for my mother. But the one time I slip, it could ruin everything.

"I never used the name Bambamkoumpl," he says. "That told me you know the man. And it's not a fucking surprise, is it? Not in the circles that you run in."

I swallow past the dryness in my mouth.

The cabin was beautiful but rustic. Raw. He used that to seduce me. This hotel room with its old-world grandeur and strange intimacy? He'll use this to hurt me. Make me tell.

I wrap my arms around myself.

Dad came to every ballet recital. He worked late every day to afford my private school tuition. We might not have a normal happy family, but it's mine.

Ten will protect his crew, even if they did something wrong. That's the way I have to protect my father. He deserves justice, nothing more. Not revenge.

"He's somebody to you. That's why you're keeping it from me. Family or friend. One of your girlfriends' daddies." He gives me a hard look. "Maybe even yours."

I try not to react, but some things I can't control, like the way my heart bangs against my ribs. There's movement on my face, like a flinch. But it feels far away, like my muscles belong to someone else.

"You should just tell me," he says simply. "You're going to, in the end."

The threat is ten times worse because of the calm way he delivers it. If he were beating his chest, it would seem like an exaggeration. But I know the calm, cold reality here. He's going to hurt me. "Why? Because you'll make me?"

He watches my face, seeing everything, saying nothing.

I stand my ground, senses humming from his nearness. Or maybe that's the scotch. "I can't."

Still he says nothing.

I swallow. Ten can't trust anyone, but I can. I trust Detective Wonwoo. I trust the system, even knowing it failed Ten. I trust my father, even if I shouldn't. "I won't."

Threat runs thick in the air between us. "I'm not fooling around, Layla."

"You don't want to hurt me." I gaze into his eyes, looking for the man who couldn't drown me. The man who carved that tiny bird. The one who made up a fairy tale about a rivet.