House of Cards ||Vminkook

Chapter 19: Panic Attack

Goohee was a man that most certainly did not break his promises. Two days before the scheduled week of action was finished Jungkook received a series of photographs stored within an envelope in the mail, delivered up to the penthouse suite by one of his men personally. It had been unmarked with no address or names on it save for a single ink stamp in the corner, one that the other man always used: a small sloop with a solo mast that was the insignia of the Bae family. The contents of the envelope were glossy and professionally printed shots of the absolutely destroyed remains of Kim Jintae. Opening them and seeing the photographs, it was almost like opening a Christmas present for him; tearing the paper as if it was a ribbon and pulling the printed images out to stare at them gleefully.

The contents of the envelope were most certainly not for the fainthearted.

Strangely enough Jintae had no upper head left on the photographs. There was literally nothing discernable left, the sight of which was quite simply astounding to look at. Jungkook had seen a great deal of gunshot wounds to the head but this was something else. This wasn't a concave section that the bullet had punched through, this was a fucking explosion . Goohee's joke about his skull fragments being stuck in the ceiling could have very much been true for he could see blood and brain matter all over the walls in a rather magnificent fan pattern. The man had likely been sitting up in the bed when he had been hit, the shot resulting in such a mess. It looked like one of the men might just have shoved the rifle right into his mouth before pulling the trigger judging from the intensity. A long distance shot couldn't have caused such a glorious level of mess, it just had to have been close-range and maybe even a fragmenting bullet just for maximum damage.

Jimin had taken one look at the photograph of his head when he had passed the kitchen table and had backed away rapidly, clearly not wanting to see it ever again. Jungkook had to admit that it was very unpleasant to look at. It made the photographs of what had happened to Woo and the other men look child-friendly. Jintae was lying in bed and his head should have been on the pillow as if he were sleeping except there was nothing more substantial than his lower jaw left of it. Jungkook found it absolutely fascinating to stare at his undisturbed, white and straight lower teeth and then lift his gaze up to the disgusting mass of pulp and bone that was all over the pillows. It wasn't like looking at a real human at all, rather like something out of a film. A bad film at that, one with rather unrealistic violence and gore in it. But looking at the photographs showed that such horrors were rather fitting and not at all exaggerated.

It was actually a rather fun game trying to locate his eyeballs, yet after quite a deep study Jungkook found that he sadly couldn't. Maybe they had been blown across the room for the forensic crews to find? Maybe they had quite simply ruptured like the rest of his head when the bullet had exploded, he wouldn't have been surprised if that was the case. Staring at the mess of meat on the pillow Jungkook occasionally located a gleam of white that could have been a tooth or a fragment of skull but no eyes sadly. That was rather unfortunate, for he had wanted to look him in the eyes. Even if it was just on the photograph and not in reality, he would have liked to have been able to look deeply into his glazed over eyes and know that he had beaten him, that he had won this first campaign and that there were more victories to be had. But sadly at the expense of having the man murdered it meant that he didn't get to enjoy that private joy.

Goohee hadn't lied when he had told him that the AK 47 was a strong rifle. There was no way of identifying him from his face only because of the damage. But the other man had been sure to get his men to photograph several other recognisable features as backup to ensure that he knew that it was him. His golden class ring that was exactly the same as his father's save for the engraving inside; his Haedogje Pa tattoo on his upper arm right above an old burn scar; and the most obvious feature was the stoma tube in the base of his throat. That was good, that was proof that the corpse was actually that of Kim Jintae but he really hadn't needed the reassurance. Jungkook trusted Goohee to hire men that would do their job and not lie to him. When he had told him that he would kill Kim Jintae then he knew that the other man would do exactly that, and he even did so within the exact time frame.