RDM | MW [✔]

Prologue: Wonwoo

The connection was awful—the video feed grainy even as my fingertips flew across the keyboard to correct it.

With a pinch between my eyebrows and a straw between my teeth, I gnawed as I worked. The rhythmic sound of my keyboard filled my otherwise silent apartment with stilted clicks. There were eighteen cameras for me to sift through, and though I've handled double that amount, I wasn't in the mood to mess around.

I just wanted to see him.

The nightclub he frequented had horrible cybersecurity and an even worse camera setup. The quality of this feed was worse than a porn flick from the eighties, and though I was really, really good at my job, the best actually, I couldn't make the feed any less fuzzy.

I was a hacker, not God.

My soda was flat as it ran down my throat, the drink lukewarm and hours old. My fingertips were raw, my eyes burning. There was an ever-present cramp between my shoulder blades that practically begged me to correct my posture, but there wasn't much I could do when I spent twenty hours a day in the same chair.

Thumb on the arrows of my keyboard, I clicked through each of the cameras, my patience plummeting. Swiping my cup off the desk, I ignored the sound it made when it bounced against the old floor. A snarl left my throat, my fingers now rigid as I worked. There were hundreds of people to sift through, most of them on the dance floor, half-naked and sweating. I watched their heads bob along with the beat, arms above their heads, swaying while I scanned each one—looking carefully for the tattoo I'd long since memorized.

I couldn't find him, and as I went through each camera a second time, I worried he'd already left and I'd have to hack into his phone's GPS for the third time that night.

No.

No.

No.

I shoved my oversized sleeves up past my elbows, scratching violently at my forearms. There were three monitors in front of me, LED lights glued along the screens of each. They constantly cast me in a hue of royal blue, and I watched the colored shadows move across my knuckles as I struggled to find him.

Each of my monitors had the thumbnails of six video feeds, and I swept through them all with quick, calculated eyes. My wrists ached as my fingers moved, enlarging each feed only to move to the next one. Anger was brewing beneath my skin, and I was just about to put my fist through my desk when I spotted him.

Daddy.

He was so gorgeous.

His jeans clung to his thighs as he strode through the center of the club, his eyes on his phone as he moved with purpose. Light hair was tied in a haphazard bun at the nape of his neck, and I wanted to tear that tie out with my teeth just so I could run my hands through it.

I zoomed in as much as this system allowed, and when that wasn't enough, I pressed my face so close to the screen, the tip of my nose brushed the hardened edge of his jawline. It twitched with his smile, the elusive grin tugging at his cheeks as he weaved through an ocean of people. My fingers left streaks on the screen as I touched him, trailing the tight cords in his neck and over the muscles in his shoulders. They rippled beneath his laughter, and though I couldn't hear it, I knew what it sounded like.

I knew everything about him.

Each step he took, each word he spoke, each wave of laughter that left his chest was a carefully crafted ruse. Kim Mingyu was calculated, a near genius, yet he feigned naiveté and a disposition that spritzed people with enough comfortability to approach him.