your existence
is heaven and hell

"Surprised?" the man asked, grinning, and I stared at him, mouth agape.

For most of my life, I had been taught not to trust. And most of the time, I heeded that advice, because I knew what a difference the lack of trust could make. I never remembered how I came across it, though—who gave me this advice, or what, or the circumstance that led me to believing it. Maybe it was something from my childhood. Don't ever trust a stranger.

Maybe I had lived for so long not trusting people I knew that I forgot the key part of the sentence. It wasn't simply don't trust.

It was always don't trust a stranger.

"This is always the best part," Minho said with a smirk. He turned away and leaned against the wall, sticking an unlit cigarette stick between his teeth so it hung from between his lips.

Despite living with trust issues all my life, I had made the most fundamental mistake.

I had trusted a stranger.

The heir walked up to me and stood before me, his hands behind his back. His eyes glittered, so genuinely joyful that I almost forgot that he was the man who had singlehandedly made my life hell. It could have also been because I had seen kindness in those very eyes so many times. False kindness, I knew that now.

"You..." I breathed.

"You don't have to say anything, I know everything you're thinking right now," the heir said. He leaned closer to me, and I felt a jolt go through me at the closeness. "And you have every right to be angry at yourself for missing it. It was obvious who I was, from the very start. The places I showed up? The way I behaved?" he shook his head, still smiling. "It was obvious who I was, but you still failed to notice."

I felt dizzy from shock. This wasn't my first time being surprised, but most other times it had been like a jumpscare. This was the real deal. Shocked horror, raw and true, spread through me when I realized what I'd done. I had mistrusted everyone who ever helped me, and trusted the man who they had been trying to protect me from.

"I want you to say it," the heir said, straightening. His voice was almost good-humored, sweet even, but there was an edge of insanity to his eyes. Oh, god, his eyes. That's why he had always looked so familiar. "Everyone I've ever deceived has always given a name to me in their head. A title to the nameless man they trusted with their life. I want you to tell me what you called me."

It made complete sense.

It wasn't even hard to believe.

"The blonde escort," I said under my breath. "You're the blond escort."

"A little simplistic, but effective." He lifted a single shoulder in an elegant shrug. My eyes were unfocused, thoughts muddled, head so heavy that it felt like it was dragging my entire body along with it. "It has a nice ring to it, too. With the 'the' and everything."

"Why would you ever help me?" I whispered. All the realizations and guesses were sinking in now, the puzzle pieces uncovering themselves, just as the last grains of sand started dripping into the hourglass. "You helped me, you let me get away—"

"Because I knew you would always come back in the end." I looked at him then. He looked so much like Taeyong—with a stronger jaw, eyes more piercing, but the same startling beauty that took your breath away. I knew how confident he was in that moment—how sure he was of his plan, of everything he knew, and my own faith faltered. "Because I knew that fate or fear would bring you to me." He scrunched up his face, as if in thought. "Or I'd find you. Same thing."

"No, that's not the same thing," I spoke in horror. Confusion was boiling down to anger, and my blood had begun to sing in my head. "Of fucking course that's not the same thing! How could you—how could you fucking—" I didn't know what I wanted to say, how to express the chaos of emotions that were all heating up to a supernova in my head. "Why?"

"Why?" he echoed, looking surprised. Then, as if he had flipped a page, his expression changed back into controlled delight. It sunk in then that something was seriously wrong with him—not like the violence-loving criminals who could be heartless or cruel, or pathological liars, or even twisted people from twisted families.

No, he was beyond fixing. He was utterly broken.

"If it had been anyone else in your position, they would have realized that mute little escort boy isn't on your team," he said. His hair was a dark blond, slightly tousled, a dark red-and-black robe thrown over his shoulders, undone to expose a half-unbuttoned white shirt that showed the tip of his butterfly tattoo on his abdomen. "What kind of sex worker has a gang tattoo? What kind of sex worker knows his way around a secret underground corridor? What kind of sex worker wanders around free?"

His voice had risen to a shout by the end of his tirade, sculpted lips pulled back into a snarl like my obliviousness had pissed him off. I stared up at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly, his features went slack. The only indicator remaining of his anger was his chest, which rose and fell a little unsteadily.

"But you, my dear," he started again, voice almost musical, "you needed someone to trust completely. Someone you could believe in without context, a person whom you had no reason to disbelieve. A person with whom you had no past. A clean slate." One corner of his lips quirked up. "And I gave you exactly that."

I didn't need to ask him how I knew what I needed: Taeyong, of course. Loyalty, he had answered when I'd asked him what he had given the heir. Taeyong knew me like the back of his hand, which meant the heir knew me just as well.

The me of three years ago, at least. Apparently, I hadn't changed as much as I thought.

"Why?" I whispered.

"Because it's fun!" the man exclaimed. He was still smiling, like we were long-lost friends. "Imagine giving someone the very thing they need and then being able to snatch it away, just like that." He closed his eyes and tipped back his head, as if savoring the thought. "If you've never done that, you don't know what fun is."

"You're sick," I said.

"And so are you," he said without missing a beat. "We're much more similar than you realize."

I had a nagging feeling he was right, but I didn't want to think about that. "How does no one else know who you are?" I asked. "I get that Taeyong wouldn't betray you, but—how could no one tell me about you?"

"A handy little trick I learned from your mother," he replied. Minho snorted, and I started; I had almost forgotten he was there. "An easy enough solution that mislead so many people. So simple, yet so effective. Do you know what she did?"

I frowned. "She...pretended to be loyal to the Lee clan?"

He made a disappointed face. "She changed her name from Kim to Lee." I blinked at him, and he smiled, slowly, but openly.

