by Rhys Ford
“I’m okay,” Jae murmured reassuringly. “I’m fine… I’m okay, agi.”
I started breathing again.
My hands skimmed over his body, searching for any injury. Speckles of blood dotted his cheekbone, and my heart froze. My thumbs smeared the blood, raking the spray into uneven lines. Cradling the back of his head, I held him to my chest, waiting for my heart to start up again, willing it to catch a beat… anything to begin feeling again. My fear chilled me down to my bones, and I couldn’t keep my fingers from trembling as I ran them through his hair.
Even hidden behind a patio table, I felt exposed, but he lay on the ground under me, letting my hands touch his chest. I needed to hear his heart… to feel it pumping under my fingers.
I must have looked insane, because he cupped his hands to my face, ignoring all of his rules and fears.
“Agi, I am okay,” he said again in that husky purr that warmed my guts. “We have to help. I think Helena’s hurt. I saw her bleeding, I think. Maybe David… I don’t know.”
There was silence around us, broken by whimpers and gasping cries. I slid off Jae and peered carefully around the upended table. Kwon was stirring nearby, his legs tangled up in one of the mission-style folding chairs set on the patio. Other party guests were hiding behind what they could, most taking cover behind tables and the potted juniper trees lining the outer edges of the patio. A few feet away from us, Helena Kwon lay in her fiancée’s arms, blood turning her crimson dress nearly black. David rocked her, his hands ineffectively pressing against the wound in her side.
The diamond bracelets on her wrists were splattered with her blood, the gems now as dim as her glazed-over eyes. David’s shirt was soaked through, and he shook her slightly, urging her to stay with him until someone came. There was more than blood on his hands. A pink-gray froth poured from the side of Helena’s shattered head and onto the sleeve of his coat. A thin, bloody film dripped from his fingers, and David’s shoulders shuddered while he tried to catch his breath. He glanced up at me for a quick moment, his eyes wild with fear and pain, then back to his lover, begging me… anyone… to help her.
There wasn’t anyone coming who could put Helena Kwon back together. He just wasn’t ready to hear that yet. I knew how that felt. Nothing hurts as much as your world falling apart in your hands. Nothing.
JAE and I were separated by the cops once they arrived. An ambulance crew checked over the rest of the guests. A total of five bullets were fired. Two hit Helena, two grazed other guests, and one went wide, striking one of the boulders and ricocheting back toward the patio. The detective on the scene, a stern-looking middle-aged blonde woman named Brookes, was particularly interested in my conceal license and what a private investigator was doing doubling as a photographer’s assistant at a rehearsal dinner.
It was a conversation that went nowhere useful for her. I had no answers, other than I thought the gun had a silencer and the shots came from the house. The look she gave me was sour. I gave her one back, slightly less tart but disgusted all the same.
“Can I go?” I’d lost sight of Jae. He’d disappeared inside of the house along with a few of the other guests, accompanied by a few uniforms. The number of cops called onto the scene was staggering. “I need to find Jae-Min.”
“I’ve got your contact info.” Brookes didn’t look pleased to let me go, but motioned me toward the house. “I don’t know if he’s done yet. If not, you can wait by the front door. We’re closing up the rest of the house.”
Spotting Shin-Cho comforting his brother, I nodded at him, hoping my expression could convey my sorrow. Sitting on one of the lawn chairs, David looked devastated, and his older brother hovered next to him. A couple of detectives stood in front of them, asking questions. I didn’t need to hear Shin-Cho to know he was reaching the end of his rope. He snarled in Korean at one of the men poking at his brother. I didn’t need to understand the language to know Shin-Cho was telling them to fuck off. Either they understood him, or realized they’d pushed things too far, because the detectives were making their apologies when I hit the stairs.
I found Jae in the main foyer, sitting on a spindly looking French chair and sipping at a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He’d gained a pinstriped gray suit jacket from someone, and it was tossed over his shoulders, its arms dangling down his sides. His face was clean of blood, but his shirt had a light spray of spots along his chest. It chilled me to realize how close he’d been to Helena when she’d been shot.
