“Yes, I do,” I mutter against her lips. “It just shows how you made a very rational man like me so very irrational, Tokki-ya. Consider it an achievement.”
Her face lights up prettily. “Believe me, I do. It’s not every day the Silent Hunter falls in love with the woman he wassupposed to eighty-six. Now the real question is: What is he going to feed his pregnant fiancée for dinner?”
A wolfish, spur of the moment, laugh escapes me. A rarity, but if there’s anyone that can make it happen, it’s Monroe.
I pinch her cheek as I get up from the couch and head toward the kitchen where we have a drawer full of takeout menus. “I should’ve known. Everything always comes down to food with you, Tokki-ya.”
It’s a few days before either of us feel back to ourselves again. The jet lag wears off, and our bodies readjust to life on South Korea’s time.
I’m more than ready to get back to work. I turn up at the Claw Lounge, the club that belongs to the Baekho Pa and has served as our headquarters for decades.
In the wake of Kim Jae-hyun’s death, I’ve ensured the place was renovated. Gone are many of the tawdry, tacky furnishings and deterioration that happened under his watch.
The club has been modernized. It’s a place where our men and associates can still come to drink, gamble, and enjoy themselves, but there are limits.
We are no longer a syndicate celebrating excess; we are about being disciplined and dominant, fiercely ruling over our territory in Busan.
When I step through the doors of my office, two men are already waiting.
Lieutenant Nam Joo-wan lounges in one of the leather chairs, a glass of soju dangling from his fingers despite the early hour. He’s a wiry man with slicked-back hair and shrewd eyes that never seem to stop calculating. His laugh is loud, his opinions louder, and he drinks like a fish. There’s an arroganceto him that grates on me, though I’ve never questioned his competence.
Standing near the window is Park Min-gyu, one of my most reliable hubaes. He’s young—barely twenty-five—but built like a bull, with broad shoulders and hands that have done more damage than most men twice his age. Unlike the lieutenant, Min-gyu is principled and dutiful, his loyalty proven time and again.
“Jin-tae,” Nam greets me, raising his glass in a mock salute. “Welcome back. How was the Land of Opportunity?”
“A brief but needed reprieve,” I answer vaguely. I move through the room hardly sparing either of them a glance. “Update me about what’s happened in my absence.”
Joo-wan sets down his drink and straightens slightly, though his posture remains more casual than I’d prefer. “Business as usual, for the most part. We collected on the outstanding debts from the gambling rings—the ones who thought they could stall got a reminder of why that’s inadvisable. Nothing you wouldn’t expect.”
“And the Bulgeomhoe?”
Joo-wan waves a dismissive hand. “They’ve been sniffing around the South Gyeongsang Province again. Some of their boys got cocky and tried to shake down a few businesses under our protection. We handled it.”
“Handled it how?”
“Sent a message, of course!” he answers boisterously, adding a loud laugh. “Broke a few bones. Left them bloodied and bruised. They scurried back to their territory with their tails between their legs.”
I study him for a moment, reading the satisfaction in his expression. Lieutenant Nam enjoys violence when it serves his ego. It makes him effective but also reckless at times.
These are observations I was aware of even when I was aHo-gwi, still a captain working up the ladder of the Baekho Pa.
“If it was handled,” I say slowly, “then why do I sense there’s more?”
Joo-wan’s mouth opens to refute my suspicions, but Min-gyu interjects first. He’s stepped forward with a bow of his head.
“There was another altercation, Baekho-je. Last night a group of Bulgeomhoe enforcers harassed a restaurant owner in Gimhae. Threatened his family. Our men intervened, but...” He hesitates, glancing at Joo-wan. “It seems the message didn’t stick.”
The lieutenant’s expression sours. “It was a dust-up. Nothing more. These things happen. The Bulgeomhoe are dogs—they bark, we bite, they retreat. It’s the natural order.”
“The natural order,” I repeat, “or the disrespectful order we’ve tolerated until now?”
I move around my desk to look out at the city streets. The Claw Lounge is located on a street that’s mostly dedicated to commerce, nondescript to anybody who doesn’t know what goes on inside.
But the rest of Busan can be seen from the window of my office, the city looming in the near distance.
The Bulgeomhoe have been a thorn in the Baekho Pa’s side for years—a scrappy, vicious little gang that lacks the resources to truly challenge us but refuses to accept their place in the hierarchy.
They’re opportunistic and always testing boundaries. Seeing how far they can push before we push back.
