Heartless

{22}

Dori liked to make his presence known, so where the fuck was he all of a sudden? A man like him disappearing unsettled her, and it made her queasy thinking of all the possibilities of where he could be, more like what he was doing. She had a shit ton on her plate and there wasn't much she could scrape off to make room for more unnecessary bullshit, which is what this was.

Not to mention that neither she nor her brother heard from any one of the men they had sent to Japan as spies, looking to find this gangster and figure out his motives, what he knew, and how he was involved with everything. Unmasking this man would help take him out along with Dori because he was causing too many problems which he wasn't worth.

Considering that she had broken their alliance and made that known to everyone, regardless of whether Dori agreed to it or not, the Yakuza weren't friendly anymore due to the leader's shadiness and insanity that was not reliable. Almost ironically as she sat in her office and reapplied her lipstick, her bodyguard came in after knocking and the look on his face told her something had come up.

"Your brother got a delivery."

That grabbed her attention, and she didn't waste any time in making her way alongside him to her brother's office. Walking in after knocking, Jimin sits on the leather couch with a frown etched on his face, and his consigliere looks no different as he quickly puts out his cigarette in the ashtray resting on the glass table, where a cardboard box was.

"What's this?", she asks once situating herself opposite her brother, Jungkook standing idly by the door.

Finally, after some heavy beats of silence, Jimin stood and cleared his throat, and once opening the box, a familiar pungent smell wafted through the air. It was so unnaturally strong that Runa pinched her nose and copied Jimin's actions, standing from the couch to hover over the opened box that had someone's head lying inside.

Chopped clean off not too far below the jawline, those piercings and the hairstyle indicated that this was Dori, the man who had suddenly gone missing and now they know why. He was dead, somebody killed him and intentionally sent this to them, Jimin more specifically.

"Who did this?", she questions, and to anyone else, it seems like a stupid question to ask considering why the hell would her brother know?

The reason she asks him is because he has a certain look of recognition in his eyes. Like he knows who did this and it is painfully clear to everyone that this had just gotten much worse by the realization in the leader's eyes as he closes the box and sits down. Runa remained in her posture, not able to sit down and relax because she was on edge right now and she needed an answer. Jimin knew.

"Lee Taemin", he finally spoke up, looking directly into her curious gaze with malice behind his words, "An old gang leader of mine. Someone I used to trust but he got power-hungry and went rogue. He disappeared and I couldn't find him to tie up loose ends, and it looks like now he's gotten what he wanted. He's the new Yakuza leader, meaning he's coming to town or already here, hiding somewhere."

The information sinks in, drowning her like quicksand. She got her answer but at what cost? One thing led to another, the dominoes continued to fall and collectively, they knew that her father's assassination and her rise to power was just the beginning.

"What do we do about this? I'm sure the obvious answer is to kill him, but I don't think he's doing this just for power", she replies, and Jimin can't help but feel a sense of dread in what she suggests.

"You think he's gonna come after me?", he asks, running his hands through his hair to massage the ache in his head from not only the inconvenience, but the lingering odor that permeated throughout the office.