Ara arrives at the company half an hour early with all the documents needed for verification purposes. Sitting in the dimly illuminated, posh looking meeting room wearing a simple dark blue denim shirt matched with simple leather jacket with black slim fit jeans, her face looks stoic and composed despite the situation at hands.

It is supposed to be a board meeting but she knows this is no ordinary board meeting. She found out that her father had been the mafia boss of an underground organization shielding behind the façade of a highly successful property company. Going through all the documents again to ensure there’s nothing missing; her head is busy analyzing everything that happened.

She wanted to gather some information on his company while getting ready but gained nothing. Everything appeared legal and not even a single bad review was found during her search. She guessed maybe anyone who even tried to give a negative comment was shut immediately by their members. She saw the photos of the ‘YG Family’ on the walls while heading to the meeting room. They are definitely a big family. A big family of mafia.

How he had managed to hide that all this time is beyond her. It leaves her feeling betrayed and bitter with so many questions. Did he not trust her? Or she was never supposed to know. She’s trying so hard to grip the situation but failing to do so. There’s no one who is able to answer her questions. Even if there’s someone, she can’t trust anyone easily. The only one who she can trust and has all the answers is already dead.

In the midst of her thinking, she is shocked by dash of silver passing through straight in front of her eyes. Her eyes squinting, following the trail until it gets stuck on the wall, revealing a bullet. This time, her eyes widen, stunned and she looked on the opposite side to her right, a tall guy with short cropped jet black hair holding a gun with his right hand, rigid posture with the gun still aims in her direction.

He’s wearing a black French coat that looks too hot to be in this weather with dark jeans to match. His face remains impassive like he didn’t just try to shot her missing her face by millimeters. She coldly holds his gaze on her. Not willing to show even a sliver of emotion. She doesn’t want him to think that he got her. He might be a mafia too but she’s not as weak and vulnerable as he seems to think either.

“Hyung! What are you doing? Put that gun down”, a new guy suddenly appears and rush forward to push the gun away. He’s muttering curses under his breath but it doesn’t make them take their eyes off each other. Only then he realizes her presence.

He seems slightly surprised but still tries to be polite by bowing slightly at her. Seeing his gesture, she stands to return the bow. She noted that he’s slightly shorter and has slightly slimmer body frame too with his brown hair and small eyes with evident eye bags underneath. He carries a friendly air about him that makes her feel slightly comfortable with their current situation.

“Annyeong, I’m Seungri. May I know why you are here?” He questions her looking really confused and curious. She saw his gaze slightly scanning her upside down approvingly but decides to ignore him. At least he’s nice enough to her so far. Can’t predict what other kind of personalities she would encounter in this world, might as well keeps him on her good side.

“I’m Yang Ara,” she says the simplest explanation.

This seems to really astound him. His jaw drops at that revelation. He opens his mouth before closing it again, evidently unable to form a coherent response. The other guy though looks unfazed by the statement.

Before Seungri manages to say anything, people start to enter the room and slowly filling up the available seats. She simply bows at them politely before sitting down again. She does a quick scan to analyze the rest of the attendees. Feeling relieved to see that she blends in well enough with her outfit; she starts to take notes of their facial expressions.

Generally, they had been given her curious and accusatory glances. She can already imagine how chaotic the room going to be once the real agenda for today is presented. She can only pray they would only limit with verbal attacks instead of physically harming her like what almost happened earlier.

Once everyone is seated, her father’s lawyer walked in the room. A tall, good looking, young man in his late 20’s, Kim Sang Bum, more known as Kim Bum. He looks dashing with his dark blue suits with grey tie carrying a black briefcase that he has always bring with him. They have met few times in the past whenever he dropped by their house to discuss important matters with her father. She had never talked to him other than brief greetings because she never interfered with any of her father’s matters.

“Welcome everyone, as you all know, Yang Hyun Suk sajang-nim has passed away and despite that we’re still grieving for his loss, we would have to discuss who will be our new president to ensure that our organization won’t fall in our time of weakness,” he pauses to carefully look at each other of them, emphasizing today’s agenda. “He already left us with an heir to lead us in his will, his daughter, Yang Ara,” he gestures towards Ara and nods at her asking her to stand up. Everyone gasps, completely shocked.

She carefully stands, bowing marginally without smiling at anyone. Her eyes clears through the entire room before she sits back down, focusing solely on Kim Bum. She wouldn't care to face all the negative looks hurled at her. The deafening silence of the meeting room is already enough to make her feel uncomfortable.

 “WHY I WASN’T TOLD ABOUT THIS BEFORE?!” A loud booming voice coming from a red haired man with dark red suits in front of her, shouts at Kim Bum startling Ara. As soon as the words left him, the whole meeting room is in uproar. Everyone is agreeing with him, adding their own snide remarks and hateful words towards her. This is the exact scenario that she predicted. She doesn’t think it’s necessary to say anything yet so she let Kim Bum handles the situation. That’s what lawyers are supposed to be good at anyways.

Kim Bum simply observes them calmly, letting them express their frustrations before he addresses the same man who started the uproar with a strong voice of his own shutting up the whole room with his words, “It was none of your business, G-Dragon-shii.”

