Few hours ago…

“I couldn’t do anything…” he said then, he says now. Attorney Yoo remembers it well, the glazed eyes of her firstborn, deep set in a bony and pale face. He keeps his hands clasped together on the varnished surfaced  desk he sits behind, head bowed and with dirt smudged cheeks. She watches his chipped nails digging deeper and deeper into the flesh of his other hand as he stutters through his story.

“She was angry - she is usually angry. She tried to burn me - then the house was on fire and I tried to get her out.” He stops and looks at her, his eyes so like her late father’s pleading - appealing. “But she wasn’t moving - she was too heavy. It was too hot -” his voice breaks off and he shivers, flinches and squeezes his eyes shut. “I couldn’t do anything!”

His shirt gapes open at the collar where a button is missing, and a healing bruise on his bony chest peeps through. She gathers him close, running fingers through his hair, tucking him into her embrace so that he would not see her own tears.

Too late she feels - too late to save her son.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs soothingly. “I’m here now - it’s going to be alright.”

They had been forced apart for too long that he clings to her like a lifeline, unlike any of her other children. He makes her the centre of his world. Myung Sung can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed, for she had never been loved like that.

Perhaps, she thinks, it is because both of them has gone through the hell to find each other - her firstborn understands her better than any of her children. He knows her goals, just as they form in her mind, her unspoken wishes, her half formed prayers. And he tries - toils - to his best to make her happy.

He just needed a little love - she thinks - overwhelmed and he would die for her. Or perhaps kill - now a little voice whispers.

Her hand shakes as she shuts the bathroom door behind her and her eyes sweep over the room to settle on the bloodied body now settled on the couch, limp and pale and gut wrenching. Wook crouches beside him and for a startling second she watches immobilized as he pours over, brushing mattered hair off with nonchalant fingers and checking for concussions.

“I couldn’t do anything - he’d heard everything.” He had said, with hands stained from his half brother’s blood. “You were right mother, he has too much of his father in him.”

It is his way of subtly reminding her that she never showed much interest in Yo for reasons twisted and selfish. She had played out her own baby’s death, smuggling him under the nose of her husband to the protection of her old lover. Framing him into a situation where with a few camera footage she could show that he had deliberately tried to harm her and her unborn babies - resulting in the stillbirth of one. That old trick her father had pulled on her helps Myung Sung put the lash around her husband once more. The revenge she has planned for him is to be served years later - much much colder. For making her to choose between her children, for his twisted greed that holds on to her at the cost of his loved ones. But for now she uses him to prepare her stage, brake the son he so lovingly brought into their family folds with his own hands by making him believe in a lie that she takes pleasure in drilling into him without his knowledge. Detaching herself from Yo was necessary to show him that she was grieving, that she hated the child who had failed to aid in her ambitions.

She had never estimated how good she had become in playing her own emotions, now that her own children believed in her duplicity. Yo was lost to her the moment her husband took him under his wing, but focused on her own plans for revenge she had hardly noticed how the distance grew between them. She was much more focused upon braking her husband’s favorite son into pieces he could never put together again - with the help of the greed of that man himself.

She had tried to bring Yo back in by matching him with Yeon Hwa - but only recently she learned that he was only playing her in return, by using his fiance as a pass to the Haes. Yo had always been a curious child - snooping in places he did not belong in - with a taste for danger that did him no good. And Yeon Hwa is too greedy - far too ambitious to be a mere pawn in their game - another thing she realized far too late. She played her own hand, to her own ends - tangling all of them in far too many knots. If not for the girls her uncle kept bringing - Yeon Hwa seemed to think - she would have been the sole heiress to the entirety of the Hae fortune. And now the only way for her to go there was through the destruction of Wook - which she had provided for by giving them access to Mu so easily.

She thinks back to what Wook had been saying before and wonders if Yo is the only child lost to her.

“How could you do something like this without asking me first Wook - ah? So much planning and now -”

“Nothing needs to be changed Omma, if you just let me explain - I couldn’t do anything , she forced my hand!”

“That girl means nothing in all this!” She all but shouts in frustration. “She is to die one way or the other - but your brother Wook - ah, your brother is not a weapon!”

He rubs a hand across his forehead, flustered, anxious - but not nearly enough worried. His other hand remains fisted, and his jaw remains clenched.

“So should I have let her go? Should I have let him take her?” His voice doesn’t rise, but it is sinister enough to make her flinch. His nails are digging into his flesh again, deep enough to draw blood. Fury ripples through him, raw and vicious. “She is mine.”

“Wook - ah,” she tries to tell him not to let his rage blind him but he presses on, blinded to their greater motives.

“How dare she let him touch her - kiss her - when she’s never…never let me -”

“That’s irrelevant…” she starts and then sees the acid in his eyes. “You saw them? You followed them? Wook - ah, answer me! Did you take your brother with you? How could you be so foolish? You know how he behaves when - Did you -” she draws in a sharp gasp. “You did it to provoke him - Wook - ah - how could you!”

He speaks like a man possessed, barely registering her words but spilling his own brewing anger, hatred and pent up range.

“I wasn’t going to kill her. Even for all the money in the world - I wanted to protect her, keep her happy. She could have been so happy with me…” The table shudders when he bangs his fist on the wood, growling. “And she went behind my back and slept with that bastard!”

