THE PALAZZO

A step inside Doh Kyungsoo’s holiday home and you felt like you’d entered a whole new world. The multistorey Italianate palazzo with its mosaic flooring, sky high ceilings, antique chandeliers, extensive and exquisitely lit hallways with incised decoration, fine old woodwork, and handsome staircases, was spread over a sprawling area of eight thousand square feet - in complete contrast to his modern and minimalistic Seoul apartment.

After a tour of the place, the housekeeper with a stick up her escorted you to your room. “Your clothes are in the closet.”

“Already? How?”

Awestruck, you surveyed the vast closet stocked with dresses, jackets, shoes, bags, underwear, accessories; you name it. Everything perfectly to your taste, style, and size. Except, none of it was actually yours.

Utterly perplexed, you inquired, “Where’s my bag?”

Impatiently awaiting a dismissal, her pencil thin eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she deadpanned, “You have everything you’ll need for the week right here in this room,” lips barely moving while she spoke.

“What about my prescription...umm..my contraceptives?” You drew out the latter half of the question in a whisper - feigning embarrassment.

The NIS has given you a strip of contraceptives tagged by days of the week. But, for Wednesday, in place of the pill was a mic, indiscernible and inconspicuous, of the exact size and shape of the tablets on the strip.

Chen’s instructions echoed in your ears. ‘You just have to sit still, be quiet, and get the buyers’ names on tape. We need to know not just what he’s selling but who he is selling to. This is a mic and you’re going to wear it this time. No arguing.’

Lips ever so slightly quirked in an awkward smile, she clarified, “You won’t need that while you’re here.” She then proceeded to draw a sequined black jacket from the closet and laid it out neatly on your bed while you continued to shadow her around like a lost puppy.

“Mr. Doh wants you to wear this to lunch.”

HOTEL PARKSUNSHINE JEJU

Baekhyun and Sehun had checked themselves into a three star - Hotel Parksunshine Jeju - situated just a couple of hundred metres away from The Palazzo.

“We set up everything in here,” commanded Baekhyun, carelessly laying out all the computer equipment on a desk in the corner.

An irate Sehun answered back, “Well, this is supposed to be my room!”

Nonchalantly, Baekhyun retorted, “I don’t want all this in my room,” and trotted off to his own lodgings for a quick shower, leaving Sehun to the grunt work.

***

The two men pored over the receiver but there hadn’t been a peep from you ever since your arrival at The Palazzo.

“Give her some time! Maybe she hasn’t had the chance to put it on yet,” reasoned Sehun, lazily sprawled in an armchair by the desk.

Lips forming a pout, Baekhyun voiced his concerns out loud, “You think she’s alright?”

“Maybe...she’s busy with Doh Kyungsoo,” the younger answered with a playful wink, “I don’t blame her, he is undeniably attractive.”

Seized by a sharp pang of jealousy, Baekhyun scrunched his brows and stated matter-of-factly, “That’s not how she works.” Contemplating on his own words, he continued after a pregnant pause, “Get the back up.”

Thrown aback by his superior’s hasty and obviously skewed decision, Sehun countered, “Already?”

But Baekhyun had his mind set to it and the look in his eyes hurtled his junior into action. Sehun rummaged through his bag for a spare mic while Baekhyun continued to cerebrate, “We need to get her a mic! We need to be able to hear her.”

Fastening his shoe laces, Sehun chuckled, “Really? Or do you just want to see her?”

CAFE INDIGO DELICATESSEN JEJU

Kyungsoo’s gaze lingered on the heavily embellished black jacket that you’d styled with a pair of black leather leggings, knee high boots, a crisp white dress shirt, and tasteful gold jewellery.

“This jacket took more than a hundred hours to make at the atelier,” had been his first full sentence to you ever since you’d arrived at The Palazzo. His keen eyes observing your every little move as you took a delicate bite out of the garlic butter baked salmon and washed it down with Sauvignon Blanc.

You acknowledged his words with a noncommittal hum but he pursued the conversation with, “Go ahead. Feel it.”

Albeit hesitantly, you complied, running your fingers up and down the glittering barbed embroidery before returning to your meal.

The fish was dry, probably fresh off the deep freeze, which was peculiar and unseemly considering you were on an island. Every single morsel felt like a punishment but, alone, unarmed, and unwired, you were not going to risk a misstep with Doh Kyungsoo especially since he'd been the one to order your lunch for you. So, just as expected of Shaye, you pretended to ‘relish’ it.

It takes one to know one.

Narrow eyes trailing up and down your eyes, nose, lips, throat, the man looked like he was on the brink of an earth-shattering and this revolting look on his face was the last thing you needed paired with an already unpalatable meal.

Bile rising in your throat, you laid down your cutlery, and declared defiantly, “I’m not sleeping with you.”

