“For ’s sake, Wang. Just because it’s called blood money, doesn’t mean that you need to actually get blood all over it. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Jackson Wang grinned down at you. He was dressed in black from head to toe, his hood lowered and the mask on his face pulled down so that it was now resting under his chin. There were smudges of blood on his forehead and cheeks, but you weren’t worried. The blood wasn’t his. It never was. Besides, if the -eating grin on Jackson’s face was any indication, then he wasn’t remotely hurt. It had been a routine hit tonight; kill the guy, get the money. But there was more cash here than you’d been expecting. You looked up at Jaebum, who was standing over you, arms folded as he looked down at the briefcases full of cash with a steely glint in his eyes.

“He lied to us. There’s at least 2 million in here,” you explained, waving a stash of notes for emphasis. “Way more than we were expecting. It’s a good thing we took him out, or he would have caused some serious problems for us.”

Jaebum scoffed, rubbing his jaw. “Nobody conducts robberies in our territory without our permission. He was asking for it.”

Jackson crouched down beside you, fingers reaching out to leaf through a small stack of notes. He hadn’t had the time to savor the cash, he’d been rushing to get away from the crime scene after the kill. There was always a rush of adrenaline when he got safely back to headquarters, the money secure and the operation successful. Not to mention that he lived for the spark that alighted in your eyes whenever you spotted the cash. You loved money and Jackson Wang loved you. He nudged you lightly with his shoulder.

“What do you think, babe? Think we should invest the extra million into our wedding?” he joked.

You glared at him, unamused by his antics. “ off, Wang.”

“Hey, I was just kidding-“

“Aside from the fact that I would rather die than go anywhere near a wedding with you-“ you shot him a look of disgust to emphasize your point. “We can’t use this cash directly. See these notes? They have consecutive serial numbers and they’re brand new, crisp notes if you ignore the blood Wang got on them. Guy robbed these from a bank, remember? If we take this money anywhere near a legal source in this country then we’re going to set off a million triggers and the robbery will be traced back to us.”

Jaebum sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Fine. We won’t use them for anything legal, then. We’ll use it to pay off BTS for last month’s arms trade deals. They’ve been ragging me for the money all day.”

You sighed and shook your head. “It’s not just dirty money, Jaebum. This cash is directly traceable to a bank robbery conducted barely a week ago. The national investigation agencies literally have alerts everywhere for this. BTS won’t touch it either. No, we need to get this money out of the country. It’s going to take a smuggling operation.”

Jaebum blinked at you, eyebrows raised. There was a reason that he trusted you to handle the gang’s finances; you had a way with money, knew exactly what to do with it and how to handle it. He’d been suspicious at first, unable to understand how you turned dirty cash into perfectly legal, accountable money sitting in a bank account within a matter of days. But you’d been handling GotSeven’s money laundering activities for years and at this point, Jaebum didn’t even bother to ask you what you were doing with the money or how you invested it and faked the transactions to get it back. You always returned with more money than you started off with and the money had never been traced back to the gang since you started working for them, so he trusted you.

“Where does it need to go?”

You looked down at the cash and sighed. “An amount this size? Overseas. I know a guy in Macau. He’s got some understanding with the local banks, they’ll accept anything for a 15% cut. He’ll deposit the money there, we’ll have it transferred to the account of one of our shell companies, fake a couple of contractual agreements and it’ll be back in our bank accounts, fully legal and untraceable in two weeks tops.”

Jackson frowned. “Why should we give some er in Macau a 15% cut of our money?”

You sighed and rolled your eyes at him. “Because that’s how illegal money works, bird brain. What else are you going to do? I’d like to see you try to deposit one of these notes in the local bank here without having the federal agencies tailing you for the next month and wire-tapping all your communications. Why don’t you stick to shooting your gun around and leave the money matters to people who understand them, okay?”

Jaebum nodded at you, cutting off your rant. “You do what you have to do. We’ve lost our direct links to Macau, though. Our regular guy there got shot dead a few weeks ago. Chinese mafia got to him. Apparently he had a lot of gambling debts.”

Jackson blinked and looked disappointed. “Aw, man. Zhang Wei’s dead? I liked that guy. He came down to my club the last time he was in town, dude knows how to party. We drank some major liquor and he gambled away literally everything he earned while he was here. Crazy guy.”

You raised an eyebrow at him in disgust. “Zhang Wei was human garbage. Do you not have any standards for the friends you make?”

“Aww, are you worried about me getting in with the wrong crowd, baby?” Jackson cooed.

“You are the wrong crowd,” you replied before turning to Jaebum. “How do we get this cash into Macau, Leader-nim?”

