A con artist and a billionaire tangle in a game of deception, charm, and absolute riches. For a crown of unbelievable power, how much are you willing to pay?
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INT— THE PARK ESTATE.
JEJU-DO, SOUTH KOREA— MORNING.
SCENE IV.
IT HAS BEEN a long, long while since I've genuinely sobbed.
I've cried. For a job that needed a show. A con that needed a way out. My tears aren't a rare commodity. It's nothing but a common tool in my arsenal; well abused ink on worn and rusted pages. It can gain sympathy, a chance, even a lever. If I could rate my tears, I would call the two percent chance of losing honesty.
The two are either sides of the same coin; for those who sadistically enjoy the pain of others and those who don't care for the pain of others. Freaks of a kind, sadism of the worst degrees.
Real tears, one deep within my own, mirroring a part of me I never pull— and a few times wonder if I truly have — upheave from inside me and onto Kristoff's shirt.
I don't even remember how we got where we are. All I know was that I was getting choked out by a maniac, and then there was Kristoff with the right hook, I was in his arms, and now we were in a cinched, dark room where I could barely see past him.
To be fair, I could barely see past my throbbing eyes and tears, so it was useless either way.
I was half slumped on the edge of what I can only assume was furniture but wasn't seated correctly on, half of me was on Kristoff himself. His lap and torso. His neck and chest. I was leaning on him as much as I was melting into him, our bodies blended in shadowed comfort.
My only anchor. The point of light amidst darkness.
How ironic it is to be the man who got me here. The reason I was in a circle of Dante's Inferno.
And he was gentle. Maybe he always was. Maybe today was an exception. But his hands were soft in their caress, the roughly hewned sinew and bone of them a point of safety.
Safety.
This was insanity. Maybe that was the point. I was too exhausted for reason.
He was patient for my sobs to turn to cries, to turn to sniffles. My hands clenched against his shirt when I looked up at his face. In the darkness and the closeness, he was the devil as he was my saviour. His eyes were dark, his face the same chiselled lines. The shadows haunt him. He haunts the shadows. But with my chin tilted like a piety, the answering prayer was a sweet hold of his palms. He was always so cold but I had never felt warmer.
