RDM | MW [✔]

01. Mingyu

Choi Seungcheol's eyes were two black holes. They threatened to lead anyone who dared stare into them long enough straight to hell. A lesser man would cower beneath his gaze but I wasn't a lesser man, and I sure as shit didn't cower.

"Have a seat, Kim." With a heavy hand, he gestured to the chair across from his desk. His words were cordial but the hardness of his jaw told me I'd better sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

In two years, I'd only been in this office twice.

Unbuttoning my jacket, I sat in the oversized chair he'd gestured to. My knuckles popped as I flexed my fingers, the rings wrapped around them nearly identical to the ones he wore. Propping one foot on the adjacent knee, I lifted my chin to my boss.

"Is there something I can do for you, sir?"

He nodded once, running his tongue along his teeth. Fisting a tumbler of what I assumed to be whiskey, he tipped his chin back and took the shot. Abandoning the glass, he pressed both palms into the edge of his desk. His cheek twitched as he careened toward me, his eyes dark and words hushed.

"What I'm about to say does not leave this office. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

"It appears as though someone has ordered a hit against me."

It wasn't often someone issued a kill on my boss but it happened from time to time. It was the hazards of living a life like this one, though it seemed the man had some kind of deal with death.

With ease and simple precision, Choi Seungcheol always managed to evade it.

Most men lacked the balls it took to issue any sort of threat to him, and the ones dumb enough to try received a round of bullets between their legs and a brutal trip to hell.

Maybe it was the way his eyes looked, damning and cruel, or maybe it was the way he absentmindedly twisted his wedding ring around his hardened skin. Either way, I knew this threat was different.

I couldn't just pop a bullet between the eyes of a rogue rival and call it a Wednesday afternoon.

No.

This time he was worried, and that realization alone had my spine stiffening. "What do we know so far?"

"The threat came through on the dark web. It was posted on a message board consisting mostly of contract killers and desperate men looking to pay off their debts."

The internet wasn't a medium I had a lot of knowledge of, but I was an expert in murder. I'd been a contract killer for two years before I'd started working under Seungcheol and I was acutely familiar with the protocol of murder for hire.

As fucked up as it was, there was no shortage of men willing to kill for money. All it took was one person—a friend of a friend of a friend to get you the number of a man who cared more for money than he did for the preservation of his already damned soul.

"If this person is turning to the dark web, it means they're desperate," I said. "Hiring a hitman in this town is like ordering fucking takeout."

Seungcheol's jaw was rigid, and though he appeared still, I knew he was vibrating with rage. "Except there isn't a hitman in this town that would come close to taking me out."

"That, and no man with half a brain would dare try."

Not again.

He'd only been shot once—a near miracle in this line of work. Bullets had come at him from all different directions, and only one scar was left on his body.