Jaebum pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and began dialing some numbers. “I’ll talk to DaySix. They’ve been running some opium trades there of late, I’m sure they’ve got some routes in. I’ll ask the Bear to meet you in the morning for a drop-off. You talk to your finance guy in Macau and help them figure out how to make the exchange, okay?”

You blinked. “I’m not driving around with all this dirty cash alone. Send Tuan with me.”

“You can take Wang.”

“What? No!” you complained, while Jackson folded his arms across his chest and beamed at you. Jackson was the worst security detail ever. He always talked way too much and made you want to steal his gun and shoot yourself in the head. You preferred Mark. He was quiet, kept his eyes on the money and didn’t like pointing his gun around for the hell of it. “Why can’t I have Tuan? He’s better at this stuff.”

“Tuan’s detailing a cop that’s been on our tail a lot lately. It’s a full-time mission, I can’t spare him. Take Jackson instead,” Jaebum said firmly. There was a tinge of authority in his tone, one that told you not to argue with him about small details. Jaebum trusted you but he kept all his gang members in line and you were no exception. You tried to ignore the pleased grin on Jackson’s face as you closed the briefcase full of money and stood up, dusting your knees off.

“Fine,” you snapped. “I’m leaving the money in the safe here, then. I’ll come by to pick it up in the morning.”

Jaebum nodded. “Sounds good. Nice work today, guys.”

You nodded and went into the bathroom, splashing your face with water and looking at the dark circles under your eyes. It had been a long day. The more Jaebum grew to trust you, the more work you had. You’d started off investing some small amounts into shady schemes but in a matter of four years, you were now in charge of all of GotSeven’s finances. You handled the dirty money and invested it in segments; shady real estate, bonds, shell companies in foreign countries, businesses which ran as fronts for the illegal trades. Not even Im Jaebum knew exactly where all the wealth of GotSeven was located, because you’d made it all that untraceable.

It wasn’t easy work. It involved a lot of transactions, a lot of tracing money that didn’t really exist or spreading it in various bank accounts across the world. The only person who really seemed to understand the difficulty of your job was Park Jinyoung; he’d been handling the finances before you came along and he was only too happy to let you take over. I don’t want to spend all night reading about the tax regulations and banking laws in Latvia, he’d admitted to you once. I’m a strategy guy. It’s a good thing we found you. I thought all the accounting stuff was going to drive me insane.

There was a knock on the bathroom door.

“Hey. I’m heading out for the night. Need a ride home?” Jackson’s voice called through the bathroom door.

You sighed and wiped your face with a towel before opening the door. Jackson was standing on the other side, a handsome smile on his face. He’s gotten rid of the blood and taken off the mask; there was nothing hiding his dashing good looks from your gaze. Besides, Jackson was always glowing and extra flirtatious after he’d returned from a successful mission. It took him a while to come down from his adrenaline high.

“I don’t know, are you going to keep flirting with me the whole time?” you demanded.

He held his hands up in the air jokingly. “Fine, I’ll tone it down. Come on. The buses probably stopped running and I’ll never understand why you refuse to buy a car. Sometimes I feel like you want me to drive you around everywhere because you like my company.”

You scoffed. “Fat chance. I just don’t want to attract attention to myself.”

“Buying a car would attract attention to you?” Jackson demanded incredulously.

“I work in a convenience store by daylight, genius. Don’t you think my co-workers would get a little suspicious if I suddenly turned up with a brand new car on my minimum wage salary? They think I’m struggling to make rent. Besides, I don’t keep spare cash or store money in the bank. The money Jaebum pays me with is all invested in various financial schemes and securities, I keep some of it in real estate off the coast-“

Jackson groaned. “Oh my god, that’s enough money talk for tonight. Fine. Don’t buy a car. Live in a ty apartment and take the bus to work even though you’ve probably accumulated a fortune from all the work you do for GotSeven. That makes perfect sense.”

You ignored Jackson, walking past him and getting into the passenger-side seat of his fancy sports car. He would never understand. Jackson was an excellent hit man and he could kill a guy with his bare hands in less than two seconds, but he was addicted to the life. He lived for the money, for the thrill and for the luxury. Sometimes you wished you could loosen up like him, enjoy everything that you got by virtue of working for GotSeven and accept the fact that you could live a comfortable life now.

“Why aren’t you at your club tonight?” you wondered, as Jackson started the car. “It’s Saturday.”

“I left Bambam in charge. His girlfriend’s doing a shift there tonight so he was going to be there anyway,” Jackson replied as he pulled out of the parking and sped away from the headquarters. When Jackson wasn’t taking out guys for GotSeven, he ran a shady strip club downtown. It wasn’t a bad place really, although it was definitely illegal and substituted as a meeting place for a lot of shady deals. When you combined y girls and alcohol, almost any man could be convinced to part with his money.

