Page 15 of Perfect Martinis
Shivers dance on my skin and I reply, "I'm looking forward to it."
He lets me up finally and I take the liberty of ordering food for us. There's a chance we may not get the upper hand against Lear, and I'd rather die with a full stomach.
"How do you think he did it?" I ask as I spear my tteokbokki with a toothpick.
Jeong-Ki looks over at me. "Did what, exactly?"
"I mean, somehow he organized it so, if I paid off my friend's debt to the local kkangpae, I'd have to leave since my inheritance came from the Sicilians. Or was it serendipity that I did that and he heard about it somehow -- likely via the kkangpae -- and got lucky?" I wonder. "It feels like we are missing a key element here that connects me to you."
Jeong-Ki nods, slurping some japchae. "That is why my sergeant was sure you were running this whole thing. There's something we're missing here on how he found you and tailed you from here to Seoul, knowing you'd get embroiled in the kkangpae again, and knowing that was my division."
I pause. "He could've found your division from a sasaeng. Some still follow you."
He groans. "Don't remind me."
"It's how he found me and tracked me. Do we think the kkangpae were paid off to tip him off for anyone going to Seoul he could manipulate remotely?" I wonder.
"That's such a crapshoot," he muses. "But then Lear was never a smart man. He got lucky and came up with half-baked ideas that somehow paid off -- usually because of me."
I don't believe in coincidences whatsoever. Plus, it would've been easier to just look for someone already in Seoul. When we find Lear, I plan on interrogating him. Not only is he psycho enough to want to track down and hurt Jeong-Ki, he's also apparently manipulated my business to do so, as well as stalked me.
Sorry, buddy, I used to be nice. Not anymore.
* * *
After dinner, we head to Lear's lakeside mansion; the home he bought with all of Jeong-Ki's money. Bastard.
"He has a typical security system. All we have to do is jam the signals and he won't know what hit him," Jeong-Ki says.
"Suddenly you really don't give a shit about the rules, huh?" I comment.
"Not after how I rescued you," he replies.
You neglect to mention how turned on you were even while you rescued me, I think.
He takes his phone out and presses something on an app. "Make sure you have a data connection in case you need it on your phone. Our Wi-Fi receptors are also going to be affected."
“Are we sure he won’t be expecting us? I mean, we both did leave Korea pretty quickly,” I say, doubt creeping in.
Jeong-Ki grins. “You don’t seem to fully grasp that Stefan is a grade-A fuckwit with money for brains. If anything, he thinks you left after what happened to you. Which, by the way, you really should’ve been seen at a hospital.”
I wave a hand as if to wave away his concerns. “I need the person who did this to me dead, Jeong-Ki. That’s all I need. All the years of helping clean up after the bodies were gone from behind the bar I used to work at made me pretty desensitized. So just pray I get to enjoy this.”
He regards me for a minute, dark eyes calculating what I said. Then he nods. “Let’s go.”
A window is open and the sounds of a man cursing heavily hit my ears.
“Fucking shit ass… They told me to hook it all up to the Net. It will work fucking perfect. Now I’m even in the damn dark, these fucking tech cunts…”
Even his lamps were running on Wi-Fi? What a pretentious prick.
As were his locks.
Jeong-Ki turns the knob on what would, historically, be the servants’ entrance and the door easily swings open. We walk into a darkened hallway, but it’s short, and the lights from the outside give us enough illumination to see by.
And it’s easy to find Lear. His voice echoes in the large house as he bumps into something and curses.
Jeong-Ki picks up a long, thin decorative vase along the way, and one doesn’t have to be a genius to know what he’s going to use it for as he holds it like a baseball bat.
