It’s not Daisha’s name that shows up on the Caller ID this time but Sang-cheol’s.
I answer before the first ring finishes. “Where is she? What the fuck happened?!”
“Baekho-je…” he coughs weakly. He sounds pained as though each word is a struggle.
The insides of my stomach twist into knots. “What? What is it?!”
“I’m… I’m sorry…” he sputters. “I’m at the hospital. Just got out of surgery. He… he stabbed me, Baekho-je. Miss Monroe’s friend and her boyfriend too, the lab tech. We were all stabbed.”
“Damnit, Sang-cheol!” I roar, slamming my hand against the steering wheel. “Where is Monroe? What happened to her? Tell me!”
“The man in black. He was… he was masked. He came out of nowhere. I… I didn’t even have time to draw my weapon before...” Another cough interrupts him, lasting for the next couple seconds to come. “When I woke up, I was in an ambulance. Miss Monroe wasn’t with us. She’s gone, Baekho-je. He took her.”
Black Shell has Monroe.
The revelation makes the blood in my veins run ice cold. The chilling sensation quickly spreads through the rest of me, running down my spine in a sharp shiver.
It’s the worst possible news I could be delivered. My worst fear confirmed.
The man who murdered my family thirty years ago and who somehow took my unborn son’s life away now has the woman I love.
Rage and terror war inside me, two primal forces threatening to tear me apart from the inside out. I’m caught between the urge to scream and put my fist through the windshield.
I’m desperate and frantic all while I should be strategic and smart.
This is exactly what he wants. He wants to make me spin out of control like I’ve done before. Then when I’m emotional and irrational, he’s going to deal the final blow.
He’s going to?—
I cut off the terrifying thought and wrench the steering wheel, pulling over to the side of the road with a screech from my tires.
I try to think through the red haze clouding my head. It feels impossible as my pulse races and all I can think about is what he might be doing to her.
Where would he take her? Where would Black Shell go?
I’m racking my brain and still urging myself to think straight when my phone buzzes. Not from a call but a text this time. Several of them that come in one after another from an unknown number.
The first is a photo of Monroe. The ice in my veins drops to an even lower temperature, making it so I can’t even breathe.
She’s bound and gagged, her wrists secured with rough rope, her eyes wide with terror as she stares at the camera.There’s a cloth shoved into her mouth and a bruise already forming on her cheek. She appears to be in some sort of trunk or compartment…
The next text appears right under the photo.
If you wish to finish this, you can find me where it all began.
A split second later, the final text pops up on the screen.
Come alone or I slit her throat.
I stare at the words, my hands shaking from the fury and terror coalesced inside me. I’ve never wanted to destroy an enemy more than I want to rip Black Shell to shreds. Than I want to tear him apart and listen to his screams of agony as I do.
If he hurts my rabbit…
I breathe through the thickening rage and focus on his message.
“Where it all began,” I mutter to myself. My jaw hardens. “The hanok.”
My childhood home, tucked away by the beach miles outside the city. The place where I lived for the first four years of my life with family who loved me—until that was taken away.
