“Bicheoso?!” Shin Hye snatched the ringing phone away from Min Ho’s hand and glared at him. “You’re supposed to be in hiding!”

Min Ho could only watch helplessly as she handed Shi Yoon his phone. A moment ago, she and Shi Yoon had been arguing about what Min Ho could only assume was a ridiculous plan made by her, because Shi Yoon seemed to be against it. Their heated discussion was interrupted when his phone suddenly rang. He was about to answer it when Shin Hye took it away.

“I’m hiding from the people who are trying to kill me, not my family and friends!” Min Ho snapped back.

Shin Hye’s glare didn’t waver. “You really are clueless, chaebol. Don’t you know that the worst kind of enemy is the one who masquerades as a friend?” She was clearly seething, and Min Ho didn’t know why she was suddenly so angry all the time. If she wasn’t screaming at him, then she’d be screaming at Shi Yoon. It was like a never-ending argument with her.

“Who’s Han Chae Ah?” Shi Yoon asked, putting the phone up for Min Ho to see the screen.

He took a seat to calm down or else he’d be up in Shin Hye’s face once more. Min Ho was starting to notice that she has never missed an opportunity to make him feel so dumb. He ran a hand through his still wet hair. “My secretary.”

Shi Yoon rejected the call and turned the phone off. “I know this may be difficult for you but you have to understand, Min Ho-ssi, that—“

“Decide whether you’re in this or not!” Shin Hye interrupted Shi Yoon. “You may be used to getting your way all the time, leaving and coming back whenever you want because people never question or reprimand their prince. But when you’re with us, you follow the rules! Those rules keep us alive, is that really hard for you to understand?!”

Min Ho’s eyes shot up to her face as he stood up. He couldn’t take it anymore. The condescending tone in her voice was riling him up again. You know nothing about me. He banged his palms on the surface and leaned in to stare at Shin Hye from across the table. “UNDERSTAND? I understand how you people ed up my life! How am I supposed to know what to do in this situation? I’m not an assassin, I’m not a hacker, I’m not a criminal!”

Shin Hye leaned closer too, not the least bit interested in backing down. “That’s right, we’re criminals! We’re the criminals trying to keep you alive!”

He scoffed. “Don’t pretend to give a about my well-being! You’re only doing this to save your asses so I don’t rat you two off to the authorities. Just like the only reason you didn’t shoot me was because you couldn’t live with your guilty conscience if you have!”

“I could kill you right now and prove you wrong, chaebol!”

“Threaten me again and I’m going to forget you’re a woman,” he said through gritted teeth.

“STOP!” Shi Yoon held his hands up and pushed the two away. “Can you two just calm down?! God, this is so frustrating!” He turned to Shin Hye. “Chill the down. Just talk to him calmly, why do you have to be so angry all the time?”

“Because he’s being careless! What if he reveals our location, huh? He was stupid enough to go back to his place, he was stupid enough to go to the police station, and now he’s here again, putting us in jeopardy!”

“I can hear you,” Min Ho griped, feeling the pang of her every word.

“Oh yeah?” She jerked her head to his direction. “Then hear this. If you’re going to stay, then you better do what you’re told and keep quiet. I don’t need someone clueless ing things up!” She spat before stomping away.

Shi Yoon let out a frustrated groan and sank into his seat. The tension in the air was more palpable than ever, and he didn’t know why he was stuck in the middle of two angry butting heads. He turned to Min Ho who looked like he was about to punch a wall. “Well, she clearly hates you.”

“No ,” Min Ho grumbled and marched off to his room, leaving Shi Yoon alone in the dining table. As soon as he shut his door, he let out a loud wail – just to release the rage that has built up inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this angry. Without thinking, he grabbed his duffel bag from the floor.

“I don’t need any of this,” he mumbled as he snatched the clothes he was wearing before he took a bath and shoved them inside his bag.

‘You may be used to getting your way all the time, leaving and coming back whenever you want...’ Min Ho bit his lip and rubbed his neck, remembering what Shin Hye accused him of doing just moments ago. With a grunt, he threw the bag on the floor before collapsing on the bed. “I’m just going to prove her right if I leave,” he whispered, covering his eyes with one arm. This is so frustrating! SHE is so frustrating!

Just then, he heard a knock on his door. He sat up slowly in time to see Shi Yoon’s head peek inside. “You busy?” He asked.

Min Ho ran a palm across his face and shook his head. “Come in. Sorry about earlier. I just lost it.”

“Not your fault,” he replied as he closed the door behind him. “Shin Hye’s just… on edge. She hates not knowing things and we’re basically floating on air right now. We don’t know who’s after us and why. She just took out all the frustration on you.”

“Why is that woman like that?”

