“There’s a traitor among us.”

Before anyone had time to properly consider that possibility, Chaeyoung felt a strong arm grasp her neck and pull her forward. She tried to wriggle and kick her way out of his hold, but he fired a bullet through the ceiling – drawing everyone’s attention. She felt the hot tip of the gun pressed against the right side of her head and grew completely still, her blood running cold with fear.

“Yoongi,” Jimin said sternly, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Everyone drop your weapons,” Yoongi – the man holding a gun to Chaeyoung’s head – commanded, standing in front of the rest of their ‘team’.

Everyone looked absolutely shocked at his words, freezing in place as they tried to make sense of what was happening. To make matters even worse, the gang of intruders walked through the door at that moment, standing behind Yoongi – fully armed and ready for battle.

“Just let Chaeyoung go and we can talk about this,” Taehyung said calmly, but Chaeyoung knew he was trying to hold back his anger.

“Did I ing stutter?” Yoongi snapped, shooting another bullet towards the roof and causing Chaeyoung to flinch, “Drop. Your. ing. Weapons. Or the girl dies.”

Jungkook had never looked as furious as he did at that moment. When Yoongi tightened his hold along Chaeyoung’s throat, causing her to gasp for air, Jimin, Taehyung and Jungkook collectively lunged forward. But, that only caused Yoongi to press the gun more firmly against her head.

“One more step, and I will shoot. All of you may love her, but I sure as hell don’t,” Yoongi warned, his voice low and threatening.

That caused all of them to stop in their tracks, each of them throwing Yoongi the most hateful looks Chaeyoung had ever seen from any of them. She tried to take a deep breath and calm down before meeting each of their eyes to communicate that she was okay.

“Why are you doing this?!” Jennie exclaimed, her gun still held firmly and aimed towards the large group of people in front of them.

“Once everyone drops their weapons, I’ll tell you,” Yoongi smirked at her.

Slowly, Jimin placed his gun on the ground and held his hands up, causing everyone else to reluctantly follow. In the end, there was only one man who hadn’t surrendered.

Jungkook threw a confused glance over his shoulder at Hoseok who was still grasping his gun, “Hoseok, put the gun down.”

When he didn’t respond, Jungkook’s voice became much more demanding, “Hoseok. I said, drop the ing weapon.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Hoseok replied, turning the gun so it was pointing towards Jungkook and causing his eyes to grow wide in shock. The rest of the Phoenixes looked at him with a mixture of confusion and bewilderment, looking completely betrayed. He continued aiming the gun towards Jungkook while backing away from the Phoenixes and Griffins to stand beside Yoongi and their other men.

“You guys have been in on this together?” Jungkook asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Since day one,” Hoseok replied with a cunning smile.

“Oh my God, that morning on the camping trip,” Jennie gasped, “it wasn’t just a coincidence that you two were walking and laughing together so early in the morning.”

“And that entire trip, you two were practically attached at the hip,” Jungkook nodded, realization starting to dawn on him, “I knew something was off, but I never would’ve expected this.”

Hoseok laughed lightly, “too bad you guys were stupid enough to look past it.”

“Why are you guys doing this?” Namjoon demanded, his eyes hard and his jaw clenched.

Yoongi chuckled, “because the Park and Jeon family need to be stopped. They need to crumble and break down the same way they cause hundreds of other families to on a daily basis. You wanna know how Hoseok and I met? We grew up together in an orphanage where we would spend every single minute discussing how much we despised the Parks and Jeons and plotting revenge for not just our own parents who were murdered by them, but for the countless other families that have to surrender their pride, their joy, and even their life for the sake of these two families. We’re sick of the power differentials that exist between the rich and the poor and we want justice.”

“And how long have you been planning all this?” Jimin demanded, his eyes glinting with rage.

“Since way before you picked me up off the streets and asked me to join your gang,” Yoongi smirked, “from that point on, though, I had you in the palm of my hands.”

“What about you?” Jungkook scowled at Hoseok, “did you plan all this too before joining the Phoenixes?”

Hoseok nodded, “at first, we thought we’d find ways to sell you out to the police by doing little things like orchestrating break-ins and robberies. But, the police couldn’t do . Your families and gangs were much too powerful and resourceful for them.”

Taehyung’s brows knit together and it looked like his brain was working at a million miles per minute, “so the bank robbery and the break-ins that happened on the East side – those were all your doing?”

“Along with the imposter Phoenixes on the West?” Mark demanded.

Yoongi and Hoseok looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction.

“But those little things weren’t very rewarding. It didn’t leave an impact. Little by little, we began recruiting help. People who hated the Phoenixes and Griffins almost as much as we did. Thankfully, that wasn’t a hard thing to do, considering your reputations,” Hoseok said, glancing over his shoulder at the group of men behind him – some of which Chaeyoung could recognize from the morning she was almost attacked on the West Side, “And once we had the numbers and combined our resources, we could plan larger scale events and be more ambitious. Our next goal was simple: revenge. We wanted to show you what if felt like to lose a family member – we wanted you to suffer the way we had. So, we planted a bomb.”

Chaeyoung gasped at that, her heart feeling heavy when she whispered, “the HIV clinic.”

“I should’ve guessed when I saw that surveillance footage the night of the bombing,” Jungkook muttered, spacing out, “it was a male around 1.75-1.80 metres tall with a slim and athletic build. The body looked so familiar, but I didn’t want to believe it was someone I knew. Someone I trusted.”

“Not to mention, he tried to stop us from listening to the vintage record before it could reveal the location of the bombing,” Jin pointed out, looking appalled.

“So, this entire time, you have been playing both sides and trying to make our groups suspicious of one another. And to be fair, you were doing a good job at it. We