Later that night, Kim sits in the living room by the pool, guitar in hand, playing idly, not really paying attention as he is deep in thought. So deep, in fact, that he doesn't even hear Kinn come in, and is startled when his brother taps him lightly on the shoulder.
"You okay?" Kinn asks him with a worried look in his eyes, placing a drink on the table for him.
"Mmm, just... thinking," Kim tries to explain his state of mind without giving too much away. He and Kinn have come a long way in the last few weeks, from not having a brotherly relationship to actually having one. But some things are still difficult, especially trust. Kim still expects Kinn to betray him whenever he has a topic he wants to talk about, but then he swallows his instinct to speak, just as he has for years. The few moments he has given in have helped to build more trust, because Kinn has not let him down yet. Years of loneliness and mistrust are still hard to overcome.
"Where is Porchay?" Kinn sits down next to him, letting him know that he is staying. In a way, Kim is glad for this, and then again he is not.
"Asleep." Kim puts down the guitar and picks up the drink. "Porsche?"
"In the gym. I tried to get him to lie down and distract him, but it didn't work. He drives me crazy walking from one side of the room to the other, so I sent him to the gym."
Kim nods and can read between the lines that Kinn tried fucking Porsche to sleep, but it didn't work. In Porchay's case it worked like a charm. Getting off three times in the space of a few hours, twice before dinner and once after, exhausted him enough for him to fall asleep, though they all worry about what tomorrow will bring.
"What, no comment on the reference to our sex life?" Kinn smirks as Kim remains silent.
"I was trying to avoid commenting on it." Kim rolls his eyes. "Porchay is asleep," he says then, raising his eyebrows at his brother in a telltale manner. It's payback time, time for his brother to know how annoying it is to even think about your brother and his boyfriend in bed. Although Kim has to admit that Porsche is very easy on the eyes. At another time, in another place and with another personality, Kim would at least have fucked him.
"Oh," Kinn says, looking surprised.
"What?"
"I... It's just that Porsche mentioned a few days ago that Chay told him you hadn't had sex yet."
"We weren't," Kim confirms. If Porchay reveals these things to his brother, Kim can talk to his own.
"Oh, okay," Kinn smiles now and even blushes a little. "You waited longer than I thought."
"We didn't really wait, at least not consciously. Just... with everything that happened, I guess neither of us was in the mood and we were too exhausted."
"Still, I'm not sure I could sleep in the same bed and not ... go there."
"If Porsche asked, you could, if you didn't want to be an arsehole. Porchay didn't ask, but if he'd asked me to wait, for whatever reason, I would have. I've hurt him enough."
Kinn looks strangely guilty as Kim looks up from his drink and catches his brother's expression. He waits for the story that must be there, and finally Kinn sighs deeply. "I did hurt Porsche before we were even together, because I didn't wait. I didn't wait and took advantage of him when someone drugged him. I'm lucky that he forgave me afterwards."
Kinn is embarrassed, scratches his neck and Kim remains silent, taking a sip of his drink as he considers this new information.
"Do you think, given the choice, they would be better off without us? I mean all of them, even Namphueng?" Kim finally asks his brother, not reacting directly to his brother's fuckup.
"I thought so. I even gave Porsche a way out when we were kidnapped. I told him to run away, take his brother and live his dream and I would tell everyone he died in the woods somewhere. It almost killed me, but I wanted him to be happy more than I wanted to be happy at his expense."
"Why didn't he do it?"
"Porsche came back to save me when they opened fire on me less than a minute later. He did the same thing when the compound was attacked. He just showed up when he shouldn't have and saved me, almost got shot by Vegas and still stayed. Through all the violence and Pa's mind games."
"I tried to keep Chay away from that kind of life, but it didn't work when Porsche stayed and then it turned out that his mother was part of the family. I still think he would have been happier away from it all, but that was never his or my choice. If there was a way to get him out without hurting him more, I would do it. I hate that our father has been dead for months and we still don't know what's going to happen or how to protect Chay from it."
"I think we would all live a different and perhaps happier life if we had ever had the chance to leave. Who knows what I would do or who Khun would be," Kinn muses and takes another sip of his drink. "You're thinking about tomorrow." It's not a question, Kinn knows.
"Yes. I'm trying to prepare myself for the possible outcomes: What if Chay is right and their father is still alive? In what condition will we find him? What has he been through? Will he recognise his sons or not? What if we find him and he's dead? Either because we're too late, or because he's been dead for some time. And what if he's not there? What if they have another sister or brother that nobody knows about? What if there's someone in there who's not related to them? What will happen to Namphueng in any of these scenarios? How can we get her help and finally find out what is really going on with her?" Kim rattled off the questions that kept running through his mind, each one leading to more questions and more possibilities.
