A/N: I DOUBLE UPDATED SO READ THE CHAPTERS BEFORE THIS ONE THANKS!!

The door leads to a hallway, filled with floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s nearly 9 PM, however, so I cannot make out anything on the outside except for bright lights and the glowing pool and the flames from the bar. Being in this hallway makes me feel strange. The sounds of cheering and yelling from outside are still audible, but muted; although I can see the party going on, I am not a part of it. It is like I am in my own little world.

    My eyes snap back down the hallway. There is a door a little up ahead on my immediate right. It is slightly ajar.

Perfect.

    I slowly tread into the room. I am in a posh, modern bedroom of a large suite; a king-size bed sits across from a 55” flat-screen TV. Windows overlooking the pool take up the entire wall across from me. The view is gorgeous. But there is something about this room that makes it seem alien, unfriendly.

    5 more minutes and I’m out of here.

    A MacBook pro sitting on the glass dresser next to the bed catches my eye. There is a red USB plugged into it.

    I obviously can’t take the laptop, I think, recalling the disastrous tracking software Yohan was able to implant in Preet’s laptop after I hacked into their website for the first time at Brookhaven High. Taking the USB will do.

    I yank the flash drive out of the Mac. My bikini barely covers the parts it’s supposed to, so there’s nowhere to hide this- damn this stupidly effective Yohan rule. But it’s alright. I can hide it in the palm of my hand until I-

    The click-click! of a gun’s safety echoes behind me.

    “Drop it,” a cold voice intones, and my stomach plummets all the way down to my toes.

    No.

    No.

    I know that voice, but how-

I thought I scanned the entire place-

    Footsteps echo through the room as he gets closer and closer to me, until his gun is lodged in the small of my back.

    The man chillingly utters, “Three.”

    Ami. Ami. Get yourself together.

    “Two.”

    Kyungsoo taught you what to do in this situation. You practiced on Joshua. You can do this.

    “One-,”

    In a flash, I whirl around out of the line of fire, lock his arm against mine, and hit him across the face with my elbow. Normally, he would have easily countered this move- I have seen him do it before- but he must not have expected me to do this. He staggers backwards and I knock the gun to the floor with my fist. My body swoops to the floor and grabs the USB and I try to sprint past him but I am too slow; he grabs my forearm and twists it behind my back, eliciting a cry of pain from me. The next thing I know, he plants his knee firmly in my back and pins me down onto the side of the bed. Despite my desperate struggle, he manages to flip me around so that I am lying on my back.

    “Ami Hwang,” Jungkook Jeon snarls, pinning my arms next to my face. “Well, well. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?”

    “Yeah, well, I just came back from the dead,” I hiss. The ache of my heart is almost too painful to suppress. Jungkook looks even better than he did 4 years ago. His cheeks have lost the little roundness it once possessed- it is all hard edges and sharp angles now. I can feel through the sensation of his body pressed up against mine that he is more toned, musculed. He has matured from a 16-year-old boy into a 20-year-old man.

    But there is something missing from his eyes: a spark that was once always there. All I see when I look at him is a cold-hearted killer.

Nothing more.

    “I thought you had been killed,” Jungkook growls. I can practically feel the intensity in his eyes burning through me. His fingers slowly ghost over the scar on my right shoulder; an involuntary shudder runs through my body. “I saw you die.”

    “Yeah? Just like I saw Marcus die? Because you shot him?” My voice cracks at the end of my sentence. “You- you don’t even know what you did to me. I spent years-,”

    “What I did to you? Do you know how it feels to have the person you trust the most betray you? And then have to shoot one of your own classmates in the head?” Jungkook’s voice is pulsing with fury. “And then see the girl you love bleed to death-,”

    “You murdered my best friend,” I utter. “You ruined my ing life. I- you don’t understand. You’re trained to deal with situations like that. I wasn’t.”

    He tightens his grip on my arms, clenching them so hard that his fingers press into my skin.

    “Do you think I was trained to deal with a situation like that?” he whispers in a deadly voice.

    We simply glare at each other for several moments and I am hit with an overwhelming sense of loss amongst the feelings of ire and animosity.

    A memory rises to the surface of my mind: a late-night conversation with Jungkook in his car- right after I discovered that he was an assassin.

    I can promise you one thing, Ami. I will not kill you, and you can trust me.

    “I hate you,” Jungkook hisses.

