My Client's Former Best Friend | MEANIE/MINWON

Chapter Seven.

What are you doing?

Wonwoo’s brain demanded as the door slammed shut.

We don’t get involved with the police or kidnapping or murderers. Especially when one of them is our ex-boyfriend.

Oh, just shut up.

  Wonwoo had pulled them into a little kitchen of sorts. It was screened in, with a door leading out to the back patio. There was a huge grill along one side and a barbecue pit in the middle of the floor. A stocked bar curved out from the wall beside them. It smelled of campfire and tequila.

  Wonwoo crossed to the opposite side of the pit from Rowoon. The location didn’t matter. What mattered was the man in the navy suit. The man he hadn’t seen in eight years.

  His hair, his beautiful brown hair, had streaks of gray in it. His face showed the strain of the job.

  “Detective, huh?”

  He scowled. “I don’t want to make small talk with you. I have work to do. Say what you’re going to say so I can get back to it.”

  “Fine. This is my case. Mr. Wen is my client. Stay the fuck out of it.” Wonwoo kept his manner calm and his words forceful.

  Rowoon scowled more. “Wonu, you can’t honestly tell me you’ve involved yourself in a kidnapping case.”

  “Of course I haven’t. As I said, Mr. Wen is my client. He doesn’t want the police involved in his life, and I am in charge of making sure his wishes are seen to, got it?” Before Rowoon could react, she added, “And don’t call me Wonu.”

  “Mr. Wen is the key witness in the Xu kidnapping case. I could have you arrested for obstruction of justice.”

  “Xu Minghao hasn’t even been gone twenty-four hours. How can you call it a kidnapping case?” Wonwoo shot back.

  “Because his father is Xu Yiming.” He didn’t need to say more. Estranged or not, if Xu Yiming wanted his son back, he’d turn the whole city upside down, rules and regulations be damned. “He got an anonymous threat this morning, demanding ransom for his missing son and implicating Mr. Wen was the perpetrator.”

  Wonwoo sighed. “I can tell you for a fact that Mr. Wen is innocent of the kidnapping.”

  Rowoon didn’t react.

  “He has been in the city with me and/or Mr. Kim since yesterday evening.”

  Rowoon raised an eyebrow. Wonwoo knew from his intimate knowledge of Rowoon that he was looking Wonwoo over for any signs of perjury.

  “Your word is useless, Wonu. You lie for a living,” he said.

  “Not about the things that matter.” Wonwoo filled his words with meaning, injecting them with the memories of their relationship—two naïve romantics, playing at forever.

  Rowoon sighed. “I can’t stop the investigation.”

  “Good, I don’t want you to. You’re right, I don’t get involved with kidnappings, and someone’s got to find that man before Xu Yiming rips this town apart. Just don’t take Mr. Wen in for questioning.” Wonwoo may have sounded flippant, but his heart was pounding. If Rowoon didn’t believe him, if he didn’t buy his story...

  “Fine. If Mr. Kim’s story checks out, I won’t question Mr. Wen. But if we haven’t found Mr. Xu in twenty-four hours, I’m taking him in.”

  “Seventy-two. And Mr. Kim doesn’t get interrogated either.”