This seems to infuriate him as he glaringly locked eyes with Kim Bum who seems indifferent about it. Ara notices he’s clenching his left hand that he puts on the table so hard they’re turning white. She’s pretty impressed at how composed and collected Kim Bum is when it’s obvious that G-Dragon could cause him serious damage if he were to unleash his built up anger.

G-Dragon suddenly turns to her with such hatred in his eyes that if looks could kill, she would have been dead. He stands up and slams both palms on the table, leaning towards her with murderous looks. She calmly looks at him, readying herself for anything that he might attempts.

“You can never replace Yang Hyun Suk,” he cruelly snarls at her.

“I never wanted to,” she counters, looking at him dead in the eyes.

Her retorts just goads him further as his face turns redder before he snatches the seat he has been perched on and tosses it over her head. Just missing her hair by couple of millimeters. The whole room is stunned and becomes so quiet they could hear a pin drop.

He storms out of the room, unstopped by anyone. No one dares to anyways.

The tension in the room is so palpable as if the air could be cut with a knife. Kim Bum scrutinizes her carefully and seems satisfied enough that she appears fine and unharmed. They both know that feelings don’t really matter much in this world. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it works in a mafia world.

Kim Bum claps his hand once, breaking the silence and bringing the attention back to him. “Well, whatever displeasure all of you have, she has been appointed by Yang Hyun Suk sajang-nim himself to become the new president and you are expected to obey her commands,” he states, smirking slightly at all of them including her. Ara can see how much he’s enjoying their misery, hers and theirs, but she knows there is nothing much she can do about it.

She can’t let her father down despite the circumstances that had brought upon her all of this. There’s no way she’s going to let his empire goes down, not if she can help it. Screw whatever they think of her, they are stuck in this together now. With a new found determination, she locks gaze with Kim Bum, silently telling him that she won’t back down from this challenge. His eyebrows quirk up before he smirks at her amusingly.

Groans of disapproval can be heard throughout the whole meeting room but no one said anything until a man in his black suit with blonde Mohawk hair but black roots suddenly proposes an idea that throws the meeting room into chaos again. “She should earn our trust before we are able to follow her leads. Two basic tests should be enough to see some of her skills,” he sternly states. Murmurs of agreement come from everyone at that suggestion.

“Fair enough, what do you have in mind Taeyang-shii?” Kim Bum peers at Ara as he asks him. Ara is slightly annoyed that the decision is taken from her but she knows that they do need to see what she is capable of. Trust and respect are earned not given.

“Reassemble a classic Beretta M9 gun and fight with one of us. If she can’t even do the two fundamentals, how can she lead a mafia organization?” Taeyang tauntingly takes a gander at her, daring her to reject the tests. Ara emotionlessly stares right back at him.

“Simple tests indeed. Who’s going to fight her?” Kim Bum questions again.

“Let me do the honor to show this her place,” a girl who looks around her age, with short black bob hair with sleeveless t-shirt declares from the other end of the table, glaring at Ara then smirking wickedly as the others cheers her on.

“That’s decided then. Shall we start?” Kim Bum addresses everyone present. A chorus of yes and silent nods answer him. Kim Bum then stands up followed by all of them goes out of the meeting room. Ara follows along cluelessly since she doesn’t know where they are heading. This is definitely not what she had in mind waking up this morning. For now she simply has to do her best to impress them.

They take the elevator in groups before heading to basement before being lead to a camouflage double door that reveals an enormous armory arsenal room. Rows upon rows of various kinds of weapons extending from a wide range of automatic weapon to conventional swords. Machine guns, auto rifle, short gun, daggers, scythe, just to name a few amongst those that she can catch a glimpse of. Ara is definitely impressed and awe-struck with everything that room has to offer. She will surely spend most of her time here soon to get to know every single one of the weapons once she passes.

Her attention is brought back to the center of the room where they arrange two tables closely facing one another with a gun on each of the table. They disassemble both guns and jumble up the parts. She’s a bit confused why there’s a need to have two guns until she sees the same man who almost shot her earlier walking towards the other table. This can’t be good.

Ara knows he would love to kill her without hesitation if she fails to reassemble the gun before him. The stake to win this just rose higher. She still can’t comprehend why he is really hostile towards her when they just met today and still hasn’t spoken a single word to each other.

“Sorry Ara-shii, there’s slight change in the game. Top hyung offered himself to go against you to spice things up a little bit,” Taeyang clarifies to Ara without a trace of emotion in his voice. He’s not sorry and they both know it.

Ara calmly walks towards the table as the crowd talks under their breath. She steadily locks eyes with Top whose rigid posture doesn’t give anything away. As soon as Taeyang gives the signal to start, both of them quickly insert the first component which is the muzzle of the barrel assembly into the forward open end of the slide. They both quietly focus on putting all the parts while the atmosphere grew tense as the time ticks by.

Top made the mistake of looking up right before his final piece to see Ara pointing the gun at him. He’s slightly alarm with eyes slightly widen before his mask is back on his face and his arm raise as he pushes takedown lever up and pointing it to Ara too.

