'Get down!'
The jarring landing when Jin rugby tackled him to the ground stunned Jimin's senses.
The bullet had missed his head by a hair's breadth, but there was no time to think about his brush with death as he and his men crouch-ran behind a table and hastily overturned it to use as a shield.
The lounge was pandemonium once again, people screaming and running and diving for cover when a second shot tore through the air and splintered the timber.
'Last time you'll accept an invite to a Kim Taehyung soiree, ey?' Jin hooted at a woman cowering beside him as a third bullet shattered a vase and rained shards of glass onto Namjoon's shoulders.
The fourth lodged itself into the plaster above Jimin's head, the fifth bouncing off an engraved gold plaque nailed to a pillar. Five, six and seven joined their sister embedded in the wall, but Jimin remained put, counting down each blast until the top floor plunged into silence.
He didn't need to see Taehyung to know that he was the one shooting at them. The Kimber Raptor - the same gun he'd had the pleasure of owning for many years - had a distinct resonance. It was a firearm Jimin treasured, a firearm he could handle if blind.
It was also a firearm that held only ten rounds.
It was time for the motherfucker to reload.
'Is it him?' Namjoon panted as Jimin took a gander around the edge of the table.
'Oh, it's him, alright.'
Taehyung appeared precariously calm, a confident smirk at his mouth as he stalked the perimeter of the lounge and knocked a fresh mag into his Raptor.
On the plus side, having him in their line of sight meant he wasn't pursuing Yunhee.
The downside? The defiant bastard was challenging them to take a shot knowing damn well that innocent civilians were stranded between them.
'What is he doing?' Jin hissed as he squeezed the handle of his Smith & Wesson.
'Stalling us,' Jimin grumbled. 'He knows Yunhee's gone and that we plan to follow.'
'Then shoot the silly cunt so we can get underway,' Namjoon harangued.
'Can't. Too many people,' Jimin rasped as his enemy flashed his teeth and sent him a condescending salute. 'Fuck!'
Taehyung lifted his Raptor at lightning speed, his pearly whites disappearing behind a vicious sneer when he opened fire.
Taking refuge just in the nick of time, Jimin braced himself against the shaking barricade, waiting out the assault as the powerful gun punctured lead into the opposite side.
'Boss!' Jin yelled above the deafening racket while checking a notification on his burner phone. 'They're in the limo!'
Jimin sagged against the shuddering table top.
Hearing that Yunhee and Tae had escaped the tower was music to his ears, but they still needed to cut off that car before the cops collared them and tossed them at Taehyung's feet.
Weighing up his options, he glanced at the elevators on the far side of the room, noting that both shafts were now unmanned.
If they used either of them, they'd be in the lobby and out of the building within minutes, but there was not a cat in hell's chance of making it across the lounge until Taehyung-
'What the fuck?' Namjoon whispered when the firing suddenly stopped. 'Has he gone?'
Brow rutting, Jimin peeked around the table again and caught Taehyung vanishing into the stairwell.
Not trusting the wily son-of-a-bitch to have another card up his sleeve, but knowing it was their only chance to flee, Jimin jumped to his feet and made a break for the elevators.
'Let's move!'
*
'Is that them?'
Splaying his hands on the dashboard, Jimin leaned forward and squinted at the limousine just up ahead. Double-checking the text message on Jin's burner, he cross referenced the number plate Tae had sent, and then promptly looked up with a racing heart.
'It's them.'
'Step on it,' Jin thundered.
They surged forward when Namjoon hit the gas, overtaking the distinct, black vehicle they were pursuing before he abruptly jerked on the wheel. The Santa Fe swerved left, spinning ninety degrees into the middle of the street to create a roadblock for any oncoming traffic.
'Nice work, Joon,' Jimin panted when the limo skidded to a stop fifty metres shy of his door.
Jin barrelled out first, dragging the dazed chauffeur from behind the wheel to take his place, while Jimin unsheathed his Glock and planted his foot on the grey pillar rolling around the footwell.
'Take the stone and drive straight to the address I gave you. We'll be right behind you.'
