The War of Gods (A Welcome to the Underworld Novel, Book 3) (67 page)

“Oppa,
please,” Soo Jin pleaded through clenched teeth, watching Ho Young drive away in the car he just bought his younger brother. “Let me go after him. I can’t stand seeing him breathe after what he did to our father. Let me have the honor of killing him. I don’t know how much longer I can obey your commands and wait for you to kill him. You’re taking too long and it’s making me wonder if you ever will.”

She didn’t hide
the resentment in her voice as she watched Ho Young drive away.

Young Jae
did not miss the insinuation of her words. The cold eyes she received from him told her there was no way in hell he was giving her the glory of killing Ho Young. Simply put, it was clear he was getting pretty damn tired of her disobedience.

“Don’t you dare question me and my plans. We have spoken about this. Ho Young’s head belong
s to me,” Young Jae warned sternly, his eyes challenging her to further disobey his orders. “I know you want him dead. Trust me, so do I. But we need patience, Soo Jin. There is killing and there is torturing. I want him when my power is highest, when the Underworld kneels before me. I want him when he has nothing, when he is kneeling before me in misery, begging for his life. I want to watch the tears flow down his eyes as I skin him alive. I want to win during a war, not a simple battle. That revenge will be sweeter than killing him now, in the middle of the evening where we would never be able to savor his death and our victory.”

The mental image that
manifested in her mind at her brother’s words did little to repress her rage. It was all in the future and it was all too long for her to wait. She did not want to wait any further. Soo Jin parted her lips to argue, but was again silenced by Young Jae. He had already anticipated her rebuttal.

“
Do you really have any loyalty to me if you can’t even listen to my orders?!” he screamed.

Soo Jin clamped her mouth shut, her lips twitching in embarrassment. She could feel the heart-shaped necklace her father gave h
er burn a mark into her chest.

This was one of the few times he yelled at her
, and she knew she had pushed him over the edge. Yet, as her angry eyes averted from the space Ho Young once stood in, the animosity she felt when she laid her eyes on Young Jae was one that fueled another fire in her soul.

Soo Jin
pondered the irony of her station in life.

She was a Queen before others
, yet still a lowly soldier when in the presence of her brother.

How
pathetic she felt to have her powers so confined, how angry she felt that he was the one curbing the potential of her power, and how bitter she felt to know that he was the one who stood in her way on the path to ultimate power.

S
oo Jin closed her eyes, biting back thoughts about what life would be like if he was gone, if she could be the one to rule over the Scorpions. However, she stowed away such thoughts for she knew nothing good would come out of tempting herself with a power that she should never seek. She loved her brother and despite her love for power, she wasn’t willing to allow her thoughts to venture on to the possibility of her betraying him.

“Yes, o
ppa,” Soo Jin relented, bowing as her show of adherence to his orders. “I’ll stay away from him.”

She wasn’t happy with what she said
, but prideful entities were rarely happy when they took commands from others.

Satisfied, Young
Jae smiled at her cooperation. He placed a hand on her shoulder to show how much he appreciated her compliance. “It is better this way, lil sis. Just trust me on this. It’s better this way.”

She nodded, no
t fully registering his words.

Although his gaze on her was kind, s
he could also see a restless fatigue in his eyes. He had just returned from doing something and he did not look settled. She glanced down at his hands and saw that there was blood marring his fists. He had just hit something.

“Something is bothering you,
” Soo Jin noted, concern replacing the bitterness. Her brother rarely had his feathers ruffled and if he did, then it meant a disconcertion had occurred.

“I’ve heard some
. . .
unsettling news,” he confirmed.

Soo Jin fur
rowed her brows. “What is it?”

“
Hwang Tony
. . .
has been spotted.”

I
t was Soo Jin’s turn to be rattled.

“Hwang
. . .
Hwang Tony?” Her eyes blossomed at this information. “Hwang Hee Jun’s younger brother? But I thought he died when you raided the Siberian Tigers’ estate and killed the lineage?”

“Somehow,
some way, he made it out alive and he’s in Seoul. When we killed them, we eradicated the Siberian Tigers’ lineage, but not the extended family. Hwang Hee Jun’s girlfriend, her children, and some of his extended family continue to live, and I believe they have been housing Tony.”

“What do you want me to do?”
Soo Jin asked, knowing already that this type of problem was something that her brother always personally went to her for.

“What you do best,
” he said slowly, his intent clear. “Kidnap the family, bring them to Club Pure, and do what I need you to do there. My reputation hangs on the line. We need to find Tony and kill him immediately. We also need to silence any necessary people who are threats to ruining the reign of my throne.”

“Of course,” she replied. Her strict eyes softened slightly when a specific tidbit came to her mi
nd. She recalled that Hwang Hee Jun had a girlfriend who had two children of her own. “What about the children?”

“I would like it,
” Young Jae began, his eyes softening at the thought of the children, “if the mother and her children would be spared. If they don’t know too much, then I would prefer for them to be spared.”

Soo Jin nodded, understanding the reluctance on her brother’s part to hurt a mother and her children. Out of the two siblings,
Young Jae was always the kinder one.

“If everything goes well, then
I think we can arrange that.”

“An
d Soo Jin?”

“Yes, oppa?”

“There will be four other selected Scorpions with us,” he shared carefully. “None of our other Scorpions, or anyone else, will be involved. We’ll keep this quiet. I don’t want anyone to know about Tony still being alive and what we’re about to do.”

