“So you’re Im Jaebum’s lawyer.”

You froze at the unfamiliar voice. Your hand was about to open your car door, you had been about to leave work. The underground parking lot was relatively deserted and you felt a shiver down your spine. There was nobody at your formal workplace that should know anything about Im Jaebum. It was a corporate tax law consultancy firm, literally all you guys did was help companies file taxes and you’d been working here for two years. You took a deep breath and turned around to face two large, unfamiliar men who loomed over you.

“And who are you?” you asked coldly, trying to ignore your hands trembling.

One of the men blinked. “Let’s just say we’re from a group of people who have a specific interest in the well-being of Im Jaebum,” he replied ominously.

You released the car door and turned to face them. There was no backing down now. You should have known the moment you got a phone call from Park Jinyoung that you were already inextricably dragged into their mess. There was no used getting scared. You could see a gun in the man’s belt but you stepped forward anyway, gathering the courage and reminding yourself that if they intended to kill you, there wasn’t much you could do to stop it anyway.

“Really? You wouldn’t happen to be from the same group that got him put into jail, would you?” you snapped. “What was that name again? Oh, right. BTS.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “You shouldn’t drop that name so casually.”

You rolled your eyes. “Why?”

“Because it’s a dangerous name. And there are dangerous people there. You might be able to get Im Jaebum out on bail, but you can’t stop what’s coming to him. He’s angered our side. So it would be best if you didn’t defend the man whose face is going to be on the headlines as the head of the country’s human trafficking racket in a few days. In fact… we’re willing to offer you a little incentive to just let the whole matter blow over.”

You blinked at him. “Incentive?”

The man chuckled. “Come on, don’t act so stubborn. We did our research, we know he’s your ex. You might not be aware, but you have quite a reputation among the gangs, you know. You’re considered a Helen of Troy types. Her face launched a war on Troy, and yours launched a war against an entire gang.”

You scoffed, clenching your fists. This man was hitting your sore spots right from the outset and you decided that he needed to be taken down a notch, even if it meant your death. “No. Both those fights were fought exclusively by men, neither Helen nor I had anything to do with them. And I don’t know if you’re trying to impress me with your inaccurate knowledge of Greek mythology but you can’t offer me anything that would make me comply with what you want.”

The man smiled. “So you’re that loyal to your ex-lover?”

“No. I just don’t want to touch your dirty money. Leave me alone.”

“We will, as long as you leave Im Jaebum alone,” the man replied. “It’s nothing personal, sweetheart. We’ve just been instructed to take down anybody who’s on their side. We’ll give you until the bail hearing to back off. Otherwise we won’t be so friendly next time you see us.”

“You weren’t particularly friendly this time. I would work on that,” you replied, turning to get into your car. Once you’d gotten into the driver’s seat, you lowered down the window and glared at the two men who were standing there silently, watching you.

“But in case you buffoons have to go back and report to your leader, tell him this. I’m no Helen of Troy. I’m ing Joan of Arc.”

–

You held it in until you reached the police precinct, your hands trembling and your brain struggling to deal with what had just happened. You could feel the blood pumping all over your body, an aftermath of the adrenaline that had shot through you at the thought that those men could kill you in a second. You stormed into the police station and glared at the same poor police officer that you’d had to deal with last night.

“Tell Im Jaebum his lawyer is here.”

You waited impatiently while they led you to a private room and then brought Jaebum in, still wearing handcuffs. He looked at you, but your gaze was fixed on the empty table in between you. The encounter with those men had shaken you up more than you imagined and you realized that you were terrified. Terrified for your life, terrified about the things you were getting yourself into. Those men had just proved that your defending Jaebum wouldn’t happen without consequences. Jaebum sat down opposite you and waited for the officer to leave the room before he leaned forward.

“What happened?” he demanded.

You looked up at him, distracted. “What?”

“I know that look. Something happened. Somebody scared you. Who was it?” Jaebum demanded.  You could see the fire in his eyes and he grabbed his chair from behind the table, dragging it around so that he could sit right beside you. You were shocked when his handcuffed wrists came up to cover your hands. He squeezed your fingers tightly. “Tell me who it was.”

You cleared your throat and yanked your fingers away from him. “Stop it. I came here to discuss your bail hearing, and to coach you on what sort of questions the judge might ask you tomorrow-“

Jaebum bit his lip. “No. Not until you tell me what happened.”