Shi Yoon pressed his lips together. “She’s not always like that. You’ll be surprised at how pleasant she can be on good days,” he smiled. “And to be fair, you haven’t exactly been forthcoming either. You keep bringing up the whole ‘she almost killed you’ bit.”

Min Ho sighed. Shi Yoon was right. He’s been at as much as she has. The hatred was mutual, and to be honest, he probably made it worse when he goaded and kissed her last night. He pushed the thought off his mind and leaned his hands on the bed, turning back to Shi Yoon. “Did you want to talk to me?”

“Yeah,” he pulled the chair from behind a desk and sat down to face him. “I never got the chance to ask about the break in at your place. Did the intruder steal anything?”

Min Ho was quiet for a bit as he tried to recall what he saw in his room earlier that day. He shook his head. “Nothing really. My room was just a mess, but everything else seemed to be there. Well at least, everything important. It couldn’t have been a theft because nothing pricey was taken, not even my jewelry. That’s when I figured it had something to do with whatever happened last night.”

Shi Yoon his chin, pausing to think. “I’ve been wondering. I never found out where you moved to. I went as far as checking out all real estate purchases, leases, rentals in Seoul every day, dating a month from the week you moved. I even went to Wang Gwan for research but came up empty handed. I’ve told you before, you’re a hard man to find. So how did whoever broke into your place find out where you’re staying?”

Min Ho frowned. He has never thought about that before. That’s strange. “I don’t know.”

Shi Yoon tilted his head. “Who knew about your new address?”

Min Ho opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he realized what Shi Yoon was implying. “No way. Surely you’re not saying any of my friends are involved in this!”

“Hold your horses,” Shi Yoon held up his hands. “I wasn’t saying anything like that. I just wanted to know how many people knew.”

He sighed and continued. “My secretary was the one who got me the condo.”

“You mean Han Chae Ah? The one who just called.”

“Yeah,” Min Ho nodded. “Woo Bin also knew. He probably told Jae Hyun and Min Woo. But they’re not the type to blab about that to other people. They know how important privacy is to people like us.”

Shi Yoon creased his brows. “Four people. How about your Grandfather?”

“I asked Secretary Han not to tell him, but it’s likely he knew,” Min Ho replied. The way Shi Yoon was interrogating him still sent the impression that he was suspecting his friends. Impossible. “You know, there are other ways of people finding out…”

“Is there anyone else that called you in the past 24 hours? Any calls you made?” Shi Yoon cut him off.

“I called Grandfather’s house twice just to check up on him. And I called Woo Bin before dinner.”

Shi Yoon’s frown deepened. “Did you tell him where you are?”

“Of course not!” He replied defensively. He may have been careless but he certainly wasn’t stupid. Although Shin Hye seems to think so. “Woo Bin assumed I checked in a hotel. I told him the break in was a theft.”

A silence fell between them as Min Ho got lost in his thoughts. When he decided to come with Shin Hye and Shi Yoon, he never thought he’d have to cut off all connection with the outside world. Maybe because he didn’t know how long it was going to take to catch whoever was after him. But aside from worrying about getting killed, how the hell was he going to explain his absence to his Grandfather? To his friends? All was well now, but he’s due on his desk on Monday morning. What’s going to happen when all of a sudden, nobody can reach him? He wasn’t an ordinary man. When the heir of Wang Gwan suddenly goes missing, Chairman Lee will do everything in his power to find him.

“Do I really have to hide from them, too?” Min Ho asked.

Shi Yoon nodded. “For the time being, yes. You’re in this now, whether you like it or not. We don’t know who’s after you, and how powerful they are. You may think now that it couldn’t possibly be anyone close to you, but at this point, you should start suspecting everyone. Trust nobody. Even your family and friends.”

“But you expect me to trust you?” He cocked his brows.

“Well, I think we’ve made it clear we aren’t out to get you, otherwise you’d be dead by now,” Shi Yoon paused. “Then again, you probably shouldn’t trust Shin Hye.  You never know with her,” jokingly threatened.

Min Ho winced at the thought. “As long as she doesn’t try to kill me in my sleep then I think we can stay within the same vicinity.”

“Oh please. She has more assassin dignity than that,” he chuckled before turning serious again. “But she was right, you know. You have to do what we tell you from now on. If you’re going to stay, then we better work together to stay alive. Unless you’re having second thoughts and want to leave?”

He pondered on it for a bit before looking up at Shi Yoon again. “Like you said, I’m already in this. Might as well accept my fate.”

Shi Yoon smiled and stood up from his chair. “Come on, we have to fix something before we proceed.”

Min Ho frowned. “Fix what?”

“Whatever it is that’s making you and Shin Hye try to rip each other’s faces off. We can’t have bad blood between us or we’ll end up killing each other. Literally.”

