The War of Gods (A Welcome to the Underworld Novel, Book 3) (43 page)

“You haven’t been returning my calls
, and I’m leaving soon,” Young Jae confronted, confirming her suspicions as to why he had finally made an appearance on Tae Hyun’s doorstep. Disappointment was pressed in his deep voice.

Yoori didn’t know how
exactly he had gotten passed Tae Hyun’s guards. She thought about it further and concluded that it was probably the luxury that came along with being a King of the Underworld. If Tae Hyun wanted something, doors would open for him. She imagined this was the case for her brother and Ji Hoon as well. When a King of the Underworld was near, no doors were strong enough to keep them away.

“I don’t know
. . .
I’ve been worried,” he trailed before shrugging involuntarily. “I thought Tae Hyun was keeping you from seeing me, so I decided to come over to find you myself—just to make sure that you’re okay.”

“He would
never
try to keep me from seeing you,” Yoori reassured. The unworthiness that ignited inside her in response to her brother’s care and concern tormented her. “I’ve just been busy. That’s all.”

H
is eyes measured the empty apartment behind her. “Where is he?”

“Meeting with his Serpents,
” Yoori lied, unsure herself of where Tae Hyun was. She didn’t need to disclose to her brother that Tae Hyun was acting strange and avoiding her.

Young Jae
nodded again before casting his focus to her. There was a pregnant pause before he said, “So, can I take you out to lunch?”

Yoori’s heart leapt
into her throat. It was a simple request that required nothing but a simple confirmation on her part. She truly wanted to have lunch with him. She wanted nothing more than to hang out with her brother. Nevertheless, she couldn’t place aside the troubling reality of what Soo Jin had planned to do to him.

Desolation drained any ounce of hope left within her
. She deserved none of his care. For his safety, she needed to stay away from him.

“I really shouldn’t—” she started with a heavy heart.

“Please?” he pleaded before she could refuse him. Yoori could surmise by his awkward expression that pleading wasn’t something Young Jae did on a daily basis. “Today is our last day in Seoul. Anna and I are leaving tonight with the rest of the Scorpions. I want to spend time with you again before I go back to Japan.”

She was blindsided.
Go back to Japan? Already?

Her lips quivered at the unexpected news
. “You
. . .
You’re leaving tonight?”

He nodded.

“But you just got here
. . .
”

“We
can’t stay long,” he replied. Young Jae sighed at her stubbornness. He continued to speak, his voice smaller than before. “Are you angry at me for disapproving of Tae Hyun? Is that why you’re avoiding me?”

Yoori shifted guiltily.
How horrible was it that her own brother thought she was behaving this way because she was punishing him?

He’s leaving tonight,
thought
her inner self.
Are you going to let your only brother—your only family member—leave without hanging out with him one last time?

Yoori peered up at him
, nervously fidgeting with her fingers.

She couldn’t. She couldn’t let him leave
like this. Despite all the shit that hounded her, Yoori knew her selfishness would prevail. She had to see her brother one final time before she cut all ties to protect him against herself.

“I’m not angry with you, o
ppa,” she told him with a comforting smile. “I just had plans to eat with Tae Hyun,” she easily fibbed. “But I’ll ditch him for you.”

Young Jae laughed at her attempt to break the ice.

All negativity aside, Yoori would never forgive herself if she allowed the last moment with her brother to be spent in awkwardness. This could very well be the last, happy occasion she spent with him and she wanted it to be as positively memorable as possible.

“Is everything okay between you and Tae Hyun?”
he asked when she grabbed her card key to leave with him. “You seem a bit more
. . .
miserable since the last time I saw you.”

T
he overwhelming bluntness (and accuracy) in her brother’s question surprised her. She flashed him a bright smile and did her best to maintain her mask of composure.

“I’m fine,” she li
ed, slipping her black Ugg boots on. She wrapped herself with a black zip-up jacket with a fur-trimmed hood. “If I look miserable, then it’s only because it’s winter and I’m suffering from all the snow that has been falling as of late.”

Young Jae shook his head and
chuckled at her reply.

Yoori grabbed her long white cashmere scarf that hung from the dining
room chair. She sped back toward her brother, grabbing the doorknob to pull it closed on her way out.

“W
here are we going for lunch?” she asked eagerly, relieved that for a few moments, she would be able to spend time with her family and forget about all the evil in her life. She slung her arm around her brother’s. Yoori grinned uncontrollably as they moved to the elevator.

“To a new sushi place that just opened,” Young Jae
shared just as they stepped into the elevator.

His reply earned a cheer of approval from Yo
ori. She had been craving sushi for a few days now. Perhaps some good food would help chase away the crappiness that was in her life.

“Yes! Sounds go
od. I’ve been craving sushi!”

Young Jae laughed happily, playfully pulling Yoori closer to him
after the elevator descended down.

“Good. I’ll call Anna and have her meet us there. It’ll be a good place to have our family lunch before
we part ways.”

■
■
■

Moments Prior
. . .

“Why didn’t you tell her what you’ve been doing for her?” Ace inquired after Tae Hyun hung up the phone with Yoori.

Sporting a forest green jacket and black cargo pants, Ace had bee
n standing in Tae Hyun’s office—one that rested in one of Tae Hyun’s many nightclubs—and overheard the conversation between his boss and Yoori. Curiosity marked his scarred face.

Tae
Hyun glanced up from his desk. He was dressed in a light blue, pinstriped dress shirt and dark gray pants. His fingers still held his Blackberry as he rested it on his brown mahogany desk. Conviction was etched on his face when his eyes latched on to Ace. Though there was resolution in his gaze, it was also evident that the conversation he had with a depressed Yoori had taken a toll on Tae Hyun.

