Chapter 1

“I, I li…… like you, Boss!”

The shout she barely managed to force out in a trembling voice spread through the desolate warehouse like an echo. At the same time, a cold silence fell over the people gathered there. As if someone had forcibly cut off every sound at once.

To see the result of what she had done, Lee-jin slowly lifted the eyelids she had squeezed tightly shut.

Her life was on the line. If this went wrong, she would die in this gloomy warehouse without anyone ever knowing.

The first thing she saw was the jet-black toe of a shoe, shining excessively even in the dim interior. Maybe everything about a large man was large, even his feet; from the end of the leg he had crossed in a threatening manner, the idly swinging shoe looked big enough to fit both of Lee-jin’s feet inside.

Gathering her courage, Lee-jin raised her gaze a little higher. Her eyes moved along the long legs wrapped in black slacks without a speck of dust on them, and when they reached around the man’s waist, the man uncrossed the legs he had so loftily folded.

To keep from looking between the legs spreading apart in a careless way, Lee-jin did not stop the gaze that had been traveling upward.

Then, as if she had been waiting for that, the man leaned forward out of the darkness where his upper body had been resting. For an instant, it felt as though a huge tidal wave were rushing toward her.

“Me?”

The man, now revealing himself, asked shortly.

It was the first time hearing his voice. For several days, Lee-jin had lingered around him, but the man had only given brief, curt replies that did not carry as far as where Lee-jin stood; the one who usually did the talking was the pale-faced man in glasses who followed beside him like a shadow.

Maybe it was because of the oppressive weight of the space, but the voice of the man who had uttered no more than a single word was low and slow enough to be alluring.

Keeping her eyes fixed on the man’s broad chest, Lee-jin hurriedly nodded.

“……Y-yes. It was lo-love at first sight.”

“Why?”

At the end of the rather gentle question, there was a faint trace of laughter. The tone was ambiguous, as if he might be interested or as if he might be mocking him, but Lee-jin decided not to dwell on that for long.

I have to live, she decided to think only that.

“Y-you’re handsome.”

At Lee-jin’s answer, the man let out a low laugh. Somehow it sounded a little deliberate, but he did not seem displeased. So Lee-jin lifted her eyes again and finally looked at the face of the man she had supposedly ‘fallen for.’

[Why is this gangster bastard so handsome? Annoying as hell.]

As Wonjae had said when she first saw the man’s photograph to confirm the target of the assignment, he was needlessly handsome.

As befitted someone with several fearsome reputations, he gave off a brutal aura, but his face alone was truly striking enough that one could not look away.

Even the scar above his left eyebrow, crossing his forehead and about the length of a pinky finger, could not mar his perfect looks.

The man’s name was Kwon Ki-joo. The man who had swallowed up all of Boss Nam’s places of business, the very ones Boss Nam had asked them to handle, in a single night. After that, he had openly devoured this entire area and had now become an absolute ruler. Also, the person Lee-jin had to keep under watch.

“Still, it’s troubling if you follow me around like a stalker like this.”

With a smile still on his lips, Kwon Ki-joo spoke lazily. Unseen, Lee-jin bit the inside of her mouth and let go. As could be seen, the surveillance had failed, so now she had to rack her brains to get out alive.

“If I made you uncomf-comfortable, I’m sorry. It’s my first time doing something like this too…….”

“Are you saying it’s your first time falling for a man, or that this stalker act is your first time?”

“B-both…….”

“Ah, really?”

As if his interest had been piqued by Lee-jin’s answer, Kwon Ki-joo leaned a little farther forward. With that movement, it felt as though heavy, rough air swept over and descended on Lee-jin.

“How old?”

“Twenty-three…….”

“Hm, young. Name?”

“Song Lee-jin.”

Wearing an unhurried expression, Kwon Ki-joo rolled the name around inside his mouth. “Lee-jin.”