The crowd has been stunned. Until some of them regains their sensibility and start clapping followed by the rest. They are thoroughly amaze because Top has been their best man when it comes to machinery weapons. He can talks about all the details of any rifle or guns as if he’s talking about the weather. No one among them has ever beaten him in this test. Not even G-Dragon.

“You had definitely aced the test, Ara-shii. Prepare yourself for second test.” Kim Bum simple announcement snapped them out of their trance, lowering both guns on the table. Ara only got the slightest nod from Top as they both take their place back in the crowd. She figures that’s the furthest he can do to tell her he has acknowledged her. She feels slightly relieved with that, at least she doesn’t have to worry about an expert sniper under her own father’s organization set out to kill her. That’s what she deduced from his behavior and outfit.

They remove the tables to clear the space in the middle. This time, everyone takes few steps back to give more space for the match. Ara removes her leather jacket and empties her pocket crouching to put them on the ground. The girl who challenged her earlier is already waiting for her in the center with cocky smirk plastered on her round face as Ara stand straight and take steps towards her. Taeyang stands in between both of them as the referee again.

“Minzy, don’t torture her too much alright?” Taeyang smirks at her before she rolls her eyes and few snickers can be heard coming from the crowd behind them. Ara couldn’t care less with all the underestimation that they are doing. It makes it easier for her since their guard is lowered and she’s definitely going to use that to her advantage.

“Oppa, don’t worry I might only kill her accidentally,” Minzy innocently bats her eyelashes towards Taeyang before everyone laughs as if it’s an inside joke amongst them. Ara stands there emotionlessly; she doesn’t have time to play their sick games.

“There’s no rule for this match, but you would be declare winner once your opponent is unable to fight or died,” Taeyang looks at her slightly smirking when he finishes his sentence. Ara dismisses him with her poker face.

Taeyang gives the signal to start once everyone calms down. Minzy immediately gives her a fast right cross which she blocks with her palm before giving her an uppercut. Minzy hops back to give them some space and take a moment since the strong uppercut left her feeling slightly disoriented.

Anger seems to cloud her eyes then she delivers a sharp roundhouse kick that Ara manages to catch just in time before she strikes her elbow downward on the spot directly underneath Minzy’s kneecap. Minzy wails in pain yet Ara disregards her as she gives a roundhouse kick of her own straight to Minzy’s head that throws her lying in a heap on the ground.

Ara still in her fighting stance when Minzy does a kip-up then start delivering multiple fast jab and cross at her which Ara deflects at the same pace. Ara has to admit, Minzy is definitely a good fighter despite her earlier beginner’s mistakes that were probably due to her under estimating Ara’s ability. Now that she takes Ara seriously, her true strength and capability start to show. Ara is definitely having fun combating with a good fighter.

Ara increases her speed as her excitement rises, giving multiple punches that forces Minzy to slowly staggers backwards trying to defend herself but failing to do so. She receives most of the jabs and crosses to her face. Ara finishes her attacks with hooking Minzy by her neck closer then delivering a strong knee kick to her stomach. Minzy seems to be blinded by pain as she holds her stomach crouching down on the floor. Ara takes few steps back slightly pitying Minzy but her stoic face gives nothing away. She could have taken advantage of the situation and gives the final attack that would leave Minzy unconscious, making her the winner but she doesn’t want to do a cruel act.

Taeyang take steps closer to Minzy to analyze whether she can still fight or not with grim expression on his face. He shakes his head slowly when he deems that her injuries are getting too severe for the fight to continue. He looks up at Ara with mixed feelings swirling in his eyes. She can see he’s slowly approving her presence but he is pretty upset that she had managed to hurt his dongsaeng to such extent. Ara figures they must have a pretty tight bond for him to feel that way for her.

“I declare, Yang Ara as the winner of this match and as our agreement, we acknowledge her capability as our president,” Taeyang then does a curt nod towards her followed by others. Slowly, the others start clapping too. Ara is too stunned to react so she simply nods as a response.

Ara turns back to look for Kim Bum when out of sudden, she’s being strangled causing her to put her right hand backwards holding on her attacker then do a flip in the air so that she’s behind her attacker. Ara immediately kicks behind the kneecap forcing this person to kneel before she twists her attacker’s neck, effectively killing her.

Everything happens so fast, leaving the room at a standstill before chaos breaks out, everyone screaming “Minzy!!!” crowding her before she’s being push out of the way by three women getting to Minzy’s lifeless dead body. They're trying to bring her back to life but Ara knows better, her techniques have always been precise. It never failed her before eventhough she's desperately wishing that it did failed her this once. Everyone in the room are completely shocked and horrified to see one of their 'family' members being killed in a blink of an eye in front of them.

Ara is stunned too but she can only watch everything happens quietly. She can’t help her reflex when being attacked but this is definitely the worst part of today. She hates that she was forced to kill an apparently important person when she just got their small approval of her.

‘Great, now what would they think of me?'

I'm sooo sorry it took so long to update ==' but hopefully, this chapter is worth it ^^ please do let me know what you guys think of this chapter =D