He dismissed your concern with a quick, “I won’t touch you,” eyes now fixated on your blush pink lips.

“Why aren’t you eating?” You asked, feeling a vague unease settle into your bones.

To that he gave you an honest,“Because I like to watch you eat,” in response.

The notifying blink on Kyungsoo’s phone was a welcome interruption to this exhausting conversation. He excused himself to take the call and you immediately signalled the server to clear your plate but the man brought you a croissant instead. He answered your unasked question by sticking his thumb out in the direction of one of the tables occupied by two men dressed like unassuming tourists, one significantly taller than the other.

When you met his eyes, Sehun scowled which you returned by scrunching your face and sticking your tongue out at him. Baekhyun tuned your attention to himself by tearing apart the piece of bread in his hands. You followed suit to find a mic no bigger than a peppercorn placed inside the croissant.

Expression coloured with worry, Baekhyun mouthed, ‘Are you okay?’ and suddenly a welcome warmth invaded your cheeks. Giggling like a schoolgirl, you blew a kiss in his direction which he accepted with an eye roll .

HOTEL PARKSUNSHINE JEJU

Baekhyun the receiver to you crooning to ‘Rainism’.

The despicable singing had been your way to reveal that the backup was in place but that didn’t stop Sehun from tuning the volume down to minimum. Baekhyun slapped his hand away causing the younger to retort indignantly, “She’s your girlfriend not mine!”

It was exactly moments in which Baekhyun sorely missed Chanyeol. He also inwardly berated himself for picking Hotel Parksunshine which wasn’t helping the whole ‘my-former-partner-was-way-better’ situation. But before he could say anything in his defense, static disturbed the transmission for a few seconds and then droned a deep, bored, male voice.

‘We have two guests joining us for tea.’

‘Oh,’ they heard you address Kyungsoo, ‘Okay. What would you like me to wear?’

Kyungsoo’s response was a deep sigh that almost sounded like a moan. Baekhyun’s hand clenched into a fist at the sleazy sound and Sehun’s annoying smirk only enraged him further.

‘Did I say that you could come?’ Kyungsoo spoke again while the two men continued to intently eavesdrop on the conversation.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ you replied, clearly unsure of what to say next, ‘umm...can I come?’

‘It’ll be boring.’

Following the non-success of obedience, you tried seduction, ‘Not as long as you’ll be there.’

‘I said it’ll be boring,’ Kyungsoo asserted.

‘Okay,’ Despite your agreement, Baekhyun sensed the murderous apprehension in your tenor which had an oddly calming effect on him, ‘It’ll be boring,’ you concurred.

‘I’ll see you at four,’ Kyungsoo concluded with an evident smile in his tone as if he’d just managed to tame a wild cat.

THE PALAZZO

Two hours later

Kyungsoo gave you a quick once-over before slamming his laptop shut and focusing his attention entirely on you. Aghast, he asked sotto voce, “What do you think you’re doing?”

You froze, a million thoughts cascading through your head, all of them centred around whether the plan had somehow come unravelled before Kyungsoo. Feeling crushed under the weight of the featherlight snooping device resting on your shoulder, you plastered on a polite smile and shook your head in confusion choosing not to say anything that could potentially hamper the progress made thus far.

Expressing his annoyance at your ditz act, he threw his hands up and exclaimed, “That belt!”

Genuinely confused this time but also greatly relieved, you asked, “What about it?”

“It doesn’t go with the dress,” he hissed.

You studied your outfit in the beveled wall mirror with an ebonized and gilt frame and if your opinion mattered, you’d say you looked like a renaissance painting. Your hair, now dyed an elegant strawberry blonde, came down over your shoulders in smooth locks, your lilac Milano silk dress was modest, sophisticated and so were the diamond earrings and the pumps you’d picked out to put the outfit together. Fastened around the small of your waist, the belt accentuated your curves and made you feel more like yourself and a little less like Kyungsoo’s trophy girlfriend..or moll.. or whatever it was that he’d made you out to be in his warped, bulbous head.

“Take it off,” he commanded, pulling you out of your reverie.

Again, you were left with no choice but to oblige with a hesitant nod.

***

“Shall we talk about the price?” Asked Kyungsoo’s bald guest in Japanese.

Kyungsoo was seated at the head of the table, with his laptop in front of him and his eyes anywhere but on the screen. Your fingers curled around the warm cup of green tea before you, the nauseating smell of which had slowly started to bring on a migraine.

Hands folded, Kyungsoo coolly answered, “I told you...blind bids only.”

Surveying the dining room area, you pretended not to follow the gentlemen’s conversation.

Gentleman.

The word brought an imperceptible smile to your lips.

‘The safe-word is gentleman,’ Chen had instructed you on your way to the airport.

