"Wait for it. Just wait."

Rin stares straight at the clear cocktail glass, her amber eyes reflecting the cyan blue of the alcohol. I watch her intently, amused and liking the distraction.

"Now!"

She flicks her wrist. And in a second there's a tornado in the midst of the deep turquoise of the drink, and I laugh as she chugs the entire thing in one gulp.

Rin smiles widely, licking her lips.

"Mm. That's so good."

"I might order another one, actua—"

Then the inside of the bar suddenly quiets. It gets so quiet all of a sudden that Rin pauses, looking up in confusion. I follow her glance.

There's a man standing in front of me. Two men— counting the one snickering behind him. He's tall, muscular under his expensive shirt. Seemingly he wants to show off too, with the silken sleeves tugged upwards.

Tattoos mark half of his body. But I stare at him, both disinterested and unimpressed. He might be considered handsome, but my standards were sky-high with V already.

Just a piece of shit with daddy's money.

My eyes narrow.

"Who the fuck are you?"

He bursts into laughter, when nothing is really funny at all. At this point the entire bar is staring at us.

He seems to laugh for almost a minute before he finally stops, staring down at me with a smile that makes me want to vomit. His fingers motion at the oversized hoodie I'm wearing.

"Me?"

"Just a guy wondering what you're hiding underneath all that, baby."

A familiar glass spins through the air.

And I hold my breath as the cocktail glass slams straight into the side of his head, shattering into a million pieces. The glass rains down on the bar floor as he stumbles back with a cry, his hand flying to his temple.

A thick trail of blood smears his palm.

My gaze whips over to Rin, her hand outstretched and a playful smile on her face.

Time seems to stop, for a second.

Rin was such a sweet girl. Fiercely loyal, never hesitating to help out if she saw something against her morals. But there was one thing I'd told her to fix, for the past six years I'd known her.

Her terrible temper.

The guy curses, stumbling back another step. A group of men get to their feet, and suddenly the bar is full of loud, shouted curses.

Rin winks at me, flashing her middle finger in the direction of the man.

"Meet me back home, okay?"

Then she dashes out of the bar. And I'm stunned, as more than half of the men run after her. The man who had hit on me is sprawled on the floor now.

I click my tongue as I see Rin disappear down the street, with more than five men after her.

Damn.

She really needed to stop doing this.

________________________________

The inside of the bar is crowded.

And I sit across from Jungkook in a dark, shadowed corner, with a glass of champagne in my hand. He's also drinking— something that I'd rarely seen from him.

He gets straight to the point.

"It's about your father." He murmurs, voice taut.

"He wants me to kill Min Kian."

I glance up, a little confused. With Jungkook being one of the best assassins that my father had, it wasn't rare for him to order a murder like this.

"But I was doing some research on him," He murmurs. "And it turns out he was one of the main facilitators of the Seohan University killing."

My eyes instantly find his.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah." Jungkook replies, shrugging his shoulders. "And you know that even Jimin has been struggling to find information on that case since it's so classified. So if you want me to keep him alive and bring him to you for questioning, I can—"

"Who the fuck are you?"

A familiar, knifelike voice of a woman cuts through the low silence of the bar. Both our eyes lift, and my breath pauses in my throat when I recognize the low, feminine tone.

Aeri?!

I burst up to my feet.

She's on the opposite side of the bar, along with her friend. Her disinterested eyes are fixed up at a man who has his back to me.

I cannot see his face, but I hear what he says next. The entire bar does.

"Just a guy wondering what you're hiding underneath all that, baby."

...what did he just say to her?

Then before a second even passes, a loud shatter of glass splits through the chilling silence. I'm completely stunned— as the petite, light-haired girl who'd been next to Aeri hurls her drink glass straight into his temple.

There's a moment of pure shock.

Then the man collapses, and the moment breaks. The bar erupts into chaos, and I glimpse the petite girl flash a wink at Aeri before running out of the bar. Several men chase after her tail.

"Fuck."

The hushed curse comes from Jungkook.

My eyes flicker— this was the first time that I had ever heard a curse come out of his lips. He rushes out of his chair, and I follow right after when I see that a few men who had stayed behind were nearing Aeri.

The last thing I see is him disappearing out the bar, his burning eyes fixed straight and nowhere else.

________________________________

Rin.

Was she going to be okay?

I knew that she was a fast runner, but I—

There's no time to think about her. Some of the men from that guy's friend group had stayed behind, and I look up with slitted eyes as they close around me on all sides.

My back presses against the bar counter.

I keep my voice steady as I jerk my head towards the guy, still completely knocked unconscious on the floor with shards of glass and blood.

"I think all of you have better things to do than gang up on me. Will you leave him to die or something?"

One of them bursts into laughter.

"Oh, I think he'll understand, little lady. When he wakes up to see you right next to his hospital bed."

I growl, my mind turning as I see them tighten the circle around me. The same man who'd spoken raises a fist, with a crooked smile.

"Just think of it as a sweet little nap."

My eyes flash wildly. I needed to avoid this. I needed to— and then I somehow had to get out of this circle. But would any of them give if I tried to shove them out of the way?

I—

"How sad, then."

My eyes widen.

"That he'll be seeing all of you instead."

...V?

I stumble back in shock as the man who had tried to knock me out sways heavily. Then his eyes roll back towards the ceiling, and I watch as his body collapses forward like a tree getting sawed off its trunk.

V stands behind him, a viciously long, narrow shard of glass clutched between his pale fingertips. The tip of it drips with blood.

He has a look in his eyes that I'm not familiar with. I'd never seen it on him, when he'd been with me.

But I can only describe it as pure bloodlust.

He goes through all of them, so easily. The glass shard turns a darker shade of red with each one, and I stand there in the midst of it, watching. His dark eyes burn with the heat of his thirst, for the blood of these men.

And I should be terrified.

I should be running away. From all the screaming, the blood spattering the floor as V finds it. He looks almost like a beast, untamed and unrestricted in the fire of his fury.

It's so different than his usual steel composure that I should be wanting to get away. It would be the normal response.

But I...

A ghost of a smile passes by my lips.

He is so sexy, with their blood painting his cheeks.

There must be something wrong with me, too.

The shard of glass tight between his fingers, a weapon that really shouldn't be as deadly as he is making out to be.

He's finished with them before I can even organize my own thoughts.

And just like that, he's back.

"Aeri," He whispers, the bloodstained glass slipping from his fingers. He clasps my hand, and I look up at him silently.

"Are you okay?" He murmurs, his eyes searching my body for wounds. "Why were you here? I thought you were..."

I continue staring at him, as he frets. He really is fretting over me, as if I was his baby sister. And my jaw tightens, because this is just so stupid.

I want him, so badly it hurts.

Every part of him is perfect— every inch of him. His dark beauty, the way he keeps me at a distance. From the way he had held me in that alley with that pathetic smile of his while he had been dying from the poison eating at his heart, to how he had pushed me away when I'd been trying to tease a kiss out of him.

I had been with so many men, experienced countless of them in the Underground.

None of them. None of them had ever come close to this man standing in front of me.

But then he had to go and kill my brother. He had to go and ruin everything, just like that.

I shake his touch away. My eyes are iced over again, as I nod stiffly.

"I'm fine."

"Thanks for the help."

Then I push past him, my hands slowly curling into fists by my sides as I leave the bar. Frustration pools in my stomach, forming a tight knot.

Stupid idiot.

I grind my teeth.

He really had to go ruin everything, like that.