Chapter 16

At the private entrance, Jinseong pushed back his cuff, recalling Yi-soo’s instructions regarding the watch. Before he could display the dial to the towering security detail, Jeongwoo caught his forearm and dragged him across the threshold.

Plush velvet carpet swallowed their footfalls. Enormous crystal chandeliers blazed overhead, illuminating sprawling gaming floors packed with high-stakes roulette wheels, baccarat tables, and VIP slots. Cheers, gasps, and the rhythmic clinking of chips rose in a deafening wave. After the department store, it was yet another planet Jinseong had only known from afar, and his eyes darted across the floor in bewilderment.

Armed guards flanked the private elevator banks. When the gilded doors slid open, Jinseong stepped inside, expecting Jeongwoo to follow him in.

Jeongwoo remained planted firmly on the carpet outside.

“Go up to the tenth. Find the private lounge and tell them Young-joon-hyung-nim sent you.”

“…?” Jinseong stared at him in utter disbelief. Leaving me alone? In a public casino packed with hundreds of people? He desperately tried to decode the maneuver.

“What are you waiting for? Hit the damn button,” Jeongwoo barked, his hand twitching toward his waist. Jinseong pressed the brass button, staring in mute shock as Jeongwoo dismissively waved him off. The heavy doors sealed shut.

“…”

Being left alone caught him completely unprepared. What is this? Do they consider me a rat trapped in a box? Are they testing whether I have the nerve to run? Or is this an execution trap? His thoughts spun in frantic circles until a cheerful electronic chime broke the spiral. Fifth floor.

“Ah, come on! Stand up on your own feet! You’re heavy as shit!”

A shrill, furious voice pierced the opening doors, accompanied by the foul, suffocating stench of spilled liquor and cheap cologne. A slender young man with bleached hair was struggling to haul a limp, obese patron out into the hall. The youth’s brow was caked in sweat and irritation. Beside his bleached fringe, script hovered:

[Host Bar]

Useless information. Exhaling softly, Jinseong held the door-open button to let them pass.

“Fuck, why couldn’t he do his business upstairs? Dragging me into a private room… Argh! You fat pig!” The older man was dead weight, his knees buckling repeatedly under his bulk.

Just as Jinseong debated whether assisting them would draw unwanted attention, text materialized beside the balding patron’s temple:

[Room 510. Lost Cell Phone. Pattern #]

Jinseong’s heart slammed against his ribs. His eyelids snapped wide open.

“…”

The pair dragged themselves across the threshold. The host jabbed the button for the eleventh floor, cursing under his breath. As the doors began to glide shut, Jinseong didn’t hesitate: he thrust his arm between the sensors, forcing them apart, and slipped out onto the fifth floor.

If Jeongwoo was confident enough to leave him unescorted, the ground exits were either heavily guarded or the building’s biometric security rendered flight impossible without Yi-jae. He glanced at the platinum watch on his wrist. Nobody gave an asset an elite pass without a tracking purpose. Fine. If this was a loyalty test, he would play the board to survive.

“506… 507…”

He had ten minutes at most—perhaps five—before Yi-jae noticed his absence. That was enough for one phone call. One lifeline to verify whether Yeonjung was still breathing. One call to report to Gold Class that he was alive and held hostage, preserving his mother’s safety. If he could convince Cheol-joon that his loyalty hadn’t fractured, he could defuse the execution order hanging over his family.

He had no idea what the fifth floor housed, only that high-end escort hosts and intoxicated patrons drifted between heavily soundproofed doors. Privacy was paramount here—secret rendezvous, illicit transactions, things meant to stay in the dark. Stopping outside Room 510, Jinseong knocked once, waited, and twisted the handle.

The latch gave. The private parlor was empty. The low glass table was littered with half-empty champagne bottles, fruit platters, and discarded napkins, but no device was in sight.

Dropping to his knees, Jinseong swept his hands beneath the velvet sofa, mentally rehearsing an excuse should security enter. “Where is it?” he whispered, panic rising in his chest.

The floating text had provided an exact unlock pattern: `#`. A genuine, unmonitored line. His fingertips brushed cold metal beneath the skirt of the couch. Found it. Jinseong pulled the smartphone free, biting his lower lip. Every millisecond was life or death now. Mute the ringer. Slip it into the suit pocket. Clear out. If Yi-jae intercepted him, stripping off his clothes upon arrival might buy enough distraction to place a frantic thirty-second call later.

