“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Jae Han is knocked down a peg or two,” I told him, though I hadn’t much incentive to follow through on the promise. I cared about getting Katya back, that was pretty much it. If I cared about every person who’d ever looked down on me, spit on my name, or believed themselves to be a class apart, I’d have to kill everyone in the city.
I knew what others thought of me, and it hardly phased me, anymore. There was freedom in being unpredictable and underestimated.
“Have you prepared an in for us?”
Seo Jun nodded, his eyes blinking too quickly. “Yeah, no one will stop you, but you have to be quick. She won’t put up much of a fight. She’s a quiet one, the youngest daughter,” he continued.
“Ok, good. Let’s go,” I called to my men.
Today, my revenge on Jae Han Song would be satisfied.
He took my sister? I’d take his.
Simple.
* * *
The unconscious girlwith the bag over her head wasn’t heavy to carry. I brought her into the old mall that we used for bratva business at the end of the pier in Brighton Beach. It was a creepy kind of place, and it suited my needs. I didn’t need luxury to live in. I needed security. Being one of the youngest leaders of one of the five in New York made me a target for anyone hoping to break into the criminal underworld of the city. They figured that taking out the Ivanov bratva would get them an easy piece of the pie, but we’d yet to fall. I didn’t intend on letting anyone take our territory, and making a lucrative deal with the Songs would go a good way to achieving that.
I carried the girl upstairs, and along to a small room that used to be a massage parlor. Most of the mall was rotten and stank. Water damage and general disuse had broken down most parts of it, but some we maintained.
Inside the massage parlor, I commanded two men to stand guard and took the youngest Song inside.
Lying her on the bed, she gasped softly beneath the hood. I’d only covered her face to disorient her. I hadn’t particularly wanted to drug her, so I’d been hoping it would be enough. I hadn’t counted on her knocking herself out on the window frame. I straightened her neck on the soft pillow beneath her and tugged the hood off. A wet towel trailed its ends across her face, and black, wet hair coiled like resting snakes against her golden skin. I pulled the towel away, wondering if I should cover her with something, seeing as she wasn’t really dressed for the brisk air down by the shore. As I rose to look for something warm, a sharp intake of breath pulled my attention back to my little captive.
Dark, stunning almond-shaped eyes stared at me, straight out of my memories of last night. My heart stopped for a second in my chest, and I was hollow with shock.
“Hana?”
“Kon?” She turned her head, looking around. A pulse fluttered in her neck, the very same olive column that only hours ago, I’d licked and bit while I was deep inside her. “What’s happening? I don’t understand.” She turned her eyes to me. “Did you – kidnap me?”
“What’s your last name?” I demanded, my heart roaring back to life, and beating a war tattoo in my blood. “Last night you said it was Smith. You lied to me?”
She shrugged. “What does a name matter?”
A ragged laugh left me. “It clearly matters, Cinderella. The fact that you are sitting here right now is evidence that it really fucking matters. Are you a Song?”
I knew from the pretty pink blush that stained her cheeks that she was.
She was a Song, Jae Han’s youngest sister, and I was absolutely fucked.
CHAPTER7
Hana
Iwoke sometime between the car and getting carried inside a cold, musty-smelling building. Panic threatened to choke me, as I pretended to still be knocked out cold, my mind racing furiously. Who’d taken me? Were they going to hurt me? The man had mentioned Jae Han. Of course, in my world, there was the constant threat of kidnapping and harm, it was unavoidable. It was the reason why my father was so overprotective, and I’d grown up so isolated, alone in an armed little cotton ball of security.
I knew Jae Han had kicked a hornet’s nest with his new girlfriend, the mysterious Kat, but it looked like he’d underestimated just how much he’d pissed her family off. My family had an innate ability to annoy others, it seemed.
When the bag came off my head, I was ready for all outcomes, or so I’d thought.
I was wrong.
Familiar icy green eyes met mine. Pale skin, an aristocratic brow worthy of a Romanov, and more tattoos than I could count. I remembered pressing my lips against the one of the snake curling up his neck.
“Fucking hell,” Kon muttered, staring at me as if I was a scorpion that’d just stung him when I told him my name.
“Well, what’s your name then?” I blustered, feeling exposed. My little ruse was discovered and the consequences looked like they were going to be far worse than I could have ever imagined.