CHAPTER 89

Without caring that there were eyes watching from the table, Lara stretched her lips long and caressed TJ’s arm with her bony, skeletal fingers. Minhee forcibly averted her gaze from that hand. Everyone was pretending not to see and watching those two people.

It was as if her mind was on fire. She felt a stabbing pain in her heart, as if someone was pressing down on it with a foot. The back of her head prickled. She knew what this emotion was, this feeling that threatened to eat her alive.

‘Jealousy, undeserved jealousy.’

It was the exact opposite of what Luca had planned. She’d forgotten that while her heart belonged to this man, his heart wasn’t hers, so she had no right to be jealous just because someone was touching him, being intimate with him.

Lara Rosenburg leaned over to rest her head on Taejun’s shoulder as George Rosenburg asked Taejun questions and Taejun answered politely. Suddenly, Minhee remembered what Devon had said to her over lunch.

[That kind of man doesn’t just meet any woman. He’ll look for a woman who can fulfill the conditions he’s lacking. The truth is, that man is from ‘new money’, not ‘old money’. To become firmly established in Manhattan’s high society, he’ll need a woman from an ‘old money’ background who can build his social connections.]

At the time, she had just thought it was the nonsense of a gold digger. But now, as she read the envious glances of the financial elite, the elite at the top of the food chain in Manhattan, at Lara and Taejun, she realized that she was just from a small-town, clueless hillbilly. Minhee felt like crying.

‘Someone, please save me!’

Suddenly, thunderous cheers and applause shook the party. Startled, Minhee turned to the stage to see what was happening.

‘Ah! King J’s opening speech!!’

If it had been before, she would have been counting down the days for this event, but because of the man sitting next to her, she had completely forgotten about it. The bright stage lights followed the tall man in a two-tone tuxedo of a white jacket and black pants.

King J walked to the center of the stage and stood upright, looking straight at the lighting without seeming to be dazzled. For a moment, he did nothing but smile and sweep his gaze over the audience, but their attention naturally focused on him.

Taejun shook off Lara’s clinging hand and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms. Minhee breathed a sigh of relief as Lara turned her attention back to the stage.

‘Apparently, crushing on a celebrity is much safer than actually loving someone, and it’s good for your heart.’

When she heard the news of King J’s engagement, she had just sighed, thinking that the inevitable had arrived. Even when she saw King J and his fiancée in person, she felt like she sincerely wanted to cheer for their love.

They didn’t have the soul-devouring emotions that Minhee was feeling watching Lara and Taejun.

‘What does it feel like to be the only one for each other?’

Minhee wanted to feel that kind of emotion too. She was envious of the two people who were in love with each other.

[Today, I didn’t come here to sing…]

As King J stood in front of the microphone and began his speech in his characteristic low-pitched voice, cheers and applause came from the back of the party venue. King J smiled and waved his hand towards the area where his fans, holding placards, were gathered, and the cheering grew louder.

‘I would have felt more comfortable if I sat among them.’

Minhee hastily rummaged in her clutch and took out her phone. As she started recording a video, the heads of the people sitting across from her blurred the frame. Minhee got up and moved behind the chair to stand and start filming King J.

***

Taejun pressed his temples together, trying to control the fierce sensation that had risen to the top of his head. His body temperature spiked abnormally as he watched Minhee standing behind the chair, filming Jaehee. Feeling sweat beading on his forehead, he took off his tuxedo jacket.

“Damn it…”

He gritted his teeth and muttered a curse between clenched teeth. He wanted to cover those pale shoulders revealed by the dress with his discarded jacket and button it up and then put the muzzle of the familiar Sig P226 to both eyeballs of Tyler Grant, the second-year research analyst who stared at Minhee’s deep cleavage, and pull the trigger.

Every time the hem of the dress’s skirt peeked out to reveal a slender thigh, he felt the ground shake. Her br*asts, which rose above the heart-shaped neckline, were so pale it was almost transparent, with blue veins showing beneath.

Minhee’s large eyes and red lips seemed unusually prominent today. She looked like an angel standing alone in the untrodden snow at the dead of night, but also like a seductive mistress who innocently lures men to the brink of ruin.

