the naked face || bts

twenty one

Rocky Vaccaro switched on the headlights. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, but the sun was buried somewhere behind the mass of cumulus clouds that scudded overhead, pushed by the icy winds. They had been driving for over an hour. 

Rocky was at the wheel. Nick was seated next to him. Yoongi was in the back seat with Areum. In the beginning Yoongi had kept an eye out for a passing police car, hoping that he might somehow make a desperate bid to attract attention, but Rocky was driving through little-used side roads where there was almost no traffic. They skirted the edges of the town, picked up Route 206 and headed south towards the sparsely populated, bleak plains of central Itaewon. The grey sky opened up and it began to pour: a cold, icy sleet that beat against the windscreen like tiny drums gone mad. 

'Slow down,' Areum commanded. 'We don't want to have an accident.' Rocky obediently lightened his foot on the accelerator. Areum turned to Yoongi. 'That's where most people make their mistake. They don't plan things out like me.' 

Yoongi looked at Areum, studying her clinically. The woman was suffering from megalomania, beyond the reach of reason or logic. There was no way to appeal to her. There was some moral sense missing in her that allowed her to kill without remorse. Yoongi knew most of the answers now. Areum had committed the murders with her own hand out of a sense of honour- a Sicilian's revenge, to erase the stain that she thought her husband had placed on her and her Cosa Nostra family. She had killed Taehyung by mistake. When Jimin had reported back to her and told her what had happened, Areum had gone back to the office and found Ara. Poor Ara. She could not give him the tapes of Mr. Jung because she did not know Hoseok by that name. If Areum had kept her temper, she could have helped Ara figure out whom she was talking about; but it was part of her sickness that she had no tolerance for frustration and she had gone into an insane rage, and Ara had died. Horribly. 

It was Areum who had run Yoongi down, and later had come to kill him at her office with Jimin. Yoongi had been puzzled by the fact that they had not broken in and shot her. But he realized now that since Jungkook was sure Yoongi was guilty, they had decided to make his death look like a suicide, committed in remorse. That would stop any further police investigation. 

And Seokjin... poor Seokjin. When Yoongi had told him the names of the detectives on the case, he had thought he was reacting to Jungkook- when it was really Jimin. Seokjin had learned that Jimin was involved with the Cosa Nostra, and when he followed up on it... 

He looked over at Areum. 'What's going to happen to Hoseok?' 

'Don't worry. I'll take care of him,' Areum said. 

Rocky smiled. 'Yeah.'  Yoongi felt a helpless rage sweep over him. 

'I was wrong to marry someone outside the family,' brooded Areum. 'Outsiders can never understand it like it is. Never.' They were travelling in an almost barren section of flat-lands. An occasional factory dotted the sleet-blurred skyline in the distance. 

'We're almost there,' Rocky announced. 

'You've done a good job,' Areum said. 'We're going to hide you away somewhere until the heat cools down. Where would you and your brother like to go?' 

'I like Florida.' 

Areum nodded approvingly. 'No problem. You'll stay with one of the family.' 

'I know some great broads down there.' Rocky smiled. 

Areum smiled back at him in the mirror. 'You'll come back with a tanned ass.' 

'I hope that's all I come back with.' Rocky Vaccaro laughed. In the distance, on the right, Yoongi saw the sprawled buildings of a factory spewing smoke into the air. They reached a small side road leading to the factory. Rocky turned into it and drove until they came to a high wall. The gate was closed. Rocky leaned on the horn and a man in a raincoat and rain hat appeared behind the gate. When he saw Areum, he nodded, unlocked the gate, and swung it open. Rocky drove the car inside, and the gate closed behind them. They had arrived.