Just as he pushed himself up, the phone vibrated in his palm, its screen lighting up with an incoming call. The heavy parlor door swung open. Jinseong’s head snapped around.

“Where the fuck did that brat run off to… Huh? Who the hell are you?”

“…”

“You’re not staff. Why’ve you got that phone? What the fuck are you doing in here?”

Hostility radiated from the newcomer. Jinseong’s mind raced as letters crystallized beside the man’s unkempt hair:

[Marijuana addict]

The man’s speech was slurred, his motor control visibly delayed. Whatever substance he had taken, he seemed too impaired to question Jinseong closely. The panic evaporated from Jinseong’s features, replaced by the polite, deferential mask he had perfected through years of surviving predators.

“The guest asked me to fetch his phone,” Jinseong said smoothly, keeping his tone light and deferential. “He just went up to the eleventh floor. There’s a big party tonight—another host went up right before me.”

Desperation sharpened his acting. Weaving the street slang and subservient cadence of an entertainment worker, Jinseong prayed his smile looked convincing. This addict was nowhere near as razor-sharp as Baek Yi-jae; his hooded eyes were glazed with heavy intoxication.

“Ah… is that right?” the man muttered sluggishly, nodding slowly as the bluff landed.

“I’ll deliver it right away,” Jinseong said, bowing politely and taking a step toward the corridor.

The man shifted his heavy frame, blocking the doorway entirely. Jinseong’s stomach clenched.

The stranger appraised Jinseong’s tailored charcoal suit, smooth jaw, and parted black hair with an openly lustful stare. Reaching into his designer jacket, he pulled out a thick wad of banknotes and shoved them directly into Jinseong’s breast pocket. “You’re just my type,” he rasped, stepping closer until his sour breath washed over Jinseong’s collar.

“…?” Jinseong backed up half a pace, his stomach twisting in revulsion as the heavy bills weighed down his lapel.

“Suck me off before you go upstairs.”

* * *

“Ugh.”

The impact drove the air violently from Jinseong’s lungs as his back slammed against the papered wall. Before he could recover his balance, a heavy fist tangled into his dark hair, wrenching his head sideways and pinning his cheek hard against the plaster.

“You know how much I just paid you, you little shit? And now you’re playing hard to get?” the man snarled, hot, whiskey-sour breath washing over Jinseong’s ear. “You’re nothing but a male whore. Who the fuck gave you the right to pick and choose your customers?”

He ground Jinseong’s face brutally against the wall, jerking his head back and smashing it into the partition again and again until Jinseong’s skull rang with deafening white noise. Jinseong had attempted to twist away, and the outright rejection had stripped whatever fragile restraint the stranger possessed. Clamping his teeth over his lower lip, tasting iron, Jinseong could only endure.

“You worthless little fucking stray! What’s that other prick got that I don’t? Money? Is that it?!”

High and sluggish from drugs, the man’s crude lust had curdled into a vicious need to dominate. Still gripping Jinseong’s hair in an iron fist, he dragged him across the plush carpet toward the low velvet sofa.

“Ugh!”

The unmonitored phone had blinded Jinseong to everything else. In his desperate calculations, he had disastrously misjudged the man’s wounded ego. He had assumed that returning the wad of banknotes and offering a humble excuse about a prior client would allow him to slip away. Instead, it had detonated the addict’s temper. The man’s movements were clumsy and uncoordinated, but his raw physical mass was crushing; once cornered in the private parlor, Jinseong had no room to maneuver.

A brutal kick to his ribs sent Jinseong sprawling over the sofa armrest. He scrambled to push up and crawl toward the heavy door, but a thick hand clamped around his left ankle like a bear trap, dragging him backward across the cushions before a heavy knee crushed into the small of his back. Jinseong’s desperate gaze flicked to the platinum watch gleaming on his wrist. Ten minutes—gone. Absolute futility twisted his features.

“Damn it…” The curse tore out with whatever breath remained in his chest. He hated himself for giving in to hope, for daring to believe he might actually hear Yeonjung’s voice on the line. If he had known this sordid detour would end here, he would have ridden the elevator quietly to the tenth floor and faced Yi-jae. In the gutter where he had grown up, hesitation meant ruin; he had learned that bloody lesson a hundred times, yet he had forgotten it the moment a lifeline appeared.