You glared at him. “Excuse me? Do you not want to get out on bail? Because this investigation could take weeks and if you want to sit around in police lock-up until then, be my guest. Keep in mind that once your bail is denied, they’ll likely send you to an actual prison and we both know what happens to pretty guys like you in prisons like that-“

“Was it BTS?”

You stopped speaking. Jaebum looked worried, his dark eyes giving you the soft, adoring look he’d always given you. It struck you that even when you were together, the only time you’d ever felt safe was around Jaebum. You’d never been able to keep anything from him. You could maintain a poker face in front of the rest of the world but the moment Im Jaebum sat in front of you and looked you in the eyes, everything on your mind would come tumbling out along with the tears.

Apparently that hadn’t changed.

“Stop that,” you whispered, your voice cracking. You could feel your throat closing up and there was nothing you could do to stop it. You avoided his gaze. “I’m tired, Jaebum. I was up all night at the police station and I’ve had a long day at work. I just want to get this over with so I can go home and sleep before your bail hearing, all right?”

“No. I won’t listen to anything you say about bail until you tell me-“

“Fine. Two men from BTS came to my workplace today. One of them had a gun. They offered me money to quit being your lawyer. I told them to off and then I drove straight here afterwards, okay?”

Jaebum slumped back in his seat. “.”

“Yeah. Now that we’ve talked about my day, let’s start with the bail hearing. There are three basic circumstances a judge considers when it comes to granting bail and we need to prove that none of those three circumstances will happen in your case. Let’s talk about-“

“No. We’re not talking about anything. You need to leave, right now.”

“What?”

“Your safety is in danger. BTS don’t mess around. They literally just framed me for their entire human trafficking ring out of mere spite, do you think these guys are a joke? They will kill you. You need to leave. Sign a document or something saying you’re not my lawyer and I’ll sign it too and you can show it to them if they come after you-“

You cut him off. “I’m not backing off because of those ers.”

Jaebum stared at you for a long moment. “Why? This is your chance. You don’t want to be here. We both know that you hate my guts, you hate everything about me. I broke your trust and I shattered you. I know you went to therapy for a year, I know you quit your dream of becoming a criminal defense attorney because of what happened that day-“

“If you know, then keep your mouth shut and listen to me,” you hissed.

Jaebum stared at you. “I don’t want you as my lawyer.”

“Then you can forget having a lawyer for the bail hearing at all. It’s pretty obvious from their behavior that they’ll either turn any lawyer you hire to their side with money, or they’ll kill him. I told you already, Im Jaebum. I’m exhausted. I slept for two hours last night, I’m barely functioning. Don’t fight me on this, don’t make me expend more energy than I can spare.”

He bowed his head quietly, and closed his eyes. You realized that Jaebum looked exhausted too. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

You blinked at him. “What?”

“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” he told you softly. “I never meant for this to happen to you, I never wanted you to get involved. I made a promise to myself three years ago that I would leave you alone and never hurt you again-“

“You shouldn’t make promises that aren’t in your control.”

There was a long moment of silence. Jaebum sat quietly, his head bowed and his hands clasped tightly in his lap. He wasn’t saying anything. You could tell that he was breaking, that it was getting difficult for this man to keep himself together. You didn’t know what to do either. The more you looked at Jaebum, the more familiar he seemed. Not like the mafia leader or the man that had torn down an entire gang in front of your eyes, but like the soft, kind man that you’d fallen in love with. The one that refused to pass by a street cat without petting it. The one that had always been there for you. The one that loved you more than anything in the world. There was a part of you that couldn’t leave him here like this.

“I’m going to get you out on bail,” you told him softly. “And then you can deal with BTS however you want to. So let’s focus on that for now. All right?”

Jaebum looked up at you, his eyes red. “Yeah, okay,” he mumbled.

–

The man slapped you across the face, hard.

Your head whipped to the side and blood came into your mouth. You spat it out, looking at the ugly red liquid and the splatter that it made on the floor. You couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. They’d tied up your arms so tightly that you couldn’t feel them, had bound your legs to the chair. You could feel bruises all over your body from where they kicked you and you merely looked back up at the man, your eyes unfocused and his outline blurry.

