"No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him."

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight

*** 

It has been a week yet anger has been sizzling like lava in Kim's veins ever since Korn laid his plans in front of him...

He was trapped. Done for. No matter which way he looked, he found no escape. It had never happened to him before. Kim had believed that there was always a way to overcome or find a compromise, always a way out of a situation without risking everything. And maybe that was the reason why he had been so sure that he could get away from the misfortune of being born into the Theerapanyakhun family. 

It was true that being the mafia prince, in some ways, on some occasions did have certain advantages. Kim wasn't known by face but only by his name: Khimhant Theerapanyakunl, the youngest son of Korn Theerapanyakunl, head of the most powerful mafia family in Thailand. But despite all of that corrupt power, Kim just happened to be someone to whom those advantages weren't worth the risk of letting the mafia life consume him until nothing was left of him. And that's why he had tried to run away from it, and when not possible, he had found a compromise with his father that suited both parties. Yet this time around, Korn Theerapanyakunl got him good and has gotten personal. Way more personal than anyone has ever been before. His father dared to threaten to end the life of someone he held so dear, so close to his heart that he hadn't let his shadow know about how much he valued Porchay. Because when it came to him, Kim feared his own shadow's betrayal...

Yet his father somehow not only knew about him but also told Kim that if he didn't give in to his demands, Porchay would be the one to bear the consequences of his disobedience... 

Kim didn't know what was that gave him away. He had thought he was hiding it well. He had been able to hide his feelings and care for the people he loved for all his life. His acts of indifference have always been successful. Or maybe, his father had just amused him whenever he had acted as if he didn't care about his brothers. Yet for some reason, his father didn't want to do the same this time around. Not for Porchay. Korn for some reason was not only sure of his care for the younger boy but was also confident in his claim of knowing Kim would give up everything for Porchay. So much so that his father was putting all his cards on the table, sure of his triumph. And he wasn't wrong. Kim just didn't like that Korn knew that. That anyone knew that he would do anything to keep Porchay Kittisawat alive. It was supposed to be the secret that Kim wanted no one to find out. Anyone who knew that the younger boy could be used and targeted to bring Kim to his knees would attack Porchay time and time again. The reason why he had kept his distance from him. Yet in the end, it didn't matter how much he had done to push Porchay away to keep him safe, he still was being targeted and used to blackmail Kim...

Kim had feared that ever since he realized he was getting fond of the younger Kittisawat. And now his nightmares were so close to becoming a reality that he was losing his mind to fear and panic that was consuming him. He no longer could trust his mind to come up with anything else than the cruelest ways Korn could attack Porchay. His nightmares were wild, bloody and so vivid that he could hear the screams of pain even hours after being awake. 

Nightmares weren't something new to him, Kim had been having them ever since his mother died. Ever since he had felt her warm blood on his hands and her body getting cold in the small arms of his seven-year-old self. Sometimes his sadistic brain kept repeating the memory of that day and sometimes it came up with new ones, about Kinn, or Tankhun, or both. It was his unresolved trauma, he was afraid of losing them to death, paranoid about it to on the brink of insanity. It had been years now that he had slept without having a nightmare, except for that one night that Porchay had wrapped his arms around him and chased his nightmares away.

Yet the very next day had brought with it a new kind of nightmare: the one of losing Porchay...

That's what further made him lose his mind to rage at his own father's entitled behavior. The predatory glint in his cold dark vicious eyes. Kim wanted to gouge those eyes out with his sharpest knife for the audacity of him to threaten him with Porchay's life. There was a part of him that wanted him to calm down and analyze the situation he was in. But the more his father was pushing his boundaries, the more he was losing himself to rage and insanity caused by pure fear. Korn was deliberately forcing him into giving up everything for the missions he was planning for him. Wik, his career, his reputation, his health, his body, and most probably his life...

