[CONTENTID1]Haze[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]Chapter Twenty One[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

“You knew,” Jakyung hissed at her brother. Taekyung looked like a deer caught in headlights. Jiyeon, who stood beside him, giggled. Jakyung didn’t spare her a second glance. “You knew all along and you never told me. Oh don’t give me that ing face, Taekyung. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. I’m just surprised you all managed to hide it this long.”

“Jaji, don’t be mad,” Taekyung said. This was not how he pictured the reunion between him and his sister. Jakyung’s eyes narrowed into even smaller slits.

“Mad? I’m not mad, Taekyung. I’m livid. 20 ing years and you couldn’t find a good time to tell me that my family was comprised of gangsters?” Jakyung seethed. The suited men were all gone now, dismissed upon Taekyung’s arrival, but Jakyung had used her time wisely. She waited until the last man had left to ambush her brother with her anger.

“I did it for your safety,” Taekyung told her, trying to keep his voice even. He knew it would only be a matter of time before she found out, especially given her new friends. He wasn’t expecting his father to get shot and fall into a coma, but he was trained in damage control and that is exactly what he intended to do.

“My safety? You are clearly out of your ing mind,” Jakyung scoffed. “But you know what? That seems to be a running theme in this family. Lies, madness, death. That’s the true meaning of being a Park, isn’t it?” She brushed passed her brother.

“Where are you going?” Taekyung asked. He reached out a hand to grab her arm, but she pushed it away easily.

“Do you think I want to stay here? With a comatose father I hate, and a person who I thought I could trust?” Jakyung glared at her brother, but he could see the broken look in her eyes.

“Don’t bother contacting me, I won’t pick up.” With those words, she disappeared around a corner. Taekyung turned to Jiyeon.

“Jiyeon likes her,” the woman said. Taekyung wore a fond smile, despite having just been yelled at by the single most important person in his life.

“Follow her. Make sure she stays safe,” Taekyung told her. “She will be around some men from EXO. When possible, get them a message that I would like to meet with their leader.” With a nod, Jiyeon hurried after Jakyung.

Taekyung entered the room where his father lay. Hanbyul had been dismissed with the other men, so Taekyung took the empty seat next to the bed and medical machines. He folded his hands and tucked them under his chin as he leaned against his knees.

This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. It was a little sad that he couldn’t put his father out of commission himself but he wasn’t going to get hung up on the little details. What he was concerned about was who had been the daring assailant who put a bullet through his father’s skull. If his father was a target, then he was as well, and now that Jakyung had figured things out, everything was a lot more complicated.

He stared at his father’s comatose body. The beeping of the machine next to the bed was steady and appropriately creepy and Taekyung resist the urge to smile. How the mighty have fallen, he thought. There was only a five percent chance of survival for bullet wounds to the head, and even Taekyung had to admire the brush with death his father had narrowly escaped. From what information he had been given, the bullet should have been fatal; however, quick thinking on the part of Hanbyul and the few others who had been in the area had saved Ryujin’s life, even if he was going to be a vegetable for the foreseeable future.

Tomorrow he would have to a lot to do. It was his first official day as head of Park Imports and he would need to make the most of his time. His first order of business was weeding out those who he knew would never be completely loyal to him. He didn’t have room for mistakes, and he wasn’t going to start by keeping around men and women that would betray him.

That was what EXO would be for.

For years, the three biggest gangs in Seoul had been feuding. There was Park Ryujin, who took over from his father, Park Jinyoung a few years before Taekyung was born. The was Kim Soo-man who headed OEX and the EXO gang, though that was being led more and more by his son, Kim Joonmyun. And then there was Yang Hyunsuk, a crazy bastard who had no paper company to hide his gang dealings, but who was powerful nonetheless do to his extreme vetting of only the best fighters and killers. Taekyung would be stupid not to acknowledge that each of the groups had their strength and weaknesses, but now he saw an opening to merge some of that power together.

He knew that it was risky, approaching EXO with an offer for an alliance. At the moment, there was minor unrest with some smaller subsidiary gangs that were starting to cause trouble for the bigger groups. It usually wouldn’t have been much of a problem to quell their restlessness, but news about Ryujin was going to spread fast and that meant more people trying to take advantage of the shift in power and scramble for a position higher up the ladder. Taekyung could easily establish his dominance on his own, but it would be far easier with EXO backing him.

His sister was another problem entirely. He knew she wasn’t stupid and that she was aware of her friend’s gang affiliation. Her reaction to them merging their resources, however, was a big fat question mark. He wanted to keep her away from all the violence and drugs and terrible things that generally accompanied gang life, but now that she had figured out her own family’s ties to that world, there was no turning back. And knowing Jakyung, she would want to have a part in it after she got over her initial anger.

Taekyung would be able to little to change her mind if she decided to get involved. She would go to the ends of the earth to protect the things she cared about, and if he knew his sister, that now included the men from EXO. He’d heard from his mother how she had been with their leader and his cousin during the Spring Gala. This was a change from her hiding at the bar, or in an empty room where no one could bother her. He could see the change in her eyes. They were less guarded, but just as fierce as ever. They were calculating, but determined, and he knew it was because of them. She would be an asset to the company and the gang if she decided to involve herself, but he would leave that decision to her.

“Well, father,” Taekyung sighed as his stood. “It’s been good to see you. Can’t say if you enjoyed it or not, but I really don’t care. I’ll take care of my company. Don’t rush to wake up.” He waltzed out of the room without so much as a backwards glance, smirking the entire time.

++

Baekhyun didn’t know why Jakyung had called him, out of all people. When he had received the call, he hadn’t even known who it was at first.

“Who is this?” he asked when he picked up the phone.

“Byuntae Baek. I got your number from Xiumin. Come drinking with me.”

At that time, Baekhyun had pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if there was a hand protruding from the screen.

“Jakyung? What?”

“Are you deaf? I said let’s go drinking. There’s a club in Itaewon with a halfway decent bartender. I want to go.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Helios. It’s got a sun on the door in case you don’t know Greek.”

She hung up after that, and he shook his head. This girl truly was out of her mind. They weren’t even friends. Even after the incident with Mark, they were still awkward around each other. Of course, he had been around her more than usual these last couple of weeks, but he wouldn’t consider them friends. He couldn’t figure her out and that made him nervous.

Yet he found himself getting dressed and taking a taxi to the club she had mentioned. It was 8PM, which was still a little early for clubbing on a Thursday in his opinion, but he seemed to be the only one who thought so as the club already had a line spilling out of the door. He walked right up to the bouncer and told him his name. He was admitted without question and passed through the threshold into Helios.

The first thing he noticed was that fact that the stage was in the middle of the dance floor. There were people all around it, and the DJ standing on the raised platform was the tannes