"I don't want Porsche to get hurt anymore by this family and the same goes for you with Chay. But I'm afraid that's out of our hands, Kim. Just as it wasn't in our hands what happened with Khun last week."
"So what do we do? Just let them walk blindly into another trap?" Kim is angry now, hating the possibility. For most of his life he's been able to at least roughly predict what his father will do next, but this time he's in the dark and he hates it.
"I think we are protecting them as much as we can and will be there for them in the aftermath. Porsche is mostly worried about his brother and mother, not so much about himself.
"Chay is worried about Porsche. But that doesn't mean he won't be disappointed or hurt if we find his father dead or in a state where he'd better be dead."
Kinn nods, then stands and refills their drinks before returning to the sofa. "How are you holding up?"
"Fine." Kim shrugs, answering the question reflexively and without thinking. He also feels himself getting defensive, feeling the need to get up and walk away, to get in Kinn's face because of the question.
"I'm not." Kinn's answer surprises Kim, so he waits for his brother to continue. "I feel guilty. I never stopped Pa, never even questioned him. There were moments when I doubted him or wanted to do something different from what he told me, but I always gave in. I wish I had seen him for what he was and done something."
"He started brainwashing you the moment he realised that Khun would never be able to take over. It's easier to see when you're on the outside like me. He never liked me and he let me know."
"To be honest, I always had the impression that he liked you best, even admired you. You were more independent and stronger than Khun and me. He never managed to break you or make you show weakness like I did, and he liked that".
"Being lonely and always alone is not being strong." Kim shrugs and wants to say so much more, but doesn't. He can't put into words how broken he's often felt over the years.
"I'm sorry for that too. I should have stayed in touch and looked for you."
"Why didn't you?" Kim allows himself to ask. He always wondered why Kinn never seemed to look for him.
"I asked Pa when you left, where you were and what was going on. He made it seem like you left because you didn't like me being the future head of the family. I tried to visit you once, but the guards told me you didn't want to see me. I didn't want to fight my way in or be an unwelcome guest, so I left. I took it as confirmation when we saw each other almost half a year later and you didn't speak to me.
"I had invited you to my concerts and even to my apartment once, but you never showed up."
"He played us both."
Kim nods. "I'm afraid he's still doing that with this wild goose chase. I'm sure he knew someone would eventually discover the secret cellar and start digging."
"Possibly," Kinn agrees. "You know what I couldn't find in the papers? When he built the damn thing. There's no record of it being built, but more than that, I can't remember such a massive construction going on right in our garden."
"Namphueng disappeared sixteen years ago. We were children then."
"Maybe, but old enough to remember a few months of construction."
"Khun was held there two years before Namphueng was taken," Kim points out.
"Khun was twelve then, I was nine, and I still have no memory of any construction work during my childhood."
"Maybe it's always been there? Since grandpa? He must have been a bastard just like Pa, from the stories I heard."
Kinn nods, but doesn't respond verbally; instead he flinches suddenly. "You know what else I realised?"
"Hm?"
"That I might owe Vegas and Macau."
"Oh fuck no." It's a spontaneous reaction on Kim's part, and while he doesn't mind Macau, the brat, there's no way anyone in this building owes Vegas anything; he tried to shoot them, he tried to kidnap Chay, he almost killed Porsche.
"Only... Pa killed Gun, claiming there was a reason, and then he gave the ring to Porsche. If he killed his brother just to get the ring, he cheated Vegas out of his inheritance."
"Give him all the money you want, but a psychopath like Vegas should never have a chance at power, or he'll put even Pa to shame with what he'll do."
"Porsche says he tortured Pete while he was there. He said he had wounds all over him, burns, cuts, bruises. Even on his genitals."
"He raped him?"
"We don't know. Pete never said anything. He said he was with his grandmother. We know he never got there. He hailed a boat on a river near the second family's safe house, which was found later. That's how he escaped. Pete's being with Vegas now, could be a form of Stockholm syndrome".
"Scientists doubt that it actually exists, at least not the way you think it works here."
"You're into psychology now?" Kinn smiles.
"Had to be to figure Pa out sometimes." Kim nods.
"Have you ever been to therapy?"
"No, but Chay thinks we all need it."
Kinn laughs. "He might be right. Chan said like the same thing." Suddenly Kinn becomes serious again and looks at Kim. "Promise me you'll be careful down there tomorrow. I know you won't let me go with you and Chan, but please, Kim..." Kinn's voice breaks and Kim thinks there are tears in Kinn's eyes. "I can't lose you down there. I just got you back."
"I promise I'll be careful," Kim vows, and a second later finds himself pressed against his brother's chest, Kinn's arms wrapped tightly around him, his shirt smelling of aftershave and something familiar.
*
The next morning, Kim, Arm and Chan are standing in the basement corridor. For two hours they've been trying to unlock the door they know is there, but it won't budge.