"Everything has been arranged, the tour and the needed staff, all you have to worry about is doing what you are good at: be my weapon, and take out these people," Korn had said over the cup of his evening tea before nodding at the envelope on the table between them.   

'Oh, how I wished I had poisoned your tea years ago,' Kim couldn't help but think bitterly. 

The more Korn went into details of the missions, the more Kim could understand why Korn chose to play the first love and Porchay card now. If not for his life being put on the line, Kim would have never let his mafia world taint his Wik persona or his music. He had worked so hard for years to keep his two lives separated, never letting anyone who knew him as Wik know him as Kim Khimhant Theerapanyakunl, the third son of a mafia leader, the secret weapon and assassin of Theerapanyakun family. He had never let the brilliance of his Wik persona be shadowed by truths of his life other than the darkness that slipped into his music...

People who listened to his songs were led to believe that he was not more than an average young adult who liked writing about youth's struggles, angst, and heartbreak. He led them to believe he felt the same and was going through the same as other young people: his target audience. They believed he was singing about heartbreak and loss due to a breakup and not due to the death of his mother he had witnessed at age seven. People assumed that the shadows, monsters, and darkness he talked about in his songs were nothing more than him exaggerating his struggle with normal ordinary youth issues. But there was nothing normal or ordinary about his youth - if he ever had one...

And now what Korn was proposing would end up blurring the line between the two worlds further, between Wik and Khimhant, and most probably end with the death of both...

And if Kim was honest with himself, he had been waiting for this for a long time, had known for it to happen even longer...

He has been waiting for his death ever since his mother died right in front of him. As her body had gotten colder so had his will to live. Yet he had been found by Chan and brought back to his father who had then trained him and sent him to deadly missions as soon as his trainer had deemed him fit. He couldn't pinpoint when it was, but somewhere along the way, he had promised himself that he would take down his father before his time came. He had always thought that if he had to go down, he would take down Korn along with him. He would never be able to leave this world without the assurance that his brothers would be safe. And as long as Korn lived, they weren't safe from their father. Whenever nightmares of the day he lost his mother had kept him awake, he had spent hours thinking about it, how to take his father down. He had planned to do it himself even if that would have been the last goddamn thing he did on this wretched earth.

But now everything was happening too fast and Kim didn't have time to do anything. It was too soon. His brother wasn't ready. Kinn wasn't ready to rule alone, his hold on power wasn't stable enough, and their father still had too much control to be disposed of. It couldn't be helped. Nothing could be done now. It was too soon...

Despite his investigations on his father, getting rid of Korn Theerapanyakun hadn't been an urgent plan. Kim had done all of the digging to find the skeletons that his father had in his closet, but mostly to confirm his suspicion and find something that he could use against his father just in case. He wanted to have enough dirt on Korn before trying to convince his brothers to get rid of their father. He just hadn't known that it probably wouldn't be his doing that would drag Korn down from his throne. He hadn't predicted that he wouldn't be around to see the fall of the mighty. Now he would have let someone else do the job, let someone else be his brother's executor when Kinn finally realizes that they were better off without their father. 

But even knowing that he couldn't do anything, Kim still wanted to make sure his brothers wouldn't be the ones to directly dirty their hands with Korn's blood. But how to achieve that? he couldn't figure it out. He didn't have much time, and he didn't know what to do...

Helpless due to the ticking time, Kim was forced to be as blunt as he could afford to be. And that's why, he decided he must let lay the seeds of suspicion in his brothers' minds before it was too late...

* * * 

To say that Kim hated coming to the compound was an understatement. It had ceased to be a home to him the day his mother died. The visits of his own will to that hell were limited to him going there to meet Tankhun or to dig in to find some skeleton hidden in his father's closet.  

But this time around, he didn't go there to meet Tankhun. He couldn't let his eldest brother see him, he would know if he saw Kim. Tankhun was astute and perceptive like that. So Kim had no choice but to go to the one who wasn't. Therefore, now sitting in front of Kinn, he was trying to relay the message without words.