'Understood,' Namjoon nodded as Jimin leapt out onto the busy road.
His heart was wedged somewhere between his gullet and his brain as he ran towards the limo.
The prospect of seeing Yunhee again after their impromptu parting was more than he could bear, but when he shot open the lock and ducked inside the passenger section, Jimin's delirious smile withered and he came to a juddering halt.
One foot inside the car, the other outside on the damp asphalt, he found himself head-to-head with the barrel of a gleaming Kimber Raptor.
Holding the monstrous firearm was Kim Taehyung, looking equally startled on the far side of the compartment and shielding Yunhee so well, it was impossible to see her.
'Christ, Jimin,' he eased off first, lowering his weapon with a noxious scowl, 'you coulda knocked instead of frightening the crap out of us like that.'
Jimin lingered in the doorway, his mistrustful gaze analysing Tae's demeanour while he scrutinised every pore on his nauseatingly striking face.
The scar was gone, but he wasn't taking any chances, and so he kept his firearm doggedly pointed at his forehead, waiting for the only two words that could assuage him that night.
'You've got to be kidding me,' Tae blustered with a crooked grin of incredulity, but it slumped into a downturned glower when Jimin released the safety catch with an expression that screamed "do not test me".
He would take the motherfucker down if he so much as farted a grain of superiority in his direction.
'Say it,' Jimin demanded, 'or get the fuck away from Miss Hahm and give me a clean shot of that holier-than-thou face of yours.'
'Fine,' Tae spat with an exasperated roll of the eyes. 'Scarlet King.'
To this day, Jimin was not sure why he waited a beat before he holstered his Glock and climbed into the limo. All he could think about were those few glorious seconds when Tae shifted aside and his eyes met those of the red-dressed lady squished up in the corner.
He'd always known Hahm Yunhee to be commendably agile - one of the many reasons he loved her - but the velocity in which she threw herself across the footwell and tackled him onto the adjacent seat was award-winning.
A distressed howl regurgitated from her throat. A suffocating hug, her frenzied breath spurting from her heart-shaped lips while his button-down clung to his torso from her tears.
There were no words, and so Jimin said nothing for a time, only listened to her cry with a dreary ache in his heart that only time could heal.
'You're safe now, Little Legs,' he eventually whispered, kissing her balmy temple as he observed the man perched on the opposite seat.
Tae watched their interaction like a schmaltzy scene from a Hollywood movie, and though he balled his fists beside his taut thighs, the depth of his gaze was unguarded.
His eyes glimmered with relief because Yunhee was at last free, but Jimin sensed a melancholy beneath their glossy sheen. He grieved for their bygone relationship despite understanding all that had come to be.
There was also trepidation and angst, mingled with hope and fortitude for his unforeseen future because he'd decided to stay behind and slip into his doppelgänger's influential shoes.
Everything was about to change.
'Thank you,' Jimin mouthed.
Tae nodded and reclined against the backrest, his lips arching into a cordial smile as the engine rumbled to life and they began to cruise to their next destination.
Although her muffled sobs had subsided, Yunhee had yet to detach her lips from the flesh above his collar, while Jimin's fingers remained entangled in her dishevelled hair as he cradled her curled up body on his lap.
The serenity of their reunion was gratifying, but it was not to last.
When the privacy divider descended and a jovial voice hollered, 'Howdy, partners!', Yunhee bolted upright like a meerkat and tupped his chin.
'Seokjin?' Her manicured nails hooked over the blackout glass as she gawped at the raven-haired mobster behind the wheel. 'You came through the vortex? How? When?'
'Long story, trouble, but it's sure as hell good to see those freckles again.' Jin's mouth widened into a dashing grin, narrowly missing a cyclist when he met her rapturous gaze in the rear view mirror. 'You guys okay back there?'
'Alive and kicking,' Tae drawled.
Just about, Jimin thought as he massaged his chin with a lopsided smile.
It was sickening how much he'd missed the clumsy oaf that was his girlfriend, but he was content in the knowledge that he was foolishly in love.