“Hmm. Bambam’s really hitting it on with that girl they saved from the trafficking ring, huh?”

Jackson glanced at you. You looked tired, there was something exhausted about your tone and he wanted to know what was wrong. But he also knew that you would never tell him what was on your mind. He made a turn and then blinked at you.

“Do you have anything else going on tonight? We could drop by the club and get a couple of drinks. You look stressed recently, Jaebum must have you working full-time after we struck all those deals with the Russians, eh? Those guys are stinking rich and the loaded us with dirty money. Come on, one drink?”

You frowned at him. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it as many times as you need me to; I am never stepping foot in that abomination of a place. Leave me out of it.”

Jackson blinked at you. “What’s your problem with my strip club?”

You refused to answer him, just turning your head to look out of the window. Your head was throbbing. It had been a long day staring at the computer screen, tracking down some payments that you’d made to private bank accounts in Europe and accounting for the transactions of one of your shell companies in Barbados. You didn’t have the energy to respond to Jackson. Sometimes you felt like being around him just drained the energy out of you because you had to go to so much effort to resist his advances.

“Okay. You don’t need to get a drink,” he reassured you, his tone softening. “Can you maybe come and take a look at my accounts sometime? I had a couple of tax collectors come in the other day and they’ve been sniffing around. You know me. I do all my transactions in cash, I don’t pay any money to the stinking government and they’re catching on. I got a notice from the Income Tax Department the other day.”

You turned to him, your eyes lidded. No wonder Jackson was on the tax authorities’ radar. Some of those ers were regulars at his club and Jackson’s sole method of tax evasion was sweet-talking his way out of his dues. You didn’t want any part in it. “I work for GotSeven. I made it explicitly clear to Jaebum when I first started working there that I wasn’t going to handle your private businesses. Get an accountant to do your strip club’s taxes. Jackson. I find it hard to believe that you can’t afford to hire one.”

His voice became quiet. “I trust you more, though.”

“I’m exhausted, I don’t have the time for like this!”

Jackson suddenly stopped the car, pulling over at the side of the road. You blinked at him in surprise and were shocked when you saw his eyes looking at you intently. His gaze pierced through you and you didn’t know how to react when he reached out and placed his hand over yours. “What’s going on with you?” he asked gently. “Look, I know you don’t really like me and it’s always been that way for some reason, but… you seem stressed. Is something going on? Did anything happen?”

You bit your lip and gently pulled your hand away from his. “Nothing happened-“

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Nothing happened, okay? And even if it did, what’s the point in telling you? The only way guys like you know how to solve problems is to shoot a guy dead and then get a beer and a girl to celebrate. I don’t need any of those things. So do me a favor and just drive so I can get home, I have an early shift at the convenience store and we need to drop-off the cash with DaySix.”

Jackson was quiet for a long moment and then he nodded, re-starting the car. He drove silently the entire way to your apartment building, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he finally pulled to a stop. You breathed a sigh of relief when you saw the entrance to your building and moved to take off your seatbelt. But Jackson’s hand closed over yours gently, stopping you from removing it.

“I don’t celebrate with girls from the club. I haven’t touched another girl in a long time. You… you know how I feel about you,” Jackson said softly. He swallowed and then squeezed your hand. “You’re not an idiot. I don’t have to tell you how important you are to me.”

You closed your eyes and sighed. You hated this. You preferred Jackson’s shameless, unabashed flirting to the gentle, heartfelt confessions he sometimes made when the two of you were alone. You could joke the former away and snap at him, but you never knew how to respond to the latter. You turned to him with pleading eyes. “Don’t do this again, Jackson. We’ve been through this, ever since I first started working here. It’s been years. Can’t you let it go?”

“I can’t let it go,” he mumbled.

“You need to learn. You and me, it’s never… it’s never happening. I’m sorry.”

Jackson groaned and ran his hand over his face. “I know that. You tell me that every single time, but I don’t understand why. There’s something between us. I know you’re attracted to me. I see how you always check whether the blood on my clothes is mine after I return from a hit. You were the first person to panic when I got shot last year. And when there was a stick-up at the convenience store during your night shift and some tard tried to rob you, you called me.Not Jaebum, not Mark, not even the police, you called me and you stayed at myhouse that night because you were scared. We shared one of the most amazing nights of my life. You can’t keep pushing me away and pretending that you don’t have feelings for me.”

“Watch me,” you mumbled.

Jackson’s eyes were pleading. “Why? Why won’t you give this a chance? Why can’t this happen?”

You took a deep breath and shook your head. “I don’t know,” you whispered.

“You’re lying again.”

Maybe I am. But you couldn’t handle the truth if you heard it, Jackson Wang.

–