The Boss’s Runaway (Possessive Kingpins)

We drew up at the house half an hour later. The Songs lived in the same house where I’d grown up. Done in the Korean style, it was a huge compound outside the city housing a lot of the made men and their families around a central courtyard.

It was quiet when we left the car. I watched Kat arranging her skirts and trying to cool her red cheeks. She’d sobbed my name so prettily when she came all over me—twice—before I’d even started to thrust up into her. I’d never get tired of having this woman. My woman.

We went toward the entrance, and I was surprised to be waved through by a distracted guard. I’d expected a chilly reception, but this was strange. Inside, there was a stillness that made my nerves stand on end. It was quiet.

“What’s wrong?” Kat asked, holding my hand and picking up on the somber mood.

“I don’t know,” I said, taking my gun from my hip. “Stay behind me.”

As I sent my security team in different directions, we advanced through the house, looking for my parents. It had been a long time since I’d lived here, and with Suna gone too, it was just my parents and Hana.

I turned a corner and looked toward the private residence of my parents. I heard a wail that juddered across my skin. I recognized Dami’s tone.

I took off in that direction as I tossed back to my team, “Watch Kat. Get her out of here if it’s dangerous. She comes first.”

“Jae!” she called after me.

Kat was fearless and would run into a lion’s den without a second thought, but I couldn’t let that happen. She was too important to me.

I rounded the corner and found my mother sitting on the stone of the courtyard, tears running down her face.

When she saw me, she flew to her feet and attacked me, hitting me with her small, sharp fists. “This is all your fault! You did this!”

My father appeared behind her and pulled her off. “Stop, this isn’t helping anything.”

My mother collapsed back to the ground in a fit of renewed wailing.

A feeling of terror I had rarely known sprang to life in my gut when my father turned his weary face to me. I knew something bad had happened from the sag of his shoulders.

“What is it?”

Min-Ho sighed, a long, pained sound, and ran a hand across his lined face. “It’s your sister, Hana. Someone’s taken her. Kidnapped her. He left a note.”

I grabbed it before my father could finish speaking. Of course, I already knew who it was, but seeing it so plain before me was unsettling.

You take something from me. I take something from you. Now, we’re even, dear brother-in-law. – Konstantin Ivanov.

I drew a ragged breath, one after another, the image of my sister dancing in my head. Hana, sweet, innocent, sun-shining Hana, all of nineteen and completely clueless about the world.

Now, she was in the clutches of a verified madman.

“Give him back his sister. Trade Kat for Hana, and do it now,” Dami wailed at me.

I swallowed the fury and fear for Hana in my chest. “I can’t,” I said flatly, meeting my father’s eyes. “We’re married. Kat and I just got married.”