“Wook - ah…”

“She has a taste for beasts right? That’s exactly what she is going to get. After all there is a beast that lusts after her. Just let her return this time - just…”

The chill that had settled over her is heavy with brutal realization. Though he had said nothing Myung Sung has not planned herself, the way he says the words - calls his own brother a beast - makes her fingers tremble.

“Were you there when Tae died?” She asks slowly. “Where you there when -”

“Yes..” he hisses, eyes gleaming at the memory, making a shiver pass down her spine. “I set him on Tae - it all happened too fast.” He stops and looks into her eyes. “Tae shouldn’t have touched her Omma - what he did was wrong. Even a beast would understand that. I could have punished him myself…but he behaved like a animal - he should die like one too. It could only be fitting -”

There’s a gust of wind, a click when the door bolts shut properly,  they both snap at the sound and Wook goes to wrench it open once more, revealing the eavesdropper - his face pale and eyes burning Yo stands there . It isn’t how he had planned this confrontation - he was hoping to leave after listening to their conversation, but the wind and a slippery door knob had taken the decision for him.

“That’s exactly what I came to hear.” He says curtly, tilting his head. “Thank you brother! So I won’t be wrong to assume that’s how your face ended up in Myung Hee’s photographs - when you went out into the back alley to apprehend the beast you had unleashed yourself.”

Too late Myung Sung feels - too late to save her son.

“He’ll live.” Wook’s words tear through her thoughts, sharp with malice and blunt with emotions. He is looking at her now, straightened up and arms folded across his chest. “He still has to tell us where that chip is! Now I have to pay a visit to my wayward fiancee”

**

Present…

As much as it breaks his heart he peels her hand away and drinks the bitterness of fear that flashes across her eyes. His battered heart always reaches out, seeking reassurance by basking in the warmth of her presence. But the more rational part of him knows that such greed had ruined them once. Still it hurts - watching her heart sink that almost thoughtlessly he reaches out to cradle her face in his palm.  

“Don’t come…” he whispers, peering into her eyes. Her fingers on his wrist are clinging and cold.

“We were together!” She insists, wide eyed and fearful. “Let me come - let me tell them -”

“Ha Jin -ah,” he strokes her hair, forehead pressed against her, trying to will her into understanding their situation. It’s stupid how he couldn’t see it coming, couldn’t see the jaws of the trap closing after them as he dragged her and jumped right into it. They were never been so free to fly away - this was all planned to bring them here, trap them again. She chose him and it still makes his heart swell, but he knows taking her along would only drag her name through the mud. “No.”

“So - yah…”

“You can’t tell them we were together,” he says slowly. “It’s only going to turn things ugly for you.”

A tear trickles down her face, unchecked and unbidden. He watches her lips tremble.

“This is happening because of me right?” She mumbles, head pressed against his heart. “My family is doing this - again? So - yah, did I end up ruining you anyway?”

“Hush love,” he presses her closer and drops a kiss on her hair. “It has nothing to do with you.” He soothes knowing she was thinking back to the scandal they had caused a while back. “It’s just that I might lose my temper if they say anything remotely bad about us.” He tries to smile as his thumb strokes her wet cheek. “I need my wits about me - right?”

She nods albeit hesitantly. It feels like a stale repeat of a rebel led and won, a battle that is anticipated but never wished for. She knows he would return, unscathed and perhaps victoriously so, but a little ominous prickle at the bottom of her heart wonders if he would still be hers or not?

The greed takes hold of her and she holds into him, it is a fleeting thing but she cherishes the moment. His large warm arms wrap around her securely, bringing her closer to his steadily beating heart. She inhales him, that earthy, woodsy, spice that is entirely So. His hand still runs through her hair, and she holds in her tears.

“Call Woo Hee up and go home.” He cups her face and makes her look at him feeling the protest building in her throat. “Ha Jin - ah, I won’t lose you again.”

Tears well up in her eyes, at the statement. The man who always keeps the door open for her to step back and still inwardly fears losing her - she strokes his face softly, compelled by the overwhelming need to touch him - feel him and mark him hers. She stands on the tips of her toes and presses her lips on his jaw.

“Come back to me,” she says pulling back.

“Wait with Eun - here…” he says with a flash of a smile, and steps away, their fingers sliding off each other, lingering for a moment too long. “And call Woo Hee.”

“Yes your majesty,” she feigns a chuckle and keeps holding it when his eyes sparkles.

“Make sure you remember that -”

It is then that Ha Jin can’t take anymore and she runs back in to his arms, uncaring of the looks of pure annoyance on the faces of the detectives, or the curious looks they gained from the distant passer - bys. Her arms encircling his neck she crashes her lips against his, bold - greedy - and clinging. He returns the feelings ten fold hoisting her off her feet with heated palms on her waist. That kiss is no gentle brush of lips, its all teeth and tongue, a desperate attempt to take the taste of the other with them. Her lungs burn in protest at the lack of air and she remains worrying at his lip for a moment longer until he lowers her gently to stand on his own feet and pulls apart.  

“My person,” she mutters against his lips. “I’ll remember that.”