The K-pop idol also had a comfort with silence. He waited them out, offering nothing.
Ellisandre paced the length of the room before speaking. “I’m in charge of Linda’s security. That includes Alice, Dana, and Ash.”
Jun nodded.
“I’ve been over the recording of your account of the kidnapping.”
“Trafficking,” Jun corrected.
Ellisandre tilted their head in acknowledgment. “The man who drove you off the mountain. You said little about him.”
Jun’s eyes grew hooded. “There wasn’t much to say.”
“You didn’t even describe him.”
“Tall. Caucasian. Mostly, maybe. Nordic, perhaps. Younger side of middle-aged.”
Ellisandre gave it a beat and then prodded. “Why did he help you?”
Jun crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his own head, eyes on Ellisandre’s face. “If you think I’m hiding something, say it.”
Whatever had been going down in the last few days had not made Jun open to easy conversation.
Ellisandre looked away, rearranging their thoughts again. How much of their hand should they show? “I think you’ve been honest. It’s the details you might not think are important that could mean something to me.”
Jun straightened up slowly. “He wasn’t supposed to let me go. He did.” Jun paused, clearly going back through his memories. “He’s already connected to The Residency.”
Ellisandre’s pulse spiked. “How?” Sevastyan had no connection to the Residency at all. The closest would be Collin’s ties through his dead father who had been a Russian spy turned double agent for the US. He’d died for it.
Jun raised his eyes slowly. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“I don’t have many loyalties. You’ve met most of them.”
Jun studied Ellisandre for a long moment. “You’re hiding something.”
Well, that was not expected. Ellisandre filled their lungs with air, letting Jun see some fraction of their discomfort. “Yes.”
“What?”
Ellisandre hesitated. But Jun was Damian’s claimed. Which meant Jun was Residency. The Residency was Linda’s family. So Jun was family, if not completely incorporated yet.
And Jun was not Linda. He didn’t need to be protected like her. If Sevastyan was to ever come home, at some point he and Jun were going to have to be able to stand each other. Know each other even.
A sliver of honesty might as well start now. “Twelve years ago I shot the man you met.”
Jun stilled, his hands just above the bar of the machine behind him. He looked like he was braced, but his fingers weren’t bearing his weight. Body control. The training of an idol. He was using it. Using form and posture to create atmosphere. Displaying strength and nonchalance. Displaying his injuries even.
Jun was manipulating their interaction. How interesting. And attractive. They needed to re-evaluate Gang Junseo. Perhaps his whole group.
“Whatever he was back then, he’s not a threat now,” Jun said softly, voice almost dangerous. “I almost attacked him when he arrived. I had a weapon. I wasn’t sane. He helped anyway.”
“Why protect him?”
Jun’s eyes sharpened. “The world isn’t black and white.”
“He made an impression.”
Jun’s hips and abs flexed. He body-rolled to an upright posture without using the machine behind him and crossed his arms. “Ask me what you really want to know.”
