Let's Kill Her (Book #1)

(ﾒ￣▽￣)︻┳═一(38)

"The day you arrived here," Sehun says quietly, "Yoo came to me, told me that since our Family didn't form an alliance with the Tigers he had received word that my sister was on their kill list." I can hear the fear in his voice, but I fight back the urge to let it affect me. "Sejeong's brilliant, the smartest person in this school. She was always a possible target, and at first I thought he was just manipulating me with the idea if a threat. But I read him, Suzy. He meant every word he said. He told me he was in a position to see that she was removed from the kill list, but that there would be a price, that I would have to do something in kind. And that something turned out to be . . . maneuvering you."

"So you what? You cozied up to me, got me to trust you, all so you can hand me over to them?" My throat tightens and I attempt to swallow the hurt that's trying to strangle me. "The night that Taehyung died, the hallway -"

"Yes, I told you to take that hallway, but I didn't know what you were going to find there. I swear," he says, and his eyes are pleading for me to understand. "Dr. Yoo never told me."

I feel sick. "You were part of the plan to kill Taehyung? The guy your sister had feelings for?"

"No! Of course I didn't know that Taehyung would be murdered. And I didn't know that the intended target was Jungkook. I never would have agreed to help Dr. Yoo if I'd known any of that," he says.

I stare at Sehun in horror, replaying everything that's happened these last two weeks in my head. "If that guard had been on his normal route instead of trying to protect me, would he have been in that hallway? Would I have been caught with Taehyung's body?"

"Yes," Sehun says, and it comes out in a whisper.

I put my hands over my face. I don't even know how to process what he's telling me.

"Suzy -" he says, and reaches toward me.

"Don't you dare come near me," I say, so angry that I'm practically shaking. "When you sent me down that hallway you had no idea what was waiting for me. There could have been someone with a knife waiting to kill me! You know that, right?"

"Yes," he says. He doesn't even try to deny it.

I walk back and forth. I open my mouth once but close it again. All this time, the missing information, the things that didn't add up - those things were Sehun. And deep down, I knew it. I felt that I shouldn't trust him from the start, and yet I let my myself. "So you came to me and offered to partner up to find the murderer when you already knew who it was. Why? Because you were trying to get information out of me to report back to Yoo and the Tigers? You . . . betrayed me."

"I didn't know it was Kai. Dr. Yoo didn't tell me anything of the plan other than that I was to lure you out after curfew and send you down that hallway," Sehun says, and his voice is getting more pained.

"All those question Yoo asked me about you . . . He knew you were playing me." My voice shakes and I press my lips together, trying to get myself under control.

I glance at Sehun. He looks like he wants to reach out to me, which only makes me feel worse.

"And in that assembly, when Kai threw the knife at me? Did you take the hit to get me to trust you so that you could ask me about my father?" My voice cracks and I try desperately to shake away my emotion.

"No, no way," he says, and his voice is so genuine that I want to believe him. But how can I? "I blocked that knife because I wanted to. And that information was for me. I was trying to figure out why Dr. Yoo was going through so much trouble to kill you. Trying to set you up for Taehyung was one thing. But between Kai and the stunt that Jennie pulled with the sword . . . Dr. Yoo is clearly fixated on you, or the Tigers are, or both."