Hahm Yunhee could butt his chin a thousand times over if it meant seeing her incredible smile while in the company of those she loved.
'So!' Yunhee exclaimed as Jimin dipped his head and frowned at the scarlet patches blotting his pristine shirt. Weird, they weren't there before. 'Who's going to be the first to tell me where we're going, because Tae sure as hell won't.'
Toying with the white cotton, Jimin was alarmed to discover blood on his palms when he drew them away. At no point this evening had he been shot. He'd know after taking two bullets for Jin four years ago.
Eyes flitting wildly to the woman still waiting for an answer, Jimin inspected her petite frame hidden beneath Tae's tux jacket.
In the passion of being reunited, he'd failed to see that her satin dress was wet and the material torn up to her thigh. Her crimson lipstick was also smeared across her rosy cheek, the hands tapping her knees tarnished with dried blood.
Had Taehyung hurt her?
'Yunhee, what-?'
'It's not my blood,' she quickly mollified, though her admission did little to ease his tension. If anything, his anxiety upsurged to a panic-ridden frenzy that left him holding his discoloured palms in the air and gawking at her in question.
'Yunhee-'
'It's Hoseok's blood,' Tae replied while shifting uncomfortably in his seat. 'He's-'
'Dead!' Yunhee blurted with eyes the size of two moons. 'I stabbed him!'
'Ha!' Jin barked as he violently thwacked the steering wheel. 'Great work, Hahm!'
Hold the phone; Hoseok was dead? Yunhee had killed him?
Jimin's unsettled gaze explored Yunhee's pale face as she tinkered with the frayed edges of her gown.
Self-defence or not, snuffing out a life was a heavy burden to carry. The brave woman was a tough cookie nine times out of ten, but her minute shrug of indifference did fuck all to convince him that she was alright.
With a wavering sigh, Jimin coiled an arm around Yunhee's dainty shoulders and pulled her in for a sincere cuddle. That was all he could do at that moment, but he would be there for her afterwards because he'd dealt with homicide his entire adult life and understood the aftermath better than anyone.
'You had no choice, Yunhee,' Tae appeased. 'You did what you had to.'
'I did what I had to,' she repeated breathily.
'You did good, darling,' Jimin cooed as she clutched his stained shirt, though he felt rather helpless. The murderous scene playing out in his mind was gruesome; he'd give anything to turn back the hands of time and knife that sicko on her behalf. 'Tell me what happened.'
'Hoseok cut us off before we made it to the lobby. He was going to kill me and take Yunhee, but...' Tae cringed, his sonorous tone drifting off and dissipating into the stagnant air as he waved his hand in her direction. 'Yunhee got hold of his Ka-bar and ran him through.'
'His Ka-bar?' Jin spluttered enthusiastically as he slowed to allow an inebriated hen party stagger across the intersection. 'Oh my word, please tell me you kept it as a souvenir.'
Ignoring his right-hand man's satanic grin in the rear view reflection, Jimin focused instead on the guy who'd walked Yunhee out of Lotte World Tower. He wanted details, keen to learn if they'd run into any other trouble on the way out after Taehyung's swift departure.
But Tae was brimming with a few anxious questions of his own. 'What happened to Taehyung after we left? Did you see him?'
'Yes,' Jimin replied ominously as Yunhee snuggled deeper into his chest and interlaced their fingers, 'but unfortunately, after getting a little trigger happy and spraying the lounge with ammunition, he decided to hightail-'
A shrill tintinnabulation cut through Jimin's tale of calamity, and when he peered down at Yunhee, he realised that the ringtone was coming from the jacket draped around her shoulders.
Worming her way out of his embrace, she fumbled around inside the tux pocket, barely having time to check who was calling before Tae stretched across the footwell and wrenched it from her fingers.
'Where'd you get that phone from?' Jimin asked as Tae blinked at the lit up screen. 'That isn't the burner I gave you.'
'It's Hoseok's,' he muttered. 'I took it from his dead body.'
'Okay, then,' Jimin's eyelids constricted to slits as a foreboding feeling began to eat at his gut. 'Who's calling, then?'