“She doesn’t need to know that I’m having my Cobras
investigate her brother because I think there’s something off about him,” he informed Ace, weariness seeping out of his voice. “Especially when I don’t have all the details on him yet.” 

“You’ve been at this for days, b
oss. Perhaps if you just went home and got some rest—”

“
Her safety supersedes my fatigue,” Tae Hyun said stubbornly. “It also supersedes the frustration of being away from her and having her think that I’m avoiding her. At the moment, I have a bad feeling about her brother. I need to make sure I know enough about him so that Yoori will be safe.” He sighed, looking at Ace with sternness in his eyes. “You and the rest swore to me that you’d eradicate all vengeance towards her if I allowed you back into the gang. Right now, she is my priority. Is she yours as well?”

Tenseness filled
the room before Ace answered. “What happened with Kimmy will be something that haunts us, but you should know that we owe our lives to you. I’m sorry about what happened before. We didn’t know how much Ms. Choi meant to you. We’re not ingrates. We all know that the only reason why we’re here right now is because she begged for our lives, even when we tried to take hers. Despite anything that happened in the past, we were raised to know better. Obeying your orders aside, I still owe her my life, and I haven’t forgotten about that.”

A small smile appeared on Tae Hyun’s lips. He nodded in appr
oval at Ace’s answer.

Ace note
d the warmth that ran over Tae Hyun’s face. “You’ve really fallen for her, haven’t you, boss?”

Tae Hyun
chuckled sullenly at Ace’s question.

“She will be the death of me,” he
murmured, staring distractedly at his Blackberry.

Footfalls emanated from the hall. Seconds
later, Mina stepped into Tae Hyun’s office. She wore a black bomber jacket and dark pants. The only thing that stood out from her dark attire was the manila folder she held in her hand. She respectfully greeted Tae Hyun with a bow when he turned to look at her. Mina then took her place beside Ace.

The mood
instantly shifted from a companionable one to a tense, anticipation-filled silence. There was knowledge in that folder. It was knowledge that Tae Hyun knew dealt with Yoori’s safety. His stern eyes went from the folder and then to Mina.

“
Yoori told me that Young Jae was doing some legitimate business in Japan,” Tae Hyun launched, getting right into business. “Did you find any evidence that corroborates this?”

Mina shook her head. She
stepped forward to place the manila folder on Tae Hyun’s desk. She slid it beside his hands.

“The Cobras and I had to do a lot of digging
, but we finally happened upon a good informant from the Japanese Underworld. Apparently, over the course of the last three years, Young Jae has been working as the new shadow gang leader for the 3
rd
layer of Japan’s Underworld. He goes by ‘AJ’ in that world. From whispers, it is said that he’s now at the top of the food chain. He hasn’t gone public with it, but from all the recruits he garnered, including all the airborne Scorpions who continue to linger in Korea, if Young Jae wanted, he could resurrect everyone and have as much power as you and the King of Skulls.”

“Fuck,
” Tae Hyun muttered, thunderstruck by the weight of this new information. “I knew there was something off about him, but I didn’t think it went this deep.”

Mystification twisted Ac
e’s face. “Why didn’t we know about any of this?”

Although h
is question was directed to Mina, it was Tae Hyun who replied.

“Because Young Jae is an opportunist,” Tae Hyun answered, his firm eyes running from one Cobra to the ot
her. It all finally made sense to him. “Because of what happened with An Soo Jin, and because it was spread throughout the Underworld that he became ‘broken’ after her death, the crime lords of this world didn’t press for his whereabouts. We all assumed that he lost his mind and was hiding out because he no longer wanted to be involved in this world. The only reason why he was able to disappear safely was because Ji Hoon and I were in the process of taking over this layer. Everyone was distracted with the prospect of a new Lord deriving from one of us. No one thought twice about the fallen King who decimated his gang because he was ‘too depressed’ over the loss of his baby sister.”

Tae Hyun smirked to himself.

Everything became clearer to him.

“He used his sister’s ‘death’ as an excuse to leave one Underworld so
he could infiltrate another
. . .
”

Suspicion
then sparked in his eyes. He glanced up at Ace, the spark igniting with more fire. He had, at long last, realized something crucial.

“A year
and a half ago, I sent the nine of you to Taecin because there was evidence that suggested my brother had business there. When you went to the areas suggested, you ran into Yoori. How did you wind up stumbling into the store she was at?”

Ace and Mina eyed one another be
fore Ace replied to Tae Hyun. “There were records of your brother paying a substantial amount of money to a storage place in Taecin. We couldn’t find the address of the storage area, but we knew the radius in which the money was transferred to. We inspected the area, found nothing, and instead, stumbled upon Ms. Choi. She was walking around in a local store and everything went to hell right then and there. We lost track of her and became enraged. Our need for vengeance got the best of us and we decided to set fire to the homes surrounding that area because we wanted to kill her.”

Prickly silence
blanketed the office as Ace and Mina stood uncomfortably.

Though the reminder of what the Cobras did to Yoori hardened his face, Tae Hyun
did not allow it to override the more important matters at hand. Tae Hyun turned to Mina, his mind paving a road for something that no one thought to venture on.

“Bring up my brother’s account.
I want to see all records of his money transfers. You couldn’t find anything a year and a half ago. We’ll see if I can find anything now.”

Mina
knotted her brows. She clearly didn’t understand the significance of Kwon Ho Young when they were speaking about Young Jae and the possible danger he presented to Yoori.