“What do you think?” the man asked his companions, with a thick Russian accent. “Should we tear her limbs off while she’s still alive? Or should we kill her first since she’s a lady? Of course, I’ll give you all the chance to her first.”

Another man laughed scornfully. “She’s pretty, but that Im Jaebum’s stuck his in her already. None of us want to touch that, boss. Let’s just tear her limbs off and re-arrange them for her boyfriend. Maybe then he’ll learn not to mess with us.”

“I think he’s learned his lesson already. Somebody call him again. I’m going to make her scream hard, and I want him to hear it this time. Let’s show these rookie gangs what happens when they mess with big guns like us,” the man smirked. You could hear another man dialing Jaebum’s phone number, and you struggled to stay conscious. It was difficult to understand these men but one thing was very clear. Jaebum had made them angry. They were discussing some deal they’d made with him, some deal that had gone wrong. You couldn’t understand what was happening.

Why would Jaebum make a deal with criminals like this? Unless…

You couldn’t consider the possibility. Another man kicked you in the ribs and you felt your head spinning with the pain. No. Jaebum wouldn’t deal with men like this. There had to be another explanation. Jaebum was a business consultant, despite the fact that he knew almost nothing about business. You had once found a gun in his closet but he’d convinced you that it was meant for hunting, that it was a relic passed down to him from his grandfather. He also never let you touch his cell phone, despite the fact that you’d told him the password to yours. Strange conversations you’d overheard, how Jaebum sometimes wasn’t home when you went to visit him late at night. The one time you’d tried to go into the back room of their office and Jinyoung had nearly flipped his at you….

As the man aimed one last kick at your ribs, everything clicked painfully into place.

Jaebum’s words echoed in your mind. ‘What if I was doing something illegal? Would you still want to be with me?’

No. The answer was no, and you clenched your teeth in pain, wishing that you’d had the chance to tell Im Jaebum that before these men finally killed you to send a message to him. Your body slumped forward and you had to struggle to keep your eyes open. You heard a loud, explosive noise. Was that real? Did you imagine that or had somebody really fired a gun? You tensed your body for the next kick but it never came. Your eyes drifted closed and all you heard was a vaguely familiar voice.

“She’s here! I found her, she’s here!”

You could barely see anything. A pair of arms came to steady you, and you heard the slicing sound of something sharp cutting through your binds. You slumped forward, more blood spilling from your mouth as you heard the man holding you curse.

“, she’s a mess. We need to get her to a hospital immediately. Does anything look broken to you?” the man demanded. You heard another familiar voice… the lack of a Russian accent sent a jolt of relief through you as another arm grabbed you and helped you stand up.

“Her ribs. Help me keep her awake,” the other man replied. You felt a hand slap your cheek gently. “Hey. Stay with us, okay? Jaebum’s here, he’s dealing with the other men, we’re going to get you to a hospital. Just don’t fall asleep. Your head is bleeding.”

You could barely speak. You merely slumped against the two men as they carried you out of the room and into the larger lobby. It was a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere, you hadn’t had a chance to find out where you were because the Russians had tied a bag over your head before they’d stuffed you into their car. Dead bodies were strewn all over the floor. There were at least twenty men lying all around the warehouse, and the floor was slick with blood. You felt your stomach turn as your vision finally cleared and you saw the sight in front of you.

Three men. They were standing with their hands up in the air, trembling. One of them looked close to tears. They were all Russians, wearing the same clothing that the Russian gang were wearing.

“Please,” one of the men stammered out in a Russian accent. “We just did what Andrei told us to, we were only following instructions.”

Jaebum scoffed. He had a gun pointed at them and there was blood all over his face. You’d never seen your boyfriend like this. He stood tall, dressed in black from head to toe and a cruel, angry smirk on his face. It made you sick. This wasn’t Im Jaebum. This wasn’t him. You didn’t know this man.

“Then you shouldn’t have followed them,” Jaebum hissed dangerously. “I told you I would get you the money. We arranged to meet next week. Why the did you have to touch her, huh?”

“A-Andrei didn’t believe you- he said you might-“

Jaebum scoffed. “Well, that was his mistake. You’re all going to pay for it now.”