"You—"

"Changed my name legally," he completed. "Not Lee, but Kim. My clan knows who I am, but others are easy to deceive. The documents may saw otherwise, but I am a Lee. I always will be." His tone was smooth yet poisonous, and I thought of silk bedsheets and the scales of a snake. He smiled, terrible and beautiful. "Lee Jaejoong."

Kim, I thought dazedly. Kim Jaejoong.

The door was thrown open, and my head whipped to the side. Two men entered the room, holding a struggling third between them. I recognized Taemin and the orange-haired man Ten had knocked out earlier. They had probably brought him here. The one between them, though, I couldn't see. His head was turned away from mine, and he was moving too much, fighting against the restraints. Then I saw a flash of those eyes under the fringe of black hair, and cold panic pooled in the pit of my stomach.

"Found this one out back," the orange-haired man said, and shot me a vicious grin. "Sniper. Took out quite a few of our men, but wasn't too discreet about it."

If I had expected Jaejoong to react, I was left disappointed. "Have you ever heard of the phrase kiss to stun, shoot to kill?" he asked conversationally, and I shook my head mutely. There was something in his hands, something small which gleamed like metal in the dull yellow light. "It means you don't fall in love with the wrong person. You kiss to manipulate—you help only to gain their trust, and then you break it."

The two men shoved the sniper to his knees, and Jun glared at the ground. I couldn't take my eyes off him, off the cut on cheek and the bruise around his mouth. Look at me, I thought, prayed, as the heir lifted the gun into the air. Look at me.

He did. Across the room, his eyes met mine, but they were defiant even in the dire situation. I remembered the Junhee I had first met, the ever-smiling boy with a trusting smile and the sweetest eyes I had ever seen. The boy who wouldn't stop trying to gain back my trust even after I turned away from him, who had sacrificed and lost so much just for me.

And then I saw him as the man he was now. His eyes were rimmed with red, but his head was held high, bold and brave. This was the boy whose hands had killed so many, the boy who had no family, the boy I had never forgiven.

"Kiss to stun," Jaejoong repeated, and pressed the mouth of the gun to the back of Jun's head. To his credit, Jun didn't flinch. His eyes stayed on mine, mouth a thin line, but those eyes, they held volumes. Be safe. That was the last thing I had said to him. "Shoot to—"

"Be safe," Jun whispered, and the gun fired. He fell face-forward, and time seemed to stop for a few seconds. Then blood spread on the floor, from around his head, and I stared at it in shock.

Then I screamed.

"Oh, for the love of—" Jaejoong started forward, and grabbed my jaw. I was cut off abruptly, but though I struggled to pull away, his grip was like a vice clamped around my face. "Shut up. Shut the fuck up."

"They'll find you," I said hoarsely, eyes shining. "They'll find you, and me, and they'll put a bullet in your fucking brain—"

"No, they won't," he said decisively. I grit my teeth, and he released me, taking a couple of steps back. His eyes were wide now, in real anger, an insane edge to them. He extended a hand, and I saw Taemin place something in it, something folded and rope-like and—oh. "And even if they do, they can't touch me. See, that's the downside of love." He gave me a rictus smile. "If they kill me, you die, too."

A cold hand clamped around my heart as Jaejoong untwined the whip. The long rope fell like a snake to his feet, and my pulse raced even looking at it, looking at the tapering end and the thin length and imagining the amount of pain it could bring me. Then I remembered the scars crisscrossing Taeyong's back, and bit back a gasp at the imagined agony.

"You know why I've let you slip through my fingers for so long?" Jaejoong asked, but I didn't answer, paralyzed with fear at the sight of the whip. Distantly, I could hear Minho laughing, but everything sounded like static. Everything, except the sound of Jaejoong's voice, cutting harsh and clear through the air, like a whip. "Because it makes it even more exhilarating when I finally catch you. And you're not going anywhere now, are you?" he chuckled. "You'll cooperate, or I'll kill everyone like I did him."

With a flick of his wrist, he gestured to Jun's fallen body. Red misted my vision, and I was rearing again, not noticing how everyone had backed away. Then he raised his hand, a sudden, jerk-like motion, and the length of the whip cut through the air. I watched it in fascination as the tip soared, and came down, the whip singing—

Pain exploded across my back, so blinding and sharp that my back arched from the impact. My eyes were blown wide open, but I couldn't see anything, nor hear anything. It was like all of my senses had been overloaded, and stopped functioning from the pain like a blown fuse, and then there was nothing but agony.

"Which one did you choose, ultimately?" the heir asked, his grin like a flashing knife, in between the whips. "My brother, or that hitman?" He laughed. "It was quite interesting, you know, to hear of your petty dilemma—"

Another line of fire across my back, another few seconds of nothingness. My entire body was a scream of pain, the t-shirt hanging in ribbons over my torso from the cuts from the whip. "I'm actually looking forward to him, you know," Jaejoong said in a half-sneer. "The one who finally finds you. The one you chose."

The heir was talking, laughing, his eyes wild and unhinged as the line of his whip cut licks of flame-like agony into my skin. Even Minho's eyes were uncertain the brief moment I caught them; his brow furrowed. But the heir never stopped.

It felt like an aeon had passed when the door was thrown open, and I collapsed against my bonds. The grating pain where gashes had opened up around my wrists felt like nothing now, a joke compared to the pain lacing my back and arms as if vines of fire had curled around my skin.

My head lolled; eyes barely open. The spark of hope I had felt when realizing my plan had died, and I was dead to the world, eyes lidded and blood dripping from my lip where I had bitten into it. Then I saw the person who had collapsed on the floor in front of me—the person who had been shoved in, onto his knees, beaten and bloody, in front of the heir.

No, my mind screamed.

And Vernon's pain-glazed eyes met mine.