Tae glimpsed up, his skin the colour of winter snow when he met Jimin's impatient glare. 'It's Taehyung.'
A ghostly silence sliced through the limo as Yunhee tensed up and Jimin reflexively pulled her closer.
'Well, aren't you going to answer it?' Jin caterwauled. 'Put the pompous pillock on speakerphone and I'll inform him that I'm abducting Yunhee this time. That'll throw a spanner in his greasy works!'
Tae pinched his bottom lip between his fingers, staring at the phone with a meddlesome stack of lines on his forehead. Jimin recognised his expression, it was like his skin was translucent and he could see right through his skull to the cogs turning in his brain.
'You have an idea, don't you?' Jimin said as Yunhee flopped against the backrest with a weary groan.
Gradually lifting his head, Tae mirrored the smirk now flourishing on Jimin's lips. 'I have an idea.'
*
'Good evening, sir.'
There was a hesitancy in the host's voice, his contact-green eyes flitting across the restaurant as the mob boss stepped in from the frigid air.
'Do you require a table?'
Taehyung's cool gaze swept the desolate space as he removed his coat and gloves.
Save for a middle-aged gentleman reading a newspaper on one side of the Venetian bar, and another nursing a bountiful measure of Bourbon a few stools down, the joint was dead.
Turning a blind eye to the geezer scouring yesterday's headlines, Taehyung waved the host away and sauntered towards the other punter. He ordered an Old Fashioned as he slipped onto the next stool, grunting in amusement when the bartender's jaw fell open.
'Wowsers!' he guffawed while adding ice and a slice of orange into a tumbler. 'Twins, right?'
Taehyung licked his lips, catching the reflection of his neighbour in the mirrored wall behind the shelved bottles.
The tailored tuxedo and slackened bow tie. The James Dean strand dangling over his smooth forehead. The timeless features that had women on their knees, begging for their undivided attention.
Minus the prominent scar, they were identical, but Taehyung was not generous enough to presume the bartender could ever understand their true origins.
If he told the boy that they were not of the same womb, it would likely blow his puny little mind.
Swilling the golden liquor around his glass, his "twin brother" reached inside his jacket pocket, produced a smartphone, and slid it along the polished bar top. Taehyung fleetingly inspected it before picking up his whiskey cocktail and meeting his doppelgänger's stony gaze in the mirror.
The message was loud and clear, but Taehyung was not surprised.
The eyes and ears he had planted around the city told him that Hoseok planned to run off into the sunset with Byun Mee tonight. Moreover, the deceitful stoat would never ask to meet for a 2AM nightcap when he could be getting his rocks off with some floozy.
Jung Hoseok was dead. Slain by the enemy when Taehyung had an untimely demise of his own set for him inside the basement incinerator.
Raising his glass, Taehyung toasted to their victory while ruminating about his lengthy business venture with Hoseok.
He'd be lying if he were to say more's the pity after a decade of camaraderie, but underground life was a bitch, and he'd been a cold-hearted Mafia King at the mercy of The Dark Energy for as long as he could remember.
'Were you hoping to fill his shoes?' Taehyung croaked after taking a prolonged swig of his drink.
'Perhaps I was planning on filling yours.' Tae's smirk was uncannily fiendish as he wiped a drop of liquid from the corner of his lips. 'Think I could do a better job?'
'That would depend on how much you want Park Jimin dead.'
Necking his Bourbon, Tae slammed his tumbler onto the bar top and spun his stool to face him. 'What other reason would I have to be here?'
Taehyung plagiarised his actions, knocking back his Old Fashioned and requesting the same again for both parties as he whirled around and crossed one leg over the other.
'We both know Park Jimin is sap for that blasted woman,' Tae said as he hooked his calf over his thigh. 'He needed all the help he could get to steal her right out from under your nose. I wanted to find you again and talk business. Joining him on his heroic mission seemed as good a time as any.'
Lies, Taehyung thought with a credible smile. Beneath it, he observed his doppelgänger like a hawk, pulling him apart piece by piece to siphon out his real intentions.
