Boss ~Taeten~

Chapter 30

*Sorry this was so late! I finally decided it was time to get a chapter out for my birthday, because you guy's support is the best gift I could ask for!^^

Enjoy!!*

*There may be some triggering material in this chapter so please take care of yourself as you read through^^*

*Unedited*

3/3

17

4

The three sat in the center of the large dinner table, the blue haired mafia boss on one side and the middle aged couple on the other beside each other.

A tense silence blanketed the room, only disturbed by Taeil and Johnny's quiet footsteps as they served to food to their guests and boss.

Ten looks down at his meal and raises a dumpling up to eye level with his chopsticks and looks at it closely. "This was." he trails off before he can even complete his attempt at conversation. The blue haired boss clears his throat, sighs heavily and places the dumpling back onto his plate "This is," he said, attempting for a second time to speak "his favorite meal to prepare for us"

The pair nod and nibble lightly at their food "It was the first thing I taught him to make when he moved in with us" Mr. Boseok mumbles staring rather intensely at the ramyeon before him. "This meal was always very special to him, it was one of the only foods his mother never managed to ruin for him"

Ten had filled his mouth delicately with food, so instead of a verbal response and polite inquiry he cocks his head to display his curiosity as he chews.

"Taeyong's mother was very insistent that he maintain a certain figure in order to create a... visually pleasing, presentation of her family to the world whenever they went out. So, in short, she was rather strict about his eating habits" Mrs. Hyorin explains kindly, her benevolent tone laced in poison for what her sister had done to the young redhead.

Ten swallows his next mouthful of food slowly as he comes to process this information. As he did so he recalled the apple from one of the first nights Taeyong had lived among the gang, and the several supervised meals he had shared with the redhead afterwards. An unconscious growl rumbles up from the blue haired man's throat as he came to understand the context implied within this information.

Ten looks up at the couple with steel eyes blazing bright and silver with an emotion akin to rage, but when he spoke his voice was soft, the sharpness behind the cottony covering of his tone matched the emotions in his eyes but the gentleness of his delivery helped to soften the blow.

"Is there anything else about Taeyong's past, before he came to you, that I should know about?"

The couple looked at each other then to Ten, silently agreeing to surrender whatever information would be reasonable.

Mrs. Hyorin squared her shoulders and took a deep breath "What would you like to know" she asks strongly, staring Ten right in the eyes in such a way that a guilty man would have been forced to look away.

Ten held his gaze steady on Mrs. Hyorin's "everything" he says quietly before sitting back from his position leaning over the food before him "Everything you can tell me that will not cross too personal a line with Taeyong, I would prefer to get any personal specifics directly from him."

Mrs. Hyorin nods serenely and sits back, taking a slow blink before she begins to share and impersonal, or as impersonal as she could, account of the horrors Taeyong had been subjected to until he had come to live with them at age 11.

She spoke carefully of how as a young boy he was often left to his own devices within his home, which stayed completely locked at all times. Not a single friend was made through out those years.

She spoke tentatively of the verbal abuse Taeyong would receive from his mother whenever she saw him, how she would comment on his weight and looks during meals and the passing murmurs of disapproval of everything she saw her son doing.

Mrs. Hyorin spoke warily of his father's physical abuse, how the instant he deviated against the rules he would be beaten and locked into the musty, lightless basement for days on end with little more than the clothes on his back and a single can of whatever canned food happened to be closest for his father to throw at him at the time.

To complete her rough outline of the horrors Taeyong had been forced to face in his childhood Mrs. Hyorin described to the livid mafia boss the condition of the basement in more extreme detail.

She described in great detail the frigid concrete floors and walls, the rotting wooden stairs, the broken bulb in the only socket in the room and the boarded up window that had been smashed in one of Taeyong's father's fits of rage.

She illustrated a room devoid of all light, the moist, dirty air so thick that if you breathed too deeply you might choke. The cold concrete floors covered with layer upon layer of dust that would nearly suffocate you if you attempted to lay in it to sleep.

Finally she told Ten about the stench, the putrid stench of decay radiating off of the innumerable amounts of dead mice and rats that hid within the dust on the floors. The sickly sweet smell of vomit coming from all over showing its ugly self for days after Taeyong had been released from the blackness of his own personal hell.

Before Mrs. Hyorin could have possibly continued any further Ten held up a shaking hand for her to stop. He stood in his place with one hand upon the table to support himself and the other still raised.

The nauseous blue haired boss looked up slowly at the couple who looked back sadly at the shaken man, he opened his mouth and spoke slowly "I believe I must take some time to process this, we have a set of rooms prepared for you two to share for the time being Taeil will guide you to them.

Please accept to stay, we still have much to discuss"