FATE'S GAME | | BTS FF (18+)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KIM TAEHYUNG

Trust.

It's a word that doesn't exist in my world. Not in business, not in blood, and certainly not in marriage.

Yet here I was, waking in a penthouse that smelled faintly of coffee and her perfume, with the knowledge that Ishita.....the daughter of my enemy, the woman tied to my mother's past was sleeping under the same roof.

And something inside me was shifting. Something I didn't want.

I hadn't seen her all afternoon. The guards told me she left, claiming she went to the museum. But when she returned hours later, her pulse was too quick, her shoulders too tense, her eyes shadowed in ways she couldn't disguise.

She thought I wouldn't notice.

She forgot who I am.

I leaned against the glass wall of the living room, whiskey burning down my throat as she tried to slip past me, wrapped in her coat.

"Where were you?" I asked, my voice calm, almost too calm.

She froze. A fraction of a second but I caught it.

"The museum," she said lightly, tugging her scarf off. "I told the guards."

Her lie was smooth. Practiced. But I could hear the hitch beneath it, I set the glass down . "You saw something."

Her head snapped up. "What—"

"Don't." My voice cut through the air like a blade. "Don't play innocent with me. You left here empty. You came back... shaken. Eyes wide, hands unsteady. Something happened."

Her lips parted, but no sound came.

The silence between us stretched, thick with everything she wouldn't say. And the longer it lasted, the darker my thoughts became.

I took a step closer, and she instinctively took one back.

That hurt more than I cared to admit.

"Ishita," I said, her name low, sharp, like the crack of a whip.

"Tell me."

She swallowed, her throat working, but the words didn't come.

That silence... it was an answer in itself.

I moved closer, slow, deliberate, until the space between us was nothing but a fragile breath. Her back nearly touched the wall, and still I closed in, one hand braced against the glass behind her head. Trapping her without a touch.

Her perfume rose up between us, maddening.

"Do you think I can't know?" My voice was low, lethal. "Where you went. Who you met."

Her lips parted, the faintest tremor in her breath, but she didn't answer.

I leaned in closer, my arm still braced against the glass above her head, caging her without a touch. "Do you really think I need your confession to uncover the truth? I have eyes everywhere .

Walls talk,

guards whisper,

cameras don't lie.

If I want to, I can trace every step you take."

Her fingers curled into her coat, clutching it tighter around herself, as if it could shield her from me.

I almost laughed at that. "But you?" I continued. "You came back here, with your hands trembling, your eyes giving you away, thinking I wouldn't notice."

I let the pause linger. "So I'll ask you one last time.  What happened in the museum?"

For a second, I thought she'd hold her silence, thought she'd keep me chained in that maddening guessing game.

But then barely above a whisper, her voice cracked.

"Reyansh Rathore ."

Heat surged in my veins, sharp and merciless. Reyansh Rathore. The man who was once meant to stand where I do now. The man who would have had her, if she hadn't run.

If fate or perhaps her rebellion hadn't pulled her into my orbit instead.

My jaw clenched so tight it ached. "He was there?"

Her lashes fluttered, guilt flashing in her eyes before she gave the smallest nod. "At the museum."

Of course. Where else would a snake slither if not among shadows and whispers.

I took one step closer, enough that her back brushed fully against the glass wall. "And you let him speak to you?" My voice was quiet, deadly, because rage didn't need volume it needed precision.

"I didn't let him...." she protested, her breath unsteady. "He just... appeared. He wanted me to remember."

"Remember what?" My words cut like glass.

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "The wedding I never walked into. the broken deal. He said I ran from one cage just to land in another."

A muscle in my jaw clenched, a familiar, unwelcome rage stirring in my gut. Reyansh's words were poison, designed to undermine and provoke.

The fact that he'd had access to her, that he'd dared to speak to her in the first place, was a fire in my blood.

"He's a fool," I said, my voice low and tight.

"He thinks he understands things he doesn't. He has no idea what you are to me."

The words were out before I could stop them. They hung in the air, a reckless admission that I immediately wanted to take back.

She looked up at me, a flicker of something in her eyes ..curiosity, fear, defiance.

"What I am to you?" she asked, her voice quiet but steady, laced with that maddening mix of innocence and defiance only she could wield.

The corner of my mouth curved, humorless. "You want me to spell it out for you?"

Her breath hitched, but she didn't look away. Brave. Or foolish. Maybe both.

"You think Reyansh Rathore can compare to me?" I said, my voice low, deliberate, each word striking between us like steel.

"You think what he offered you was freedom? He would've caged you just the same. The only difference is..."

I leaned in, close enough that my breath brushed her ear.

"...my chains are stronger."

She shivered, but whether from fear or something else, I couldn't tell.

Her fingers clenched in the fabric of her coat, her jaw tightening as though she wanted to retort, to throw the words back at me...but nothing came.

Instead, silence stretched, humming with the weight of all that went unsaid.

And that was the danger. Because in her silence, in the wide, unflinching way she looked at me, I felt the tug I swore I would never allow.

I forced myself to step back, though every muscle in me screamed against it. Cold air rushed between us, breaking the storm.

"Stay away from him," I said finally, my voice hard again, armor slamming back into place. "If you see him again, if he so much as breathes in your direction...you tell me first. Do you understand?"

Her lips parted as though she might argue, but then she caught the edge in my tone, the promise of violence beneath it, and only gave a small nod.

Good. Because if Reyansh thought he could walk back into her life, he'd just declared war.

And I don't lose wars.

.........to be continued!!