For a moment, Lee-jin worried that, like the grim reaper reciting names from a register of the dead, Kwon Ki-joo might be pronouncing the name of the person he was going to kill one last time.

“Where did you first see me?”

As if he was about to begin a full interrogation, Kwon Ki-joo lowered the corner of his mouth that had curved up smoothly. From now on, Lee-jin had to stay sharply alert. There was nothing she could trade for her life.

“A little while ago, at Havana Club……. I went there to work a one-day part-time job for the opening event, and that’s where I first saw you, Boss.”

Even so, she could not sound as though she was simply reciting a scenario she had prepared. Lee-jin had to appear as the role she had assigned herself: a naïve, empty-headed fool doing stupid things because she had fallen in love at first sight with a frightening gangster.

“Havana’s opening? Then that means it’s been about fifteen days?”

“Yes……, probably.”

“How did you know my route and show up everywhere I went?”

“It’s not that I knew and went there……. I just waited in front of your businesses, Boss, and then you would show up…….”

After deliberately glancing up to meet Kwon Ki-joo’s eyes, Lee-jin hurriedly lowered her gaze as if frightened. Then she added in an uncertain voice,

“I only ran into you about three times out of ten, so it’s not like I showed up everywhere you went…….”

Anyway, that was probably about all that had been found out.

Lee-jin had deliberately controlled the pace. The times when she stayed perfectly hidden and watched, and the times when she showed herself just enough with an innocent face.

In any case, her role was to test the waters before the real job began, observing the other side’s reaction. She had never thought from the start that she would be able to monitor Kwon Ki-joo perfectly.

So, in preparation for any possible situation, and to create an excuse for herself, she had shown her face near clubs, gambling dens, and bars inside Kwon Ki-joo’s territory even while knowing full well that Kwon Ki-joo was not there.

And Kwon Ki-joo had probably already been informed of all that too. Judging by the way she had been seized and brought here today, Kwon Ki-joo must have decided it was time to put an end to this sloppy game of hide-and-seek.

“So if you like a man, do you always chase him around that recklessly?”

“W-well. Like I told you earlier, this is my first time with something like this too…….”

“I should be honored, hearing I’m your first.”

With a smile whose intent was impossible to read, Kwon Ki-joo said that. Around then, Lee-jin stared at his face as if entranced, then suddenly put on the flustered expression of someone snapping back to her senses.

Maybe because her life was on the line, her body seemed to move instinctively well without her even having to make a conscious effort.

She had followed him around for fifteen days. To find a weakness in Kwon Ki-joo, who was said to enjoy alcohol and women and spend every night in disorderly pleasure.

The reason Lee-jin had accepted this role without protest was because she had heard of Kwon Ki-joo’s gentlemanly rule that he ‘does not lay a hand on women.’

Now that she had been dragged into this warehouse and stood before Kwon Ki-joo, who sat with those dark-clad men at his back, she did think that those words had probably only been said because Kwon Ki-joo had no need to dirty his own hands personally.

“So…… after watching me, what do you think?”

Kwon Ki-joo spoke as he slowly lifted the hand that had been resting on his knee. At once, a hand shot out from behind and placed a white cigarette between his masculine fingers. When he held the cigarette between his strangely curved lips, another hand approached and lit it.

Hoo—. The white cigarette smoke Kwon Ki-joo exhaled drifted toward Lee-jin as if it would swallow him whole.

“I think I’ve already caught sight of you at least three or four times myself. And there are times my underlings saw you too.”

“…….”

“Every time you saw me, the woman next to me must have been different. Do you still like me anyway?”

As if there could be no other answer, Lee-jin quickly nodded. A faint, scornful snicker slipped out between Kwon Ki-joo’s lips mixed with the cigarette smoke, but Lee-jin pretended not to hear it.

Then Kwon Ki-joo said nothing, merely smoking in silence as he looked at Lee-jin for a while with an intrigued gaze.