The Mafia's Dove (Hyunjin centric)

Melody

-Minho's POV-

I had always been the most cautious one. Chan was protective of us, sure, but he was also incredibly empathetic. It was in his nature to look after and help others, and that caused him to be easily manipulated. He fell for the damsel in distress act more than he should, his logic often being pushed to the side lines as his kind nature blinded him to everything but the goal of helping.

I had always been the last to trust. The last to drop my guard. There were threats around every corner because of the work we did, and we had been betrayed too many times for me to so easily put my trust in someone outside of our circle. My cautiousness had kept us alive on more than one occasion, but as the only one careful enough to not trust so easily, it was often a difficult thing to balance.

We had all seen terrible things. Met terrible people. We all carried scars from the corrupt assholes we had dealt with as members of SKZ as well as before. But despite all that, the others were too quick to be blinded by the good in someone. They never saw the knife aimed at their back because they trusted people too easily.

So it was my responsibility to protect them from those that wished to manipulate or betray them. They weren't naive by any means, but they were too kind for their own good. They could spot a bad person a mile away, but some enemies never portrayed themselves as threats, or as harmless damsels.

We had seen it all. Those too dumb to be manipulative, those who were good at playing the innocent card but were never good enough. It was our job to weed out the good from the bad. It was our specialty. But some evils never chose a side. Some balanced on the fence, never crossing the line too far to risk tipping over. Some portrayed flawed innocence. Not a harmless lamb, but a wolf dressed in tattered wool.

They were always the most real, because no one was harmless. And those that acted like they were usually hid claws sharper than most.

No. My boyfriends were no fools. Perhaps it was my own issues that caused me to take on that responsibility. Perhaps it was my own inability to trust that made me view everyone else as too trusting. My own bias against humanity that made me compare people to wolves in the first place.

I wasn't trusting.

I wasn't forgiving.

I was suspicious and petty and vindictive. I saw the worst in people before I attempted to find the good, and I clung onto every flaw like a clue to some big betrayal. Every lingering look, every waver of a voice, every stuttered word.

I had learned that expecting betrayal made it hurt less. Made it easier to face. Made you prepared. So I trusted no one outside of SKZ. Not Mrs. Ahn, not the council, and not any of our connections. Trust was something earned, but not even I knew the price of mine.

But Hyunjin was by far the most difficult to form an opinion on.

I kept looking for signs that he planned on betraying us. I kept digging to see if he was being honest when he claimed to no longer be affiliated with the mafia. But I found nothing. I found no information, no clues, that indicated one way or the other.

Seungmin had already proven that Hyunjin was Hwang Seong's son, that he was legally dead and publicly mourned, and that Hwang Seong was the head of the Red Sparrow Mafia. But the rest of the information we had was simply Hyunjin's narrative. There was no evidence to support that he was disowned, and no evidence that proved he was no longer affiliated with the mafia even if that was the case.

Everyone else simply took his word as the truth, and while I wanted to do the same, I couldn't shake the paranoia.

I hated admitting that. The fact that I wanted to trust him. That I wanted him to be telling the truth. It usually never mattered to me whether or not someone earned my trust, but the more I got to know him, the more I found myself hoping he was telling the truth. That it wasn't just a ruse.