The Crown | myg

thirty-three

As Beomgyu and I are talking about how I think he should distract Chanyeol, a loud screaming noise bursts through the building. Leaving no time to spare, we forget everything we were talking about before and we run out of the office and back to the conference room. As we approach the table, we find that Chanyeol is nowhere to be seen.

"Do you think he was kidnapped?" Beomgyu asks as the other boys rush into the room, an obvious response to a loud scream coming from within this building.

"The security is too tight on the building, I don't know how anyone would have gotten in."

"What happened?" Daehyun asks as he walks over to me, the rest of the boys following soon thereafter.

"I'm not sure," I say as I begin to walk away from the table and everyone else. "You need to help me find Chan. If he finds something he's not supposed to, I don't know how I'll explain everything to him."

That's if he hasn't found anything yet. Based on the way he screamed, he's definitely already seen something he shouldn't have. Based on that exact same scream, and the way that sounds travel through the halls of this building, he went towards the east wing, probably in search of a bathroom.

"Chan..?" I yell every few seconds to let him know that I'm getting closer to him, assuming I'm going in the right direction.

"Hyuntae..?"

I hear a whisper come from somewhere in the room I'm standing in. I look around to see where I am and I quickly realize that I'm standing right beside the door to the gun range. My best bet says that Chanyeol opened the door he had assumed was the one for a bathroom, though he's on the wrong side of the building, and he accidentally walked into a gun range.

Walking into a room filled with guns is one thing, but walking into a room with highly dangerous guns, knives, machetes, tomahawks - really any throwable or shootable weapon you can think of that isn't explosive - is a completely different situation. I will admit, if I was in his position, I would also be quite scared and probably incredibly confused.

I feel something grab at my ankle, and I turn around to see Chanyeol sitting on the floor, curled into a ball. It seems as though he thinks he's in danger and he's hiding from who he assumes is his enemy.

"What happened to you?" I ask as I sit down on the floor with him.

"Where are we?" He breathes. "That room is-" he takes a shaky breath before pointing to the gun range. "-full of weapons."

"Chanyeol, do you remember that hooded man in the alley that night?" I ask as I cross my legs, assuming already that this is going to be a strange conversation. "The man that gave me the envelope of money?"

He nods.

"I'm in the mob," I say as I place one of my hands on his shoulder. "I kill people for a living."

Chanyeol sits up slowly, his hands slightly shaking as he places one on my knee. He stares at the floor for a second before looking up at me, his eyes shiny, as if he is about to cry.

I understand his fear. It's not exactly easy to find out that your best friend of so long, the woman who pays you to work in her cute little bakery, is super threatening behind the scenes when no one is around.

"So that money," Chanyeol speaks up. "It was payment for you to kill someone?"

I shake my head. "Payment to clean up the fresh corpses in someone's basement," I explain, keeping my tone soft. "It seems I'm the only one in this business that can properly get rid of a dead body. If they want the job done correctly, they pay me top dollar to get rid of them."

"How much was in the envelope?" He whispers.

"Twenty thousand," I respond, not missing a beat.

Chanyeol falls silent, yet again. His eyes staring at the wall in front of us for a strange amount of time before the shoot open incredibly wide and he whips his head in my direction.

"Is that why you can afford to pay me so much?" I nod. "I always thought you were just making bank off the bakery and you had no idea what to do with all the money."

I chuckle. "No, Chan," I stand up and reach my hand out for him to grab. "I'm just an incredibly dangerous mobster."

He takes my hand and I pull him off the ground, a confused look on his face. The expression fades and he tilts his head a little. "How dangerous?"

I lean closer to him and he does the same. "Let's just say," I drop my voice to a mere whisper. "No one in this building would stand a chance if they got on my bad side."