“…!”

He fought frantically when the man rolled him onto his back, but exhaustion betrayed him. A heavy palm cracked across his jaw, snapping his head sideways. A second backhand followed immediately, exploding into blinding white sparks behind his eyes. Jinseong tried to bring his knees up to kick, but the sheer shock of the pain paralyzed his muscles. Shivering, he lifted a trembling hand to his throbbing cheek, half convinced his jawbone had fractured.

The metallic scrape of a zipper cut through the room. Jinseong’s gaze dropped involuntarily, revulsion twisting his features into a knot of disgust. He turned his face aside and spat onto the patterned carpet, dark threads of blood streaking his saliva. The man stroked his exposed flesh with crude, hurried strokes, his heavy knee pinning one side of Jinseong’s ribcage against the sofa cushion.

“Open your mouth.” Fingers clamped around Jinseong’s jaw like pliers, digging into the bone until excruciating pressure forced his lips apart. “Put your teeth on it, and I’ll tear your fucking asshole to shreds.”

The man’s pupils were dilated into black saucers, glowing with feral, drug-soaked lust. Jinseong stared up at him, his eyelids blinking slowly through the haze. An ancient, beaten-down instinct whispered from the dark corners of his past: Stop fighting. Yield. It ends faster if you don’t resist.

“Wider!” The man yanked Jinseong’s chin upward.

Jinseong fixed his gaze on an arbitrary watermark on the wallpaper overhead, flattening his tongue against the bottom of his mouth. What would struggling accomplish here? Cold, hollow defeat seeped into his limbs like ice water.

A foul, stale musk hit his nostrils first. Then came the repulsive, rubbery friction against his tongue. Jinseong squeezed his eyes shut, his face knotting in pure physical nausea.

Click. The faint, oiled latch of the door gave way, slicing through the heavy air of the parlor. Jinseong’s eyes flew open, but the stranger’s broad thigh completely blocked his field of vision.

“What the fuck—get the hell out!” the man barked over his shoulder, enraged by the intrusion.

Leather dress shoes clicked against the floor at an unhurried, unwavering pace.

“I let you off the leash because you behaved yourself for a few days,” a smooth, familiar voice remarked from the entryway. “Couldn’t even manage that much, could you?”

Jinseong recognized the gravelly baritone before his eyes found him. Even so, his pupils widened as he craned his neck around the hulking frame pinned above him—tailored charcoal wool trousers, an expansive chest, and finally Baek Yi-jae’s sculpted, aristocratic face. The ten-minute deadline had elapsed; of course the Alpha had tracked him down. Feeling relief in this man’s presence was insane. Yet for one surreal, disorienting second, Jinseong found himself weighing which predator was more lethal.

“For fuck’s sake, does every asshole just walk in here? Hey! Quit staring and get the fuck out!” Enraged by the interruption, the addict seized Jinseong’s hair in a fist, forcing his face back toward his groin. He rubbed his glistening length against Jinseong’s bruised cheek, shoving forward toward his lips.

Jinseong gagged violently, jerking his head sideways in revulsion. The public embarrassment transformed the man’s lust into outright savagery.

“This little runt just won’t fucking learn.” His arm drew back to strike.

Behind him, Yi-jae cleared his throat with quiet, lazy precision. “That’s mine.”

“What?” The calm declaration redirected every ounce of the addict’s fury. Spitting a venomous curse, he wheeled around to confront the intruder.

The stranger was broad enough to have held Jinseong helpless with one arm, thick veins pulsing along the fists he raised to kill. Yi-jae did not so much as flinch. His lips curved into a faint, leisurely smile. That utter absence of fear made the drugged man hesitate for an imperceptible beat.

“That brat’s booked for the eleventh floor,” the addict snarled, waving a threatening hand. “Who the fuck are you to barge in? I was only getting a taste first! Want me to drag the floor manager down here? Is this how you run this fucking place?”

“…”

“I fucking paid him! Gave him the full rate, and the little motherfucker still acts like he gets to say no!” The man took an aggressive stride forward, jabbing an insolent finger into Yi-jae’s shoulder.

Yi-jae glanced down at the hand pressing into his bespoke wool, his brow lifting with mild, genuine surprise. “Reserved? Who told you that?”