“You okay?” It was hard not to touch him. I had to shove my hands into my pockets to stop myself from pulling him against me. He nodded and handed me the coffee. It was hot and sweet, but not the hot and sweet taste I wanted in my mouth. “Are they done with you?”
“I think so. Hyung’s here somewhere. He spoke to the cops first, before they could talk to me. They weren’t happy about it.”
“Yeah, cops get pissed off when someone steps on their witness,” I said. “That where you got the jacket?”
Jae murmured something that sounded like a yes or hyung. It could have been grilled cheese sandwich for all I knew. He looked tired, and I hooked my hand under his arm, gently pulling him up. He stumbled forward, catching his toes on the carpet runner. “What?”
“Let’s take you home,” I whispered into his ear. I didn’t care who was watching us or even if the cops were done with him. I wanted to get Jae home and scrub the evening from his body and mind. He gave me a bit of a struggle, looking over his shoulder and down the hall to where I assumed Seong, Scarlet’s lover, was holed up with his own gang of cops.
I gave in to my desires.
Pulling him against me, I looped my arms around his waist. He twisted a bit, looking around him, but I held him tight.
“No one’s watching,” I whispered into his ear. “And even if they are, I don’t want you to care. Not now. Not after… this. Time for me to take care of you, Kim Jae-Min. Now shut up, and let’s get the rest of your stuff so we can go home.”
I RAN a hot shower, stripped Jae, and shoved him under the water. It was hard to keep my head on straight, especially with the sight of his naked body imprinted in my mind as I headed downstairs. Tossing his shirt into a bag, I knotted it up before throwing it into the bin. The cat wound between my ankles. I stepped over her, thwarting her plans for my death.
The teapot was on the stove, and there was a collection of tins Jae’d lined up on the kitchen counter. I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s instead. Snagging a couple of cold Cokes from the fridge, I took the stairs up two at a time. Neko tried to trip me on the landing, and I edged the cat away from the bedroom with my foot.
She complained loudly, a pitiful wailing sound that warned of air raids and tsunamis. Dancing past me, Neko jumped up on the bed and screamed again. She wanted to be with Jae… with me… or just wanted to take up space at the end of the bed. Either way, she was throwing a shitfit about it.
I left the door open.
I’m not always stupid. Sometimes, it’s easier when the cat wins.
The water was still running when I set the bottle and cans down on the nightstand. Slipping past the bathroom door, I caught Jae staring at me with hooded eyes, through the glass shower door. He was leaning with his hands against the wall and his legs spread slightly apart, letting the showerheads’ flow hit him full force. His black hair was plastered down against his skull, its wet length coursing down the span of his neck.
He didn’t move when I opened the door. He didn’t blink when I walked into the shower fully clothed, and came up behind him to wrap my arms around his stomach. I held him, letting him shake in my arms while the water ran over both of us.
For some reason, Jae did it for me. There was something about him that made me ache for him. His long legs, narrow hips, and wide shoulders made my mouth water. His round, tight ass and sensual mouth made me hard. Even at the worst of times, he made me hard. My dick wasn’t listening to my warnings that it didn’t need to be buried deep inside of the man against
my chest. It could wait. It could fucking wait forever, if that’s what Jae needed.
Eventually, the heater struggled to keep up with the demands on it, and the steam from the showerheads thinned. The water was going lukewarm when Jae laid his head back onto my shoulder. Turning his face into the crook of my neck, he sighed and leaned on me, letting me hold his weight up. Reaching past him, I shut off the valves, and opened the door to grab a towel from the rack.
“I’m okay,” he reassured me, trying to take the towel from me, but I pushed his hands away.
“Let me,” I scolded him softly. His head was bent, and his eyes were nearly hidden by his hair, falling forward wet and long around his cheekbones. I touched my fingers to his chin and tilted his face up. “Let me do this.”
I rubbed him down with the soft bath sheet, taking my time with his hands and feet. I handled his balls and cock gently, feeling their heft in my palm as I dried them, before moving up his torso and ass. His shoulders and chest were next, then his hair, which soaked through the towel. I tossed it into the laundry basket and grabbed another, wrapping it around Jae’s hips.