Soo Jin nodded, understa
nding what he was implying.

“When we’re through with them,” she assured, knowing wel
l the controversial line that was drawn in the Underworld between Kings killing gang members and “innocents.” Her brother could never be involved in this tryst if he wanted to keep the honor in his reputation intact. “No one would know why they were there in the first place.”

He sm
iled in approval of her answer. “Can you get this taken care of now?”

“Soon,” she promised.
“I’ll get it all set up, but before that, I have a meeting with Ju Won. It’ll only take a few moments. In the meantime, I’ll make sure to give the orders to the four Scorpions to scope out the homes before we abduct the extended family.”

Young Jae nodded at what she said
, his mind already venturing elsewhere. “What does Ju Won want?”

“With him, who knows,
” Soo Jin said honestly. All she knew was that if Ju Won wanted to see her, then he would get his way. That was how much loyalty and admiration she had for the eldest Advisor who helped her become the Queen she was today.

“Be careful with him, lil sis,
” Young Jae admonished as she prepared to leave. He had never liked Ju Won. “He is a ruthless bastard and he can’t be trusted. I don’t want you to place so much trust in him and be betrayed in the end.”

S
oo Jin felt the weight of her two gold guns behind her back as she backed away from her brother and headed over to the precious black Lamborghini that awaited her down the street.

“You forget, big brother, that I was personally trained by him,” she said with much amusement, not knowing then how the simple meeting with Ju Won would be the changing of tides that would alter the course of her life forever.

“If any type of betrayal occurs
. . .
then it will be on my part.”

“
You will be made an example of. . .”

27: The Betrayal of Scorpions

The giant infrastructure stood as an innocuous home owned by the sublimely powerful. When one stepped out of their car and laid eyes upon it, nothing but wonder would suspend over them.

For Soo Jin, as she stepped away from her black Lamborghini, she merely viewed it as a training ground that had acted as her second home when she was growing up. It was a place that welcomed her as a young child, made her inhuman during her teen years, and molded her into a Queen as she became a woman. It was heaven, hell, and the Underworld all rolled into one.

There were cars parked on the streets, and she knew from her heightened sense of hearing that there were bodyguards hiding within the vehicles. She could hear Ju Won’s many bodyguards patrol the grounds, their breathing silent to many, but obvious to her. She could even see the shadows of snipers looming on the roof. If another naked eye were asked to stare in the same direction, they would see no trace of human entities. Soo Jin knew better. She grew up with these bodyguards and she knew the ins and outs of this mansion like she knew the back of her hand. 

From its exterior, Ju Won’s mansion appeared perfectly safe and ordinary. But for those who knew better, for those who knew the type of people who resided within this vicinity, they were well aware that this “innocuous” place was a death trap in every sense of the word. If you were invited, it would welcome you with respect. If you were summoned, it would perceive you with caution. If you were uninvited, it would kill you without hesitation.

Striding onto the property with her head held high and her heels digging into the perfectly manicured walkway, Soo Jin wore a fearless expression. The silence of the property welcomed her. The estate may be a perilous place for some, but in Soo Jin’s case,
she
would always be the executioner. She was the ultimate death trap.

Unafraid of the killers that surrounded her, she proceeded into the mansion as she always did and advanced into the enormous hall. She casually grazed her fingers over the sleek white wall before finally entering the rectangular room that was large enough to fit the entire Underworld. The room, which doubled as a colossal arena, was well lit, a deviation from the shadows that usually draped over the room. Strangely enough, Soo Jin also noticed that there were no snipers above her.

How odd
, she mused as her stilettos made her presence known to the room.

The snipers typically hid within the structure of the elaborate ceiling, waiting like guardians to protect the Advisors if need be. It was peculiar to her that none of the snipers were in the room. In fact, it didn’t seem like anyone else was in the room but her and the eldest Advisor.

Soo Jin shrugged, stowing away those thoughts and concluding that they were probably out training in the gardens.

She continued to move deeper into the room.

So many memories
. . .

Soo Jin felt like she had stepped back into time. While walking, she could see a gold coffin laying in the darker right corner of the room. The insides of her gut coiled at the unpleasant flashbacks the coffin brought. Although the exterior was made out of gold, the interior of the coffin was made out of wood. Soo Jin recalled asking Ju Won why this was the case. The answer he gave her still haunted her to this day. He said that he simply loved the sound people made when they were clawing at the wood, doing everything in their power to escape. He said he loved it even more when they screamed out in anguish upon realizing that there was no way out of the coffin. Clawing at the wood may have given them some semblance of hope, but reaching the gold surface only reinforced the horror in knowing that they have finally reached the end of their rope.  

“There is nothing more beautiful than the sound of people giving up on their control in life, giving up on hope,” he once told her before throwing her into that same coffin and locking her in after her first night of training.

Memories of her fingers, filled with wooden splinters, bleeding from attempting to scrape her way out of the claustrophobic coffin invaded her mind. The Advisors had used that as her punishment during her training. Every night she failed as a God, they would toss her into that coffin and lock her in for the night. The memories thrashed into her mind like ocean waves, making it hard for her to breathe. Even then, when Soo Jin knew there was no way out of the coffin once she was sealed in, she continued to claw at the wood because it was against every survival instinct in her body to lie there and do nothing. Soo Jin would never forget how powerless she felt. She was grateful to no longer be in that pathetic state again.