The sirens grow louder. My men rush into their cars so we can disappear before the police arrive and start asking questions.
But even as I turn to my sports car and get behind the wheel, one thought remains at the forefront of my mind.
Whoever the Black Shell is, he just made himself a very dangerous enemy.
7.Monroe
I’m curledup in bed with a paperback when I hear the lock on the front door click.
The apartment is quiet except for the hum of the centralized heating and the occasional car passing on the street below. I’ve been lost in my book for the past hour—a romance novel Kelly lent me, swearing it would change my life—but the sound of the front door opening pulls me back to reality.
Jin’s finally home.
I set the book aside, pages splayed open against the comforter, and listen to the familiar noises he makes as he moves through the apartment. Keys dropped onto the counter. Leather jacket shrugged off. His boots left by the door. The heavy tread of his footsteps as he makes his way to the bedroom.
When he appears in the doorway, my stomach roils.
There’s blood on his shirt.
Not a lot by Korean mafia standards—only a few dark splotches near the collar and a smear along his forearm—but enough to make an American expat schoolteacher pause.
His expression is unreadable, jaw clenched and eyes darkand distant. It’s the look he gets when he’s processing information he doesn’t want to share.
“Jin,” I murmur, sitting up straighter. “Are you okay? Did it all work out?”
“I’m fine—and it went fine. Everything’s fine.” He’s tugged off his shirt and turned his tattooed back to me, already heading into the bathroom. “It’s nothing.”
“I’d say blood on your shirt is definitely not fine.”
“It’s not mine.”
He leaves it at that, offering no other explanation as the bathroom door snicks shut. If he meant to reassure me, he hasn’t. If anything, the knot in my stomach pulls tighter.
Not his blood means someone else’s blood. Someone he hurt, or someone who was hurt near him, or?—
I don’t let myself finish that thought.
The shower turns on and steam curls out from under the crevice in the door. Normally I’d return to my book while he showered, but tonight I’m way too distracted. It lays forgotten in my lap as I stare at the closed door and remind myself this is the part of his life I’ve agreed to accept.
Most of the time I’m able to compartmentalize it. I can love Jin without necessarily loving what he does in the Baekho Pa, and it’s possible we can build a life together so long as he keeps those two worlds separate (or so I thought).
But I can’t help starting to wonder if keeping me in the dark is benefiting me after all. Is Jin really protecting me or is he leaving me defenseless?
The first two weeks of the school year go by faster than I anticipate. It’s a cycle of lesson plans, faculty meetings, and the expected craziness that comes with wrangling a classroom full of energetic little kids.
My students this year are a lively bunch. Most of them are eager and bright, their little faces lighting up when I praise their English pronunciation or reward them with scratch-and-sniff stickers for good behavior.
But there’s always one—a boy named Jung-suk with a mischievous streak a mile wide—who seems determined to test every boundary I set. He talks out of turn, pokes the girl who sits in front of him, and has an uncanny ability to produce paper airplanes out of thin air.
I’m learning to pick my battles.
Kelly, meanwhile, has met a promising guy at a bar in Seomyeon. His name is Ahn Hyun-woo, he works as a lab tech, and according to her breathless recaps during lunch breaks, he’s “finally a normal one.”
I give it two weeks before she finds some fatal flaw—he chews too loud or is weirdly close with his mom or doesn’t believe in dessert—but for now, I’m happy to let her gush.
I’ve got my own issues to deal with. Without a doubt, the hardest part of my first trimester has been managing the nausea.
Morning sickness, it turns out, doesn’t care what time of day it is. It hits me during first period, during lunch, and even during the weekly spelling test I give in the afternoons.