“If you pick me up, I’ll kill you,” Jae grumbled.
“My shoulder hurts too much, or I would,” I groused back.
The cat was warming our bed, and I pushed Jae onto the mattress to keep her company. The Cokes were still cold, and I popped them open, passing one to Jae. I reached over for the Jack Daniel’s, which earned me a faint smile.
Jae sipped his soda. “Did you bring any food?”
“Whiskey’s food. It’s like oatmeal. Sort of,” I protested as I twisted off the black plastic cap. “I’m Irish. We drink whiskey when shit happens.”
“I’m Korean. We eat.” He leaned against me, then held his can out. “I’ll try being Irish. I don’t think I can eat.”
“If you really want to be Irish, you’d drink from the bottle and then pretend to sip the Coke as a chaser.” I poured about half a shot of Jack into the can. “Let’s start you off slow.”
I drank from the bottle, leaving the other Coke on the nightstand. The whiskey burned the sides of my mouth, and I swallowed, letting the fire hit my belly. Moving up to sit against the headboard, I held Jae’s soda can so he could climb over my leg and nest between my thighs, leaning his back against my chest. We sat there quietly, my left hand lying on Jae’s belly while the right remained curled around the whiskey bottle. After Jae finished his drink, he took the Jack Daniel’s from me and took a sip, gasping at the rawness in his mouth.
“That’s….” He coughed, hard. “I drink soju, and I think that stuff’s nasty.”
“Keep drinking until it tastes good,” I suggested, kissing his temple. “Then you stop. Unless you want to be really Irish, and then you keep drinking until you start telling everyone you love them.”
Jae swallowed another sip and handed the bottle back to me. Leaning his head back, he stared up at my face and said, “It was shitty… what happened today. It was really shitty.”
“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. There was nothing else to do but agree. We left the house with no idea who did the shooting or if there’d been any reason for it.
I knew how that felt too.
Really fucking shitty.
“I feel like….” Jae murmured softly. “I feel like it’s all connected to me. All these people dying. Like there’s a thread or something going through me, and people I touch die. Hyun-Shik. Jin-Sang. Brian. Victoria. And now Helena. I know it sounds stupid. I didn’t do anything. It’s just… so many… so close to me.”
I wasn’t going to tell him it wasn’t his fault. Nothing I said or did would take that feeling of dread from his chest. I would only be able to hold him when the nightmares hit.
Only fair. He did it for me.
“You know what’s going through my head?” The skin on his belly was soft, and I traced his stomach muscles with my fingertips as I spoke. “Why Helena? She’s what… twenty-four… twenty-five? Why go out of your way to kill her? What could she have done?”
“I don’t know. She was… nice?” Jae shrugged. “I didn’t spend a lot of time with her. Just about an hour, talking about what kind of photos she and David wanted. She wasn’t very… complicated.”
Coming from the king of complicated, I took that to mean she was a nice girl, but dim. “So David was the brain trust?”
“I suppose,” he said, taking the bottle from me. His sips were getting more daring, and he swallowed the whiskey with a practiced ease. We’d be working through the rest of it if we weren’t careful. “He’s a lawyer. I think he’s going to work for hyung.”
“And we’re back to the incest,” I grumbled. “You guys kind of scare me. It’s like a syndicate or cult. Very much you scratch my back, and I’ll wash yours.”
“How do you think I get most of my jobs?” He snorted. “And it’s not like they’re the yakuza. Mostly they’re… chaebol.” My look of confusion must have been epic, because he rolled his eyes at me. “Chaebol… they’re families… rich families. What’s the word for it? Dynasties, I guess. They marry each other, have their own rules. Hyung’s family is powerful. So is Kwon’s. Jae-Su could have worked for hyung’s family in San Francisco, but he’s too….”
Jae’s shrug was enough. His brother was useless.
Suddenly, other things made sense. Jae’s living with his richer cousins, the Kims, when he was thirteen or fourteen, only to be turned out when Hyun-Shik’s mother blamed him for her son’s homosexuality. He’d lost more than a place to live after Hyun-Shik seduced him… he’d also lost the chance to elevate his family to those rarified circles.