As he lifted his gun, you felt your life flash before your eyes. No. Was he going to kill them? Was he seriously going to shoot these men who were begging for their lives? You struggled and yanked your arm out of Jackson’s grasp, rushing forward to stop him. Jaebum wouldn’t do that. Jaebum wouldn’t kill those people, not when they didn’t even pose a threat to him anymore. He wasn’t capable of such cruelty.

You heard three, loud, successive gunshots. The sound exploded in your ears and you collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down your face as you landed in a puddle of somebody else’s blood. You looked up into the pair of dark, familiar eyes that finally turned around and made eye contact with yours.

No. Not Jaebum. Not your Jaebum.

Please.

–

“Are you going to be okay?” Jaebum asked you quietly, once you’d finished schooling him on how to answer the judge’s questions. You had already prepared the evidences regarding Jaebum’s (lack of) criminal record and his educational qualifications. He gave you the contact details of the girl who handled GotSeven’s finances and you had called her in order to tell her to arrange the possible bail money. On paper, Im Jaebum looked like a relatively clean man and you hoped that you would be able to convince the judge that the allegations of him being involved in human trafficking were absurd.

“I’ll be fine,” you told him curtly.

“I’d feel better if you called Jackson and told him to pick you up. Or Mark,” Jaebum mumbled. His eyes watched you as you packed up your belongings. “You shouldn’t drive around alone at night. Jinyoung can get you a gun if you need one. And Youngjae can hack into your security system, keep an eye on it so that we can get an alert in case someone enters your apartment.”

“I don’t want any of those things.”

Jaebum looked up at you, worriedly. “What if they hurt you?”

You didn’t have an answer to that. If BTS came and decided to slice your throat in the middle of the night then that would be that. Nothing could stop them. But for some reason, you felt like you would rather die than accept Jaebum’s protection. You didn’t want to get involved in this. You wanted to stay as far away from the mafia as possible. You took a deep breath and turned to look at Jaebum.

“Stop worrying about me.”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I still love you.”

The words made your stomach turn. You knew that he was telling the truth. Im Jaebum had always loved you, you’d never been in doubt of that fact. Even when he took out an entire Russian gang and killed every single one of them, he’d done it out of some weird, twisted sense of love for you. But you didn’t want that love. You didn’t want the love that drove Jaebum to murder, you didn’t want the love that made him a terrible person. Deep inside, you knew that if BTS touched you, then Jaebum would do anything in his power to get revenge.

You looked at him for a long moment. “I know that. We were together for four years. All throughout law school, I saw your face every single day and I wondered how I had such an amazing person in my life. I loved you so much, I have an entire four years’ worth of memories from when you made me the happiest girl in the world. But those four years went down the drain, Jaebum. Because you lied about who you are.”

Jaebum bit his lip and looked down. “I wanted to keep you safe,” he whispered.

“You couldn’t do that.”

“I know. I’m sorry I lied.”

You shook your head, pressing your fingers to your temples. He didn’t understand. Even after all these years, Jaebum didn’t understand why you’d left him, why you’d told him in the hospital after the incident that you never wanted to see him again. He didn’t understand why you’d had to go through an entire year of therapy and quit your dream of becoming a criminal defense lawyer. He didn’t understand.

“It’s not because you lied. It was never because you lied,” you whispered. “When somebody lies to you, you get angry and then you forgive them. If it was just the lying then I would have let it go eventually, Jaebum. But I can’t. Every time I look at you, I hear those three gunshots in my mind. I see those three men falling to the floor while they begged for their lives.”

Jaebum looked up at you helplessly.  “I was angry. They’d hurt you, I wasn’t in my right senses at the moment-“

“That wasn’t when I decided to cut you out of my life. It was the next day. At the hospital. You came to see me and I asked you something, do you remember? I asked you why you killed those three men when they were begging for their loves. I asked you why you did it. And do you remember what your answer was?”

“I did it for you,” Jaebum whispered.

You bit your lip and stared down at him, trembling.

“Yes. You told me that you killed them for me. You still believe that you killed them for me.”

Jaebum opened his mouth to speak. “I don’t understand-“

“Do you know what those words did to me, Jaebum? I went through therapy for an entire year because I believed that I was the reason all those men died. You killed them to save me. Their blood isn’t on your hands. It’s on mine. You put it there. And that’s why I can never forgive you.”