"Any news from Namphueng?" Kim asks over the intercom, having asked Porsche, on a hunch, to talk to his mother again for any clues on how to open the door; he knows she must know, but he can't understand why she won't tell them.
"Nothing," comes Chay's frustrated reply. "I don't understand why she doesn't just paint what she knows, like the library."
"Did she really paint all the traps in the library?" Khun asks excitedly.
"Yes, almost all the thicker parts had some kind of trap," Kim confirms absentmindedly, letting more smoke escape through the cracks in the wall, then moving along it again, looking for another opening.
"What do you mean almost?"
"Almost, Khun. Some of the thicker places had no traps." Kim is annoyed now, because he has no time for Khun's nosiness at the moment.
Fortunately, his brother falls silent and lets them get on with their work.
"We might have to blow our way in," Kim says after checking and rechecking the wall with no new results.
"We don't know what we might unleash if we do," Chan reminds him.
"I know, but it may be the only way and a risk we have to take." Kim turns to Arm. "Can you get the explosives ready and the team in here?" While Kim can blow up a door or disable some types of bombs, he does not want to handle these explosives himself. The wrong kind of explosion could bring down the whole building above, and they don't want that.
"Kim, wait!" Tankhun suddenly shouts into the microphone and Kim holds his ear because it hurts.
"Fuck, Khun, don't shout!" he barks back. If he ever wants to compose music again, he will need his hearing.
"Khun had the idea to check the picture again, Kim," Chay takes over, and Kim knows that Khun is probably sulking right now. "We found that apart from a few books that don't lead anywhere, there are only the ladders. Ma marked all the ladders in the library. We've sent the picture to Hia and he'll place the ladders exactly as they are in the picture. See if anything happens."
"OK, Chay."
"And please be careful."
"I will, babe," Kim replies, knowing how much Porchay cares for him, yes, he wants to know if they can find their father, but he is also aware that something could happen to Kim down there. This morning, before Kim left to go to the basement, Porchay pulled him close and held him, clung to him and gave him a desperate kiss before letting him go.
All three of them jump down in the cellar when suddenly there is a loud click. Kim almost ducks for cover, but there is nothing to hide behind in the long corridor.
It's Chan who checks the wall again, where they know there must be a door, and suddenly it moves, sliding aside as if by magic.
"Oh my God, it worked," Kinn's breathless voice can be heard.
"Please be careful. All of you," Khun says, the fear in his voice clearly audible.
"Full gear," Kim decides, not wanting to take any risks. Full gear means special goggles that can see infrared, vests, helmets with cameras for the guys upstairs and for later review, and gas masks. Behind Chan, Arm and Kim, eight heavily armed men will follow them in when Kim gives the signal, wearing the same gear and providing backup if needed. They all change on the spot, the gear already down with them. Kim may have decided against body armour when they first started on the house, but now that he has something to lose, he doesn't want to take any more risks than necessary.
The team down in the basement also change the frequencies for the intercom systems so that they can hear each other without the chatter of the others upstairs.
"Ready?" Chan asks, the first to step into the corridor in front of them.
"Let's go," Kim nods.
They step through the door and find themselves in another long corridor. The walls are white, the floors grey concrete and the lighting reminds Kim of hospitals. The strange thing about this corridor is that there are monitors everywhere. Every few metres there is one hanging from the ceiling or wall. Since they are seeing and disabling as they go, even reaching the first monitor takes over half an hour, even if it's just merely ten meters from the entrance. When they reach it and see what's on it, it's no surprise: the horrible videos they found on the server are being broadcast down the corridor with full audio.
"Get Khun away from the screens," Kim orders for the guys upstairs to hear, as the video shows Kinn killing some men. They all know what comes next. The longer they work at disabling motion sensors and bugs, and the deeper they go into the basement, the louder the sound gets. After hours, Kim, Chan and Arm finally reach the end of the long corridor.
"We'll start on the right," Chan decides, and once again they begin checking for bugs, transmission signals, traps. Kim is so focused on his task that he doesn't even look around the room until he hears Chan's gasp. Chan must have been in the same frame of mind, but had snapped out of it earlier.
They are standing in a fully furnished living room, with the horrible video playing on the TV, while the rest of the room looks perfectly normal and even luxurious, except for the fact that there are no windows anywhere and some of the furniture looks dated and worn.
"Positive for blood on carpet," Arm reports, and that's when Kim notices the large stain on the large carpet on the floor. It's not red or brown, just an old stain on the floor, but Kim knows it's big enough to indicate that someone bled out here.
Next is a large kitchen. The stove is working and the shelves are stacked with dry noodles and tins, some long past their use-by date, others still edible. The fridge is empty and there is only a cup in the cupboard and a plate in the sink. There's no screen in the kitchen, but the sounds from the other rooms echo in the almost empty kitchen, amplifying and multiplying the cries of pain.