I began to hate Jae’s aunt even more than I had before. And in my own quaint, philosophical way, expressed my disgust by saying, “Your aunt so fucked you over. What a fucking bitch.”
“You’re smarter when you’re drunk.” Jae slurred slightly, and I grinned at him. “You’ve only now caught on?”
“You just explained that whole… gerbil thing. Now it makes sense.”
“Chaebol.” He was patient with me, especially when I slaughtered his language. “But killing Helena still doesn’t make sense.”
“Someone hate the Kwon… family thing?” I suggested. “Enough to shoot… someone?”
“It would make more sense if you said someone hated hyung’s family, but Helena was the one who died, not David. The Kwons have a lot of money, but the Seongs have more power… they’re older… have more… everything. Unless they killed her to hurt him, but he’s not… David doesn’t have any weight in the family yet. He’s too young.”
“Hold up, how does that make sense?” Either the whiskey was too strong for my brain, or I was missing something. “How does Seong count in this?”
“His family has more influence.” Jae removed the bottle from my hand and drank. I’d nearly upended it on the covers, so I didn’t mind when he held onto it. “Remember? David’s mother is hyung’s sister. She’s a Seong. Dae-Hoon’s a Park. His family has money, but not as much as the Seongs.”
“So Dae-Hoon married into the Seong… chaebol,” I tried the word out. It couldn’t have been too bad, because the eye roll he gave me was slight. I sat up, suddenly a lot more sober than I wanted to be. Jae grunted at being shoved forward, and grumbled again when I reached for my notebook to write down my thoughts. “And his sons… if Dae-Hoon had been around, they’d have been… tainted… by being connected to him, right?”
“Yes, but Dae-Hoon’s been gone for years, and they were raised by the Seongs.” He frowned. “Shin-Cho and David weren’t touched by what Dae-Hoon did. Well, until Shin-Cho… what he did was stupid. Now people are talking about Dae-Hoon again, and saying his sons are like him. It might affect David too, especially since he stood by his brother.”
“I’ll bet you that’s it,” I said. “You say family’s everything for you. It would be for someone like Dae-Hoon too. I don’t think he died, Jae.”
“Then what happened to him?”
“I thi
nk he walked away,” I said, kissing the tip of my lover’s nose. “They would have fucked him over, like they did you… like they did your family. I don’t think he would risk that. You once told me Koreans live for the generation after them. It makes sense for Dae-Hoon to not want that for his kids. It would kill him to have his sons suffer like that. I saw photos of him with his kids. He loved them. I think he walked away so his sons could grow up without his… shame… affecting them.”
I hugged him, jostling the Jack Daniel’s bottle he still held to his chest. Jae protested a bit, then grumbled more when I took the bottle and set it on the nightstand with my notebook. Tumbling him onto his back, I covered Jae with my body, stretching out to capture him under me.
“I think Dae-Hoon might still be alive, agi.” I kissed him, tasting the whiskey on his tongue. “David might have lost his fiancée, but maybe I can give them back their father. I just need to know where to look.”
Chapter Seven
NAMING Los Angeles the City of Angels was a colossal joke, usually perpetrated on the stupid fool who decides to brave the midmorning rush in the special hell that is the 110, 10, and 101 triangle. It was as if Satan looked down on the city and said: Fuck it, I was an angel. I’m going to piss right on this spot and call it mine.
And damn, did he drink a Big Gulp or something before he took that piss.
I’d left Jae asleep with Neko curled up on my pillow. We’d finished off the bottle of Jack at some point, and lay against each other, just listening to one another breathe. Morning hit with a vengeance, especially since I’d forgotten to pull the drapes closed, and the sun punched me in the face. A few ibuprofen, a bottle of water, and a toothbrush scrubbing later, I felt more human than the throbbing, aching sponge I’d woken up as. A shower and a cup of hot, strong coffee took care of most of the rest of it, and I’d headed out to meet Bobby in the driveway, thankful for the drive-thru Starbucks a few blocks away from my house.
