Covert Chapter 10

Flashback~

SoHyun~

Another blow.

Another kick.

The stinging sensation only worsened if I tried to wriggle my wrists out of the ropes that detained my hands and feet. The kick was strong enough to knock me over. The steel chair that my body was bound to clattered to the floor. My shoulder bones stretched across the steel metal of the chair, ripping the muscles apart.  This guy was most likely their muscle, standing at around 190 centimeters and overweight with his gut bulging over his designer belt. This wasn't a low level gang. For a mere gang member to be sporting a designer belt meant that they had money, which would be sourced from their filthy rich clients. My dad was one of them. 

“Just know you’re lucky. Your father specially requested for us to not scar that pretty face of yours.” A leaner man with tattooed fingers whispered in my ear, crouching down onto where I laid on the floor. The cigarette smell that left his rotting mouth made me gag over the masking tape. He dragged me up by the hair and the way the metal chair screeched against the cement worsened my spinning mind. I was panting behind the piece of duct tape that covered my mouth, hoping that the saliva and sweat would moisten the tape's adherence. The corpulent muscle guy stood back near the skinnier one, telling me that this guy was either the boss or the brains. 

“Now shut up, because I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth.” Once he lifted the tape, I immediately spit onto his face and glared at him. 

"You !" His gold diamond encrusted watch glinted underneath the ray of sunlight that sliced through split doors when he reached up and strangled me. His thumb dug into my throat. He better stay alive because next time I would be the one to lodge a bullet through his head. Sputtering breaths of air left my chapped lips as I heaved toward the ground. I could take it. I could take it. They won’t get anything from me. 

“Just tell me where your mom is and all of this will end.” These foolish bastards had no clue that I was an NIS agent, who was trained to withstand interrogation methods. But most of all, I had to protect my mom no matter what. As I continued to remain silent, the muscle handed an old rusty knife to the boss and he aimed it at my stomach.

“Tell me or I’ll gut you.” The dimness of the space casted shadows onto his face, hollowing out his cheeks and eyes. 

“Go ahead.” I dared, knowing that he couldn't kill me. He needed me alive, for I was the only one who could tell them where my mom was. Even if he did stab me, it wouldn't kill me. He would stab where my chances of survival were high, preferably the appendix.

He plunged the blade into my abdomen. The searing pain electrocuted my entire nervous system. The scent, the fresh blood on the utility knife, the man’s brazen expression, and the sound of my own ragged breathing was all I could comprehend before a needle entered a vein in my neck. 

The law was always distant, while his fists were near. 

“Miss, are you alright? Do you want me to take you to the hospital? But, the nearest hospital is an hour away. Oh my god. This is awful.” I slowly opened my eyes to a middle aged man with a balding head. A bright green cab was parked across from me. The overgrown grass pricked my aching body. A single sand covered road stretched out before me. This was a rural area. Something hard dug into my back. I dragged my hand toward my back and tapped it. It rang. I estimated that it was a route marker and that I was dumped on the side of a rural roadside. 

"Will you take me somewhere?" The man nodded rapidly as I pulled myself up and dragging myself into the back seat of the cab. 

I stumbled past SungHoon and hurriedly opened the bottom drawer of his desk, grabbing the semi-automatic gun with my bloody hands.

“Don’t. That won’t help your mom in any way.” His attempt to reason with me fell upon deaf ears, for I needed to eliminate the threat. It was that simple. He had his hand stretched out towards me with his anxious eyes locked on mine.

“It will be the perfect crime. I won’t get caught.” I replied, groaning from the searing pain. I stumbled backwards, hitting a wall due to the exhaustion. SungHoon quickly pressed down onto my stab wound with his bare hands and the blood oozed from between his stretched fingers. From the blood loss, I estimated that I would lose consciousness fairly soon. 

“You’re acting on a visceral instinct. At this rate you will never outsmart the NIS. Look at me. You need to stay alive to protect your mom.” His wide, pleading eyes appeared to be shaking. My eyes were burning into him and before I knew it he was in my face. In that moment, utter rage imbued my soul and all I wanted to do was either beat the life out of him or kiss him until there was no air left. Confusion weighed upon me as my eyelids were fighting the need to close. My body wasn’t mine as my hand went limp and my eyes closed, allowing SungHoon to pry the gun away from my bloody fingers.

My eyes fluttered open to blinding white lights. I looked down at my hand to see that an IV was inserted. Every breath felt like a kick to my ribcage, which I endured hours before or I suppose it was hours ago. A migraine only furthered my disorientated state. A blanket covered my bare shoulders and I was in too much pain that I couldn’t even lift a finger off the bed.

“Hold on, let me give you something for the pain first.” After inserting dilaudid into my system, he sat down on the side of the bed and brushed my hair away from my neck. His eyes lingered there, where I knew a clear imprint of a fresh bruise remained.

“I need to check on my mom,” I told him, moving my right shoulder in the process of pushing his hand away. Groaning, I fell back on the bed swiftly as all I could do was clench my fists in response. Any movement only inflicted more pain, confining me to the bed in a stagnant position. “Help me call her.” I whispered begrudgingly. This is not where I should be. But then again, I had no one to go to except for him. 

SungHoon held his phone to my ear while I spoke to my mom, convincing her to take an impromptu trip out of the country with her husband.

"Mom, did you finish tuning the piano?" I asked, swallowing the rising bile in my throat.

"Yes, I did." Her one response relieved me. I had to mask my irregular breathing from her while on the phone. If she found out that he was out to catch her, she would only regress into the feeble woman I resented my entire childhood.