Even if Minhee just quietly breathed next to him, Taejun felt like a beast in heat. From the moment he saw her in the reception hall, he had been unable to think properly. His rationality was dripping away.

If there hadn’t been people around, he would have laid Minhee, in her dress, on the table and lifted her skirt to bury his face between her thighs. He wanted to spread her legs wide open and penetrate her in one swift motion, burying himself deep inside her. He wanted to leave his mark all over her exposed br*asts so that everyone could see that she was his.

‘Should I take her out of here now?’

But this goddamn party had just begun. And for some reason, he felt that if he took Minhee out now, she would get angry.

Taejun ran a hand nervously through his hair and pressed his fingers firmly against his temples. It was the first headache he had felt in a long time.

‘Coming here was a mistake.’

Normally, he avoided these kinds of parties like the plague. Even when he needed to network for business, he would just send the more sociable Junhee to these tedious events.

He had planned to simply send a generous donation to the charity gala hosted by Jaehee’s fiancée. But he had done something he had never done before. And now he was paying the price.

Tracing back the process of how he ended up here, the motivation was quite vague. So he himself couldn’t explain exactly why.

It all started a few months ago, when Minhee told him at dinner that she was a fan of Jaehee’s, her eyes wide with excitement, and he thought she was like a small, cute animal. He had found it quite interesting that she had such a varied range of expressions.

He also wondered what she would look like if he went to the party and saw Jaehee in person. So he made a rather impulsive decision.

‘Back then, it seemed like a pretty good idea…”

But his expectations were repeatedly off the mark in unexpected places.

This morning, when an important meeting prevented Taejun from picking Minhee up himself, he decided to send a chauffeured limousine. Fortunately, Minhee had accepted the proposal, and after sending Anton Dawson, the bodyguard-turned-driver he had recently hired, Taejun had finally felt a little reassured.

Taejun knew Dawson personally: he was a former Green Beret mercenary employed by a private military corporation (PMC) of which he was a major shareholder. The captain who had founded the PMC after leaving the ODA (Alpha Team) where Taejun served was someone he owed his life, and he had provided a huge amount of investment capital.

Dawson had served as a weapons sergeant in the same ODA, and after being discharged with an amputation below his left knee, he had an artificial leg installed and was now employed by the captain’s PMC, handling light VIP security or event safety work. Although the prosthetic leg made running a bit inconvenient, TJ knew how effectively Dawson could suppress enemies in close combat. Moreover, his situational judgment was excellent.

Hiring Dawson was the best option since he couldn’t be with Minhee 24/7. Taejun, who had recently become obsessively focused on Minhee’s safety, was only concerned with getting her to the party without incident, not realizing that the inside of the party would be more dangerous.

As soon as he arrived at the party, Taejun scanned the wide space with his sharp eyes, searching for Minhee. He quickly scanned the rectangular reception hall, dividing it into a grid using letters and numbers. His gaze quickly passed over the G16 area, then did a double take and stopped.

The round shoulders and slender arms hidden behind the back of a large, brown-haired man seemed somehow familiar. As the woman standing diagonally shifted her body, the slit in her skirt widened, revealing her smooth thighs. Her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, looking as soft as a milk pudding.

‘No way…?’

Taejun’s pupils fluttered. As he pushed his way through the crowd towards the G16 area to get a better look, the damn Lara Rosenburg blocked his path.

[TJ! I can’t believe I’m seeing you at a party like this! Why haven’t you been answering my calls lately?]

[Lara.]

Taejun gave her a light nod of the head, then his eyes followed Minhee again. The large man blocking Minhee from view threw his head back and laughed loudly. That’s when he saw it. Minhee was smiling brightly at that man. Taejun stood frozen on the spot.

He had been under the firm impression that he was the only one who could see such a face. The expression he had mistakenly thought was “his” was being shown to another man.

As her clear, large eyes crinkled and her lips parted in a soft curve, her face shone dazzlingly like a reflection of sunlight.

The bell rang, signaling the start of the party, and as the man left his seat, Minhee also walked out from behind the table.

‘The dress she was wearing… F*ck.’