Could one call it mutiny when they were never allies to begin?
'You still yearn for one of my clubs,' Taehyung stated.
'Technically, the two of us already own both.'
Snickering at his accurate phrase, Taehyung tapped his fingers on the bar and pretended to contemplate his offer with a pensive appearance. Even if he did trust the man, which he did not, he would never in a million years share his valuable possessions with another.
That included any and all inanimate objects, and pretty wildcats with fiery attitudes.
'You're only days away from signing a new deal with Alexander Volkov, am I right?' Tae pondered.
Taehyung's eyebrows fired skywards, admittedly surprised by his doppelgänger's intelligence. So, the clever scamp had overheard his discussion with the Russian while tied and gagged in the trunk of their car.
'Why go to all the trouble of travelling back and forth through the vortex when you have a duplicate right here who's willing to tend to the other half of your business?'
Oh, how delightfully comical. 'You don't know the first thing about trafficking.'
'How difficult can it be?' Tae shrugged. 'Like yourself, I despise women and want nothing more than to see them suffer.'
'Your cock may tell you otherwise,' Taehyung countered.
'And the blonde barista at Dream Bean will solve all my problems when I need my fix. What of it?'
Taehyung frowned as the bartender set out two doilies followed by a fresh round of beverages.
Faye...
'How about it?' Tae picked up his Bourbon with a saccharine box-grin, his cheerful yet pressing question carving through his emotions and rendering his memory of the incredible English woman dead.
'How about what?' Taehyung deadpanned.
'I oversee the club in this world and take care of Volkov on your behalf. You go home and focus on your empire and the only woman who's ever gotten under your skin. We could meet, say, once a month to see how things are going?'
Taehyung's fingers squeezed the crystal tumbler, his mind alight with the unwelcome images of what had transpired several hours earlier.
'Something vexes thee?' Tae goaded, his lively irises teasing him over the rim of his glass.
Oh, something vexed alright.
Yunhee had dropped him like a hot brick in the midst of celebrating their first anniversary. The unappreciative wench may have fled with Park Jimin, but she was sorely mistaken for her conduct tonight, and would regret her choice until the end of days once he caught up with her.
'It's not her fault. Yunhee is confused right now, but I assure you, she will come to you,' Tae muttered as the acidic alcohol burned Taehyung's throat. 'In case you failed to figure it out yet, Jimin is the core problem. All you need to do is remove him from the equation for her to see where she truly belongs.'
Yes, Taehyung internally hissed, soaking up the vitality of The Dark Energy as it manifested deep within his veins.
The Greater Good was only one side of their extraordinary tale. It was romanticised nonsense, conjured up for the pitiless, romantic fools who believed in true love.
Jimin was not the hero in this story. He was the counter energy working against him.
'I understand your frustration. Hahm is insubordinate, but oh my, the way she used to beg for more when I put her over my knee.' Taehyung sneered at the comment, his head snapping sideways as his burning gaze seared into Tae's twinkling pupils. 'Have at it. She's all yours.'
'Where?' Taehyung snarled.
'Crystal Kingdom at dawn. Jimin has the stone. He's going to open the vortex and send Yunhee home. If you want her, I suggest you finish your drink and be on your way, because - once she's gone - Jimin and his men are coming for you.'
Taehyung's jaw stiffened to concrete as he cracked out the bones in his neck.
He would not give an answer to his doppelgänger's preposterous proposition, and never would. He had no intention of working with the manipulative fraudster.
Tonight was a set up.
Jimin and Yunhee were not going to open the portal at the theme park. They were going to open it at another location, and once Tae left the premises, he was going to lead him off on a wild goose chase.
Finishing his bitter poison, Tae tossed a wad of cash onto the counter and swiped up Hoseok's phone.
'I'll be in touch,' he said, jiggling the device under his nose as he hopped off the stool.
Lazily reclining against the bar top, Taehyung watched his twin amble across the restaurant floor and out onto the frost-bitten street before he turned to the ignorant patron reading the newspaper.
'Make sure he sees you following.'
***
11th December 2022