House Of Cards || NCT Mafia

Chapter twelve : Caught in the trap

Taeyong was seated at his desk, working on the plans that could lead to their rivals, when two men barged in his room, not even caring about knocking first. The leader would usually be upset about that, as he hated to be disturbed in his work, but as soon as he took a quick glance at his members' faces, he knew that was not a priority.

"Lucas, Jaehyun? What is it?"

The two men looked at each other before gently throwing a black plastic bag on their leader's desk.

"There's been another one" spoke the oldest of the two.

Taeyong's face darkened, understanding right away what Jaehyun meant. He didn't even have to look through the small bag to know what was inside of it.

A finger. The middle one, more precisely.

"We were in town when one on our contact told us something seemed off back in the industrial area, so we went to check, but- "

"We were to late, man" Lucas said. "That's all we found" he said while pointing at the bag with his head.

Taeyong deeply sighed.

"Anything different from the previous ones? Something out of the ordinary that I should know of? I don't know, any clue that could lead us to them?"

The two men shook their head no.

"Just like the other ones. No traces, just this bag..." Jaehyun explained.

"Not to sound disrespectful or anything, hyung, but... are you really sure it's their doing? I mean, I know you said that was their signature back then, but it's been years and there's no trace of them anywhere... For all we know, this could be a copycat or something, don't you think?" Lucas shyly observed.

Jaehyun looked at Lucas like he was crazy. No one ever doubted Taeyong's word. Especially not nowadays, for his temper got worse, let alone dare to say anything that went against him. Taeyong, who had his head in his hands, slowly looked up at Lucas.

His stare itself was enough to make the tall man shiver and Jaehyun look down.

"Are you doubting my opinion, Lucas?" he slowly articulated. 

The said man just put his eyes anywhere in the room, avoiding any eye contact with his leader, as he knew that if he did, he'd probably loose the little composure he had left.

"N-no of course not! It's just... I'm simply wondering if you thought of, maybe, considering the possibility that... you might be, uh, well, wrong..." 

After hearing the last part of the sentence, Jaehyun's head shot up towards his friend, then quickly towards their leader, scared that Taeyong would skin Lucas alive right here and there.

The older man in the room showed no emotion, however, at his member's question. Not that he was usually expressive anyway.

His fiery eyes seemed to bury themselves into Lucas' ones, as his voice deepened when he said "It is them. There's no doubt about it, understood? Now you better get the hell out of my office before I make you regret your disrespectful behavior"

Each word resonated through the members' entire bodies, as if Taeyong's voice was so deep it somehow cut through their skin and bones. 

They didn't wait for the leader to change his mind and almost ran out of the office. As they were walking back to the common are of the mansion, Jaehyun smacked Lucas on the arm.

"Dude, what the hell was that? Do you have a death wish or something?"

"Of course I don't, I just said what everybody else is thinking. Don't tell me you didn't consider the possibility of Taeyong being wrong about this whole thing"

"You're right, I did. Just like the others, yes. But you know how sensitive Taeyong is about the topic, so next time you put a stunt like that, please don't drag me into it, or at least warn me before hand so I can arrange your funeral" Jaehyun half-joked.

Lucas dryly laughed.

"Yeah, well I genuinely didn't mean to be disrespectful or anything, it's just... like you said he's touchy on this subject, he's way too close to it. I just want to make sure he is aware of it before dragging us in his personal vendetta."

"I get it, really, I do" Jaehyun softly smiled at his friend. "But you gotta let him do this, he needs it. Take it as... some sort of closure. Because that's what it is to him. I mean... they're responsible for the death of thousand of people, including Taeyong's sister, and they never got caught. He and his family never got to close this painful chapter of their lives, so, even if it's not them, let him think it is. If anything, he'll realize his mistake on his own." Jaehyun patted Lucas' shoulder.

The younger nodded, understanding his words. 

They were passing by Taeil's computer room when they heard a voice coming from inside, the door not being completely closed.

"No, no, no, no"

Jaehyun and Lucas looked at each other before getting closer to the door.

"Come on, don't do this to me, please"

The voice, which belong to Taeil, sounded stressed out at something. Almost begging.

Lucas shrugged before knocking on the slightly opened door.

"Uhh, Taeil-hyung? You alright in there?" he asked while poking his head through to small space.

The hacker turned around at the sound of Lucas' voice.

"Guys, I think we got a problem. A big one, that is."

Jaehyun, annoyed at the fact that he couldn't hear anything that was being said because of Lucas' body blocking the way, softly pushed him inside, so they could both get in the room.

It was quite dark, the only source of light coming from the several computers screens. There were papers everywhere and a good dozen of empty coffee cups laying on what the guys assumed, was originally a desk.

A quite surprising view for them as Taeil was usually rather organized. 

"What's going on?" Jaehyun asked, when he realized that Taeil had already forgotten about their existence to go back to his computers, tapping as fast as he could on his keyboard.

"The USB key that I cracked, the one you stole from Kang" Taeil started, not even looking away from the screens, where an infinite number of characters and digits went by.

"It was a trap. I-I don't know how they did it, I have an unerring firewall... I-I..." he was now panicking, still tapping like there was no tomorrow. "I don't understand how they could crack it, maybe they used their own program to disable mine, or..." he mumbled.

"Taeil-hyung, in English, please?"

The oldest stopped what he was doing to face the other two.

"Kang hacked our system. They stole literally everything we had, all our data."

Lucas and Jaehyun looked at each other, slowly understanding what that meant.

"Fuck..."