    “You’re a monster,” I growl. “What are you going to do now? Finish the job and kill me?”

“Of course.” Jungkook secures both of my arms with one hand, and places another hand on my neck without pressing down. “I’ll end this once and for all.”

“Go ahead, then,” I murmur, staring him straight in the eyes. “Do it.”

His fingers slowly wrap around my neck while I stare at him defiantly, refusing to back down-

And all of a sudden the door flies open and Jungkook temporarily loosens his grip on me, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion but before he can react an arm whacks him in the back of the head and he topples down to the ground.

“I knew this would happen,” Kris muses, giving me a smug smile. “Looks like I got here just in time.”

My jaw drops. “How-,”

“How did I know?” He hoists me off the bed. “Well, you see, there’s no Brookhaven near Chicago.”

    “You need to call your friends now,” Kris says as we speed away from the hotel. “We need to get out of here before they catch us.”

    “Who the hell are you?” I demand. “And how did you know that I was involved with the 4 Flames?”

    “Oh, I knew from the start. I just didn’t know how you were involved with them. I still have a lot more questions, Mihae, but we can get to those in due time. For now, you need to call your friends.”

    Biting my lip, I hurriedly dial Kyungsoo. He picks up after two rings.

    “How’s the party, Mimi?” he asks enthusiastically. I can hear someone- probably Joshua- yelling in the background. “Do you want us to come and-,”

    “My cover’s been blown,” I breathe into my phone.

    Kyungsoo is absolutely silent.

    And then he mutters, “We need to leave as soon as possible. I’ll meet you near the Starbucks near-,”

    “I already have a ride,” I tell him hurriedly. “We’re heading to the apartments right now.”

    “What? What ride-,”

    Kris grabs my phone from me and hangs up. “Don’t talk on the phone for too long,” he says. “One of the other gangs could be tracing our location.”

    I turn to him in bewilderment. “You still haven’t explained how you know about these gangs! What are you doing-,”

    He slams on the brakes and I tumble forward. “We’re here. Get out.”

    The two of us race up to my apartment and I quickly unlock the door. “Pack enough to last a few nights, but not too much to make it seem like you abandoned your place,” he directs me. “There’s always the off-chance that the 4 Flames won’t alert the other gangs and we can contain the situation.”

    I am too frazzled and panicked from my encounter with Jungkook to question him further. Everything is moving in a blur; the only thing on my mind right now is fear.

    I’ve been discovered again. And if they know I’m alive, they’ll know Preet and Anna are alive, too.

    I throw my phone to Kris. “Find the group chat with Preet and Annabelle, and tell them to come to my place immediately. Include my address. Oh, and make the message really scary and threatening.”

    “On it.”

    Shirts and pants go flying into my duffel bag- I haphazardly shove in my toothbrush and bras. I need to hurry-

    The front door slams open. Joshua and Kyungsoo barge into my apartment, their chests heaving. When they see me they cry out in relief.

    “What the hell’s going on?” Joshua shouts. “How did your identity get-,”

    “Mihae, I texted them,” Kris says, emerging from my kitchen.

    He locks eyes with Kyungsoo.

    Both of them are absolutely still.

    And then Kyungsoo whips a knife out of his pocket and charges at Kris, his teeth bared, and snarls, “You bastard,” and Kris deftly dodges out of the way and aims a crescent kick at Kyungsoo’s face. Kyungsoo ducks, and almost jabs his knife into Kris’ leg- before Kris slams his palm into Kyungsoo’s fingers and causes the knife in his hand to go flying. Kyungsoo launches himself into Kris’ stomach and both of them topple to the floor and I am shouting for them to stop and Joshua darts in between them and we both pry a struggling Kyungsoo off of Kris.  

    “What the ’s wrong with you?” Joshua shouts at Kyungsoo. “You’ve never lost your like that!”

    “Do you know who he is?!” Kyungsoo roars, causing Joshua to shrink back.

    “Who?” I question, staring at Kris.

    “He’s a traitor,” Kyungsoo spits out. “Yifan Wu is a former member of X.E.”

A/N: THIS CHAPTER GIVES ME PAIN OMG......... SOMEONE HELP ME :(

GUYS COMMENT/UPVOTE IF U LIKE THE STORY I LOVE READING WHAT YOU THINK <3 and lol....... btw.... there IS a brookhaven near chicago apparently sMH LMFAO LETS PRETEND THAT THERES NOT PLS THANKS