“We’re not going out?!” Henry asked incredulously.

“No, of course not. We don’t need to,” Kyuhyun answered. His hands were busy polishing a blued revolver he planned on giving to Amber as a backup to keep in her car.

“But the parties…that’s money lost!” Henry insisted.

“Henry, shut up. Why can’t you be more like Amber?” Kyuhyun joked. He really liked both of his new crew members. Having them around was refreshing and provided an injection of energy in the way he ran his crew, especially after Siwon’s death. “Donghae, tell this noob why we don’t go out on holidays.”

“Because he said so,” Donghae managed to get out through his grin.

“Oh, not you too,” Eunhyuk threw a pillow at the side of Donghae’s head. “Do it right.”

“Okay. Okay.” Donghae raised his hands in defeat then turned to Amber and Henry before continuing, “We don’t go out on major holidays like New Years because there will be a lot of crews out hustling and we don’t want any sort of retaliation against us. I mean we did jump most of these guys throughout the year. It just makes more sense not to. You look at is as money lost now but, really, it’s a day gained.”

“I better not find out that you guys did business on that day. I want everyone to lay low. I’m serious,” Kyuhyun warned.

“And don’t complain. A day off is not easy to come by anyway. Just be happy and go spend time with your family,” Eunhyuk added.

Kyuhyun lowered his stern eyes and let them fall into a sad distant gaze. ‘Family.’

The chatter continued around him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

“The car’s been parked in the garage for days. It doesn’t seem like he’s going out of town and if he does, probably not far unless he catches a flight out,” Yesung informed Heechul.

“I don’t want that. I don’t want to have to put this off any longer,” Heechul spoke into his phone.

“Right. The other cars have stayed local too and Kangin is still doing his rounds.”

“Good. I’ll give him a call. But let me know if anything changes, absolutely anything. Keep your eyes glued to that screen, Yesung. If he drives to the corner store, I want to know. If he drives to hell and back, I want to know.” Heechul got up from his seat and walked over to the wall-to-ceiling window of his mountainside residence overlooking the city. “Well then I’ll check back with you in a bit.”

“Talk to you later,” Yesung said before they both hung up.

Heechul dialed Kangin. 

“Yeah, boss,” Kangin’s voice came through the receiver.

“Status update.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been able to get too close because the new faces have been coming and going more often. I don’t want to be spotted. I’m working on getting names— ”

“I don’t care about them. I don’t need names on them. I just need you to find out where he’s going for New Year’s Eve. Stay on track.” A movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention. He looked over to see Heebum jumping down from his cat tree. “Do you like cats?”

“What?”

“Just two more days,” Heechul said in low voice, more to himself than to Kangin. He hung up without properly ending the call. He let his arm drop and continued to stare out into the lit city below.