‘Not again! How do I even get that in a sentence?’ You’d asked Chen but the seriousness of your concern was clearly lost on him. He’d dismissed it with a throaty chuckle and a lousy joke, ‘Apparently, the NIS is running out of good safewords! But remember,’ he’d continued solemnly, ‘you cannot kill your way out of this one.’

Looking down at your waist, you repeated the words to yourself.

‘I cannot kill my way out of this one.’

“We need to have an idea.” countered the man seated next to his bald friend, “How do we know that it’s as good as you say it is?”

Kyungsoo’s lips curled up in a sinister smile. He took a measured sip from the glass of bourbon to his right and rolled it around his tongue before swallowing. Eyes locked with the guest who had asked the question, he started in fluent Japanese, “Nakamura-san, you texted your boyfriend - the Minister of Foreign Affairs - upon your arrival and then your wife and children to tell them how much you love them. You had Nigiri for lunch and a KitKat from the secret stash of cherry KitKats underneath your car seat. Don’t they get soggy? Perhaps, you like them like that. Anyway, you then proceeded to input these details in the calorie counting application which I own. You told your wife that you were working late last night but, in fact, you were at the Hilton with Mr. Minister. You watched some music videos of the boy group Arashi and had twice. One at 10:23 p.m. and again this morning. You’re balding and your wife has thought about adding a dash of rat poison in your morning coffee. You’re insecure about the length of your and your doctor just texted you that you have no reason to be. And I completely agree with his...erm diagnosis.”

With everything Kyungsoo just revealed about Nakamura-san, you were having a hard time keeping a straight face especially since you’d understood exactly what Kyungsoo was trying to sell.

The man was a genius!

You stole a glance at him to realize that his profile was magnificent. Wide eyes that bore into Nakamura-san’s soul sparkled under the soft light from the overhead chandelier, his lips were plump and well moisturised, his skin flaunted a dewy sheen, and his nose was exactly how a man’s nose ought to be. You quietly returned to your beverage to take your mind off the sweet and wanting throbbing between your legs.

But Kyungsoo was clearly not done. “Oikawa-san -”

Fear flashed in the bald man’s eyes and he cut off Kyungsoo with a frantic, “Thank you for your time, Doh-san. We’ll get back to you at the earliest.”

With that the two men scrambled out of the dining room.

Kyungsoo turned to you, an exuberant victory painted across his alluring features. “People often get scared when they see themselves in zeros and ones.” His expression softened as he leaned into you and whispered, “I can get into your phone camera and watch you sleep.”

“Would you like that?” You asked, feeling your eyelids involuntarily flutter close at the proximity to his face.

Doh Kyungsoo smelled like power and in that moment you wanted nothing more than to rip his clothes apart and give into the desire that had set your very being on fire. “Very, very much,” you moaned against his luscious lips.

HOTEL PARKSUNSHINE JEJU

Muting the receiver, Baekhyun started pacing around the room in an attempt to process everything that he’d just heard.

“What the hell, man!” Sehun whined, “We’d just gotten to the fun part!”

Putting a finger to his lips, Baekhyun glared at Sehun to shut him up.

“Oh, come on!” the lanky Agent argued, mindlessly scrolling through his phone, “They’re made for each other. Also, Doh Kyungsoo can’t possibly be the first megalomaniac attempting to sell a cyber weapon.”

Ignoring Sehun, Baekhyun started to make a mental note as to how he would present this information to Minseok.

Everything was finally adding up. Everything, right from the murder of Senior Doh. Doh Kyungsoo had embezzled his company’s resources to build a cyber weapon which he was now ready to sell in the black market to the highest bidder. A weapon so powerful that it had the potential to digitally monitor any person on the planet via SMS, phone calls, social networking applications, you name it. Nobody was immune to its might - no government agency, no politician, no businessman. It could be used as a means for blackmail, extortion...it had the power to collapse governments in a matter of days thus paving way for political instability anywhere and everywhere on the globe.

The possibilities were endless.

Eventually, Kyungsoo was likely to sell off Stratio and wash his hands off everything. To be able to accomplish all of this, Doh Kyungsoo would have needed complete access to all of Stratio’s vast sensitive information. So he hired Gwishin to clear out the obstacles in his path - starting from his very own father. Gwishin made sure to make all the murders look like accidents so that nobody would ever suspect Doh Kyungsoo of anything dubious. Besides, he had a watertight alibi every single time.

The moment Baekhyun picked up his phone, his senses were overwhelmed with the sound of the soft moan that had escaped from your throat and a feeling of dread crept into his mind. At the same time an inexplicable cocktail of longing, desire, and jealousy burned right in the middle of his chest. Tossing the phone aside, Baekhyun sank into the bed with his face buried in his hands.

Chinese finger trap.

It was the first thought that crossed his mind as soon as the fog of your moan started to clear. His girlfriend back in high school had given him the fairly simple gag toy on Pepero day. It was a sma