Next is a dining room that reminds Kim of the family dining room in his father's house upstairs. The chairs are almost identical, the table similar, but these down here look untouched, as if no one has ever sat in these chairs or eaten at this table.
They move on to the next room and find where Namphueng must have been painting for many years. There are so many paintings stacked on the walls, splashed with paint. On the easel is a half-finished canvas of a bird, a raven, whose head is completely finished but whose body is only a sketch, making it look like it's just a flowing crow's head on canvas. There's no other furniture in the room apart from a chair. They examine the paintings and find that most of them are of birds, others of the living room they have just been in, or a bedroom they have yet to find. There are many bugs in the room and even several video transmission signals in the painting room.
A bathroom follows, empty, not even a towel.
Then comes a bedroom, luxurious, with a large bed, a large wardrobe and soft sheets. The TV is showing the same horrible scenes as the others, and Kim and Chan share a look, because no one could possibly sleep in here. They don't find anything in the wardrobe.
A small library with some old books follows, then a room that can only be described as a torture chamber, where they now know Khun was tortured. There's the mirrored window they saw in the video and on the other side they find a small bedroom, a bed with handcuffs on it so that whoever was lying there could be fixed and then made to watch what was happening on the other side of the two-way mirror.
From there the rooms get smaller and much more basic. There's another bathroom, a room with several mattresses on the floor, a room with nothing but dirt and rubbish. A wardrobe with dresses and men's clothes, a strange room with a cot and toys for a small child.
The three men speak very little, only when necessary, and move like a well-oiled machine. They stop one time in the afternoon for a snack and a couple of times to take off their masks and have a drink, but otherwise they keep going. None of them can go another day without knowing what is hidden down here.
They find a room full of stolen art and a large safe full of documents relating to Korn's shady business dealings.
They are almost done around midnight when they reach a room that looks like another storeroom, with shelves full of cleaning supplies, medicine, tins and who knows what else, when Chan catches something out of the corner of his eye that makes him scream.
"Down!"
Kim and Arm do so without thinking, throwing themselves to the floor and ducking behind the shelves. They wait for what seems like an eternity, frantically scanning the dimly lit room for any movement. Then they crouch down and draw their weapons. It's hard to breathe behind the masks, hard to see with the special goggles in the dim light and hard to move in the heavy equipment. Still, they move slowly forward, and then they all move in on their target at the same time.
Someone is crouched on the ground, wearing large sweatpants and a large shirt. The person's head is covered by pale, thin hands with dirty, bitten-off fingernails. Whoever it is is trembling with fear, not even looking up. You could shoot them and they wouldn't even see it coming.
"At least it's not Korn," says Chan, and of course he's right. They know the person can't hear them through the masks.
"I can't tell if it's a man or a woman."
"We should approach carefully. If they're as fragile as Namphueng, we might scare them to death looking like this," Chan says after another minute of waiting for a reaction and getting none.
"Namphueng reacted to me, so I will take off this equipment. Cover me," Kim decides. He doesn't feel as sure as he might have sounded as he takes off his helmet, then his mask and glasses. His hair is wet with sweat and the air down here is very stale and stuffy. There is almost no sound from the screens, so this is actually a pretty clever place to hide from the horrors of this dungeon.
Slowly, Kim approaches and then crouches down. He tries to picture Porchay and how he would act if he found a frightened person somewhere, not knowing who it was. Porchay wouldn't be afraid, he would only want to help.
"Hey, I'm not going to hurt you. We're here to help you and get you out of here. Namphueng sent us," he tries, but gets no response. If anything, the shaking gets worse.
"This is Chan and this is Arm. We've been working really hard to find you in here." Nothing. "Oh, and I'm Kim."
Just like Namphueng, the moment he says his name he gets a reaction. Their head jerks up and wide, frightened eyes meet Kim's.
It's a woman, not a man. She's eerily pale and very thin. There's a scar across her cheek and her eyes are slightly unfocused but alert. She has long dark hair that looks dirty and greasy, and she smells of sweat. It's hard to tell how old she is, she's so pale and frail.
"Can you tell me your name?" Kim continues and almost pulls away when she reaches out and touches his arm with her index finger, but she pulls back again, her eyes widening even more. Kim feels Chan come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Kim..." Chan clears his voice, but Kim refuses to look away from the woman whose eyes are still on him.
"Kimmy," she whispers after an eternity, and it's the voice that sends shivers through Kim, because he knows it, barely remembers it, and hasn't heard it for decades except in his nightmares. Chan's grip on his shoulder tightens. He must have realised sooner than Kim himself who is sitting in front of them.
"Ma," Kim whispers, looking into her eyes before everything goes black.
TBC