"Do you know what is Pa's favorite move?" Kim asked, then proceeded to re-explain it to Kinn who had mastered chess before Kim had even started to learn it.

Ignoring his brother's confused frown, Kim kept going, emphasizing the words that would forward the message to him. Their father was a master chess player and had tried to teach all three of them. But maybe only Kim had paid enough attention to know Korn's cryptic language stayed beyond the duration of the chess game and how his message affected them subconsciously, forcing them to act as their father wanted them to. Kim had encrypted his messages and learned all of Korn's best tricks. Observing how the older their father was getting, the cockier and the less vigilant he was becoming. He would inevitably make mistakes in sometime soon the future, and it would be the ideal opportunity to launch an attack on him. That's what he muttered to Kinn during the match.

"I should have known that you were up to something when you came here demanding me to play a chess game with you," Kinn said with an annoyed frown, unable to understand the cryptic behavior of his younger brother.

Kinn had been concerned when Kim made the demand because it was out of the ordinary. But he had accepted it without question, as Kim had seldom visited him before. Like everything else he was very talented at, except maybe music, Kim detested chess. It was confusing, then, that he asked to play chess with him. However, Kinn could no longer claim that he understood his younger brother's thoughts or state of mind. They didn't have the same kind of relationship as Kim and Tankhun, who met more frequently and were strangely in tune with each other. Still, he should have known that Kim had ulterior motives. Whenever Kim acted strange around them, Tankhun always claimed that it was just Kim being nosy and showing his care for them. But now Kinn couldn't help but believe their younger brother was just the most twisted one of them with the strangest fancy for play words, worse than their father. 

"I am just trying to tell you to consolidate your power and when the time comes, eliminate hurdles in your path, even if it means you have to kill me and our father. Let someone else do the act for you, but don't trust just anyone, and don't ever let our father know your plans," Kim said with a sigh, tired of his brother's poor critical skills.

It's going to hurt, even if Kim probably wouldn't be around for it, he knew it would. Whenever and whatever way Kinn would find out the truth, he would be hurt. The perception Kinn held of their father all his life would be shattered and so would he. Knowing their father's actual nature and the horrors of his deeds towards their own family would break Kinn, who was emotionally vulnerable and kind to a fault - devoted more than Korn could ever deserve. That's why it's best to give Kinn at least a warning about the possibility of the truths before they come knocking on his door.

"What are you talking about, Kim? Are you really this paranoid that you think I will kill you or our father to gain power?" Kinn asked, clearly offended, with a frown on his forehead and his voice raising as he glared at him.

"You should. You will have to," Kim muttered.

"Okay, I am done. I am not going to listen to your stupid paranoid thoughts anymore," his brother spat with a glare, ready to walk away just to be stopped by the tight grip on his arm.

"Listen to me, Kinn, for once," Kim whispered, tired.

For the last time, he wanted to say, desperate, yet knew better than to let that slip away.

"When the time comes, when everything is stable enough, and when you have more loyalties, take him down. Quickly and without hesitations," he advised.

"And don't touch Khun even if he comes in the way. Send him away somewhere safe. Don't you dare to let something happen to our brother. He will calm down and see why you did it," he continued even though he could see his words were not being taken seriously.

But Kim was frantic, he had to attempt one last time. He was putting all his hope on the day when Kinn would get the news, probably then he would remember his last words to him and do enough to take down their father to protect himself and Tankhun and their people.

"I have no intention of doing anything that you told me to, ever," Kinn growled at him as he pulled his arm out of his hold with a jerk, and walked away like an enraged storm.

As Kim saw the turned back of his brother disappearing, he couldn't help but let out a tired sigh.

As expected, Kinn would not listen to him about their father until the very end...

* * * 

A/N:- Please, let me know your thoughts and feelings about the story in the comments...Would love to hear from you! :)

Thank you! <3