Page 16 of Perfect Martinis
We enter an office, where Stefan is bent over a router, muttering and cursing. I clear my throat to get his attention.
He leaps to his feet, startled, but I can only see shadows as Jeong-Ki immediately whacks him in the head with the vase, creating a dull thunking sound. Stefan stumbles and falls to the ground, but this isn’t a movie, and he’s not unconscious.
Quickly, Jeong-Ki removes his belt and I do the same, so we can secure his hands and feet.
We need answers before we kill him.
“Teamwork,” Jeong-Ki comments, giving me a fist-bump. He grabs Stefan’s phone from his pocket and takes it before he gets his phone and turns the Wi-Fi back on, along with the lights.
Stefan, already dazed from the hit, groans and squints in the light. Then his eyes focus on us.
“Looks like I have visitors. Jeong-Ki, you know better than to hurt your elders.”
Jeong-Ki punches him so hard in the diaphragm it makes me wince. “You’re older, that doesn’t mean you ever get to demand respect from me, you cockroach.”
Stefan coughs and grins up at me this time. “You look surprisingly well considering what you went through three days ago. I was supposed to get the footage. But your little boyfriend didn’t leave anyone alive to get it to me.”
Fucking monster.
I reach my leg out and kick him square in the face with my heavy boot, and the crack that follows is so satisfying, as is the mess of blood now running from his shattered nose.
Jeong-Ki gives me another fist bump.
“Here’s how this is gonna go, okay? You’re already a dead man. So you being a stubborn boomer isn’t gonna help you. So, you’re going to tell me what this is all about. You got Jeong-Ki’s money. You don’t know me. So how did you decide to tail me once I got to Seoul, and why still go after Jeong-Ki? What’s in it for you?”
He spits out blood and a tooth. Guess I hurt more than his nose.
“Why should I tell you shit?”
“Because you’re gonna die anyway,” Jeong-Ki says. “At least this way, the kkangpae members here you worked with won’t outlive you for long.”
Lear grins, a terrible pantomime of happiness as blood stains his teeth and lips, as well as his saggy face.
“I’m not the one with the local kkangpae connection, children,” he says, almost in a sing-song voice. “I merely got paid to facilitate everything that happened in that place. First, just to hurt you, Moriah. And then, when you left for Seoul, I got paid even more to hurt you … and then hurt him.” He nods at Jeong-Ki.
“Who paid you? Because it wasn’t just me that got hurt. My friend did too!” I cry, remembering how bruised and in pain Phil would be every time the men left. The time they sent him to the hospital…
The ghoulish grin widens. “You truly are a stupid child. Did you think your precious friend was a victim? He did all of this to you. And has plans that go further than me.”
I used to hear when you were enraged, you saw red. Well, my vision blacks out for a moment before I realize I’ve got my knife in a death grip, pressed against his flabby throat. A bead of blood runs down the blade.
“You’re lying.”
His eyes move to Jeong-Ki. “He took my phone. You can see for yourself.”
“I plan on it.”
And without further conversation, I slice through his throat with my serrated army knife, relishing in the gurgles as blood rushes up his throat and out of his mouth as he feels his life begin to fade.
Good fucking riddance.
Chapter Eight
Moriah
We stand there a moment before I clean my blade on his jeans’ cuff, mind blank.
He was lying, right?