Shin Hye found herself having an unexpected match with the punching bag from the gym across the war room. Even imagining Min Ho’s face in her mind was enough to throw her in a fit of rage. How one man can manage to bring out so many hostile emotions in her was strange. “Lee. Min. Ho. You. Stupid. er. I. Should. Have. Killed. You. When. I. Had. The. Chance!” She sputtered with every furious punch.

Her heart raced at the sudden exercise, but she calmed down a bit after releasing her anger. Knowing she had a job to do, she went straight to the Cabin’s war room and opened her laptop, which she conveniently found under one of Shi Yoon’s pillows. Predictable, she thought.

She opened the folder she was looking at before dinner and creased her brows. Sniper. Military. She went through several profiles, looking again through every single photo, hoping something jumps at her. Immersed in what she was doing, she barely heard Shi Yoon enter the room.

“Ahem.”

Shin Hye looked up to see that two men were standing in front of her. Her eyes immediately darted to the undesirable chaebol as she shut her laptop violently.  “What is he doing here? He can’t be here,” she was about to stand up when Shi Yoon hastily ran to her side of the table and held her shoulders down, keeping her in her seat.

Min Ho was looking around the screens and the cutouts on the walls, clearly fascinated. He saw his face on the whiteboard with some facts written below it. There were photos of his Grandfather, his friends, and some other men he didn’t recognize.

“Take a seat,” Shi Yoon told him. “This is the war room. This is where we study our marks. Well, where we used to study our marks, before we moved to our other house. But we’re back,” he beamed.

“Okay, now this looks more like Batman’s Cave,” he replied, taking a seat in front of Shin Hye. He hasn’t even cast a glance her way; he was too busy studying the room.

“Why the hell is he here?” Shin Hye shook Shi Yoon’s hands off her shoulders and glared at Min Ho. “You. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of our way?”

“Ya. I asked him to come here,” Shi Yoon told her, taking a seat at the edge of the table. “There are things that needed to be sorted out.”

“Sort what out?” She turned to Shi Yoon impatiently.

“Oh my God, can you let the man talk before you raise hell? You’re like some angry market ahjumma.”

She immediately turned to Min Ho. “Ahjumma?!”

“Eh, eh, eh!” Shi Yoon snapped his fingers to gain Shin Hye’s attention back. “Eyes here, eyes here. He’s right. Listen to me first before you react, arasso?”

Shin Hye closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down. I might need another round with that punching bag. She tossed the pen in her hand on the table, leaned back, and folded her arms. She didn’t say anything more and opened her eyes to look at Shi Yoon.

“I know you two hate each other, and for good reason. Shin Hye tried to kill you and that’s obviously a perfectly understandable reason to dislike someone…” he turned to Min Ho, “…and well, I don’t know why she hates you so much, but then again she kind of hates all men in general. So the fact that you’re a dude possibly makes up for half of the reason.”

Shin Hye rolled her eyes. “Can you get to your point faster?”

He looked at Min Ho, pouting. “See what I mean?”

“Aish!”

“Arasso!” Shi Yoon hissed. “Anyway, as I was saying, I know you hate each other but it’s time to put that aside. Shin Hye didn’t kill you, which I personally think is a good thing. And Lee Min Ho-ssi here has promised to follow everything we tell him to do. Now whether you like it or not, he’s already involved in this. So we might as well work together.”

“No,” Shin Hye shook her head vigorously. “He can’t work with us.”

“Why the hell can’t I?” Min Ho asked, sounding agitated. “I already did more work than you have! I found out about that sniper being military. And I told you about Son Ah Young’s suicide. I also got your deadly weapon for you!”

Three points in his favor. Damn it. Shin Hye ignored him and kept her gaze on Shi Yoon. “What use will he be to us? You said it yourself, he’s a liability. He should just wait this out.” She was lying, of course, but for some reason, she just didn’t want to give in and admit that Lee Min Ho did have some use.

The chaebol looked like he was about to burst out from his seat when Shi Yoon widened his eyes at him. “Min Ho-ssi. You can fight, right?”

Shin Hye reluctantly turned to Min Ho for his answer, but he only frowned and gave Shi Yoon a questioning look.

Say yes. SAY YES, Shi Yoon mouthed. Shin Hye caught it from the corner of her eye.

“No.”

Her lips curved up slightly as she looked back at a dismayed Shi Yoon. “See what I mean?”

“I have money,” Min Ho said confidently.

Shi Yoon grinned widely and clapped his hands. “He has money!”

Shin Hye scoffed. “Sure. Because when you have a gun aimed at you, you can always offer the shooter more money. That’s effective,” she mocked, remembering how the last person she killed offered her money