BLOOD MONEY || bts mafia au

nineteen.

Six years ago.

Jungkook shifted uncomfortably in his seat, adjusting the itchy collar of his button up. He immediately let his hands drop to his lap at the sharp look from his stepmother. A shiver traveled down his spine at the cruel smirk that twisted at her lips.

"So, Jungkook, your father tells me you're going to be a prosecutor." The mayor gave him a smile as he leaned forward across the table, but Jungkook couldn't bring himself to offer one back. He wanted to shout that his father didn't get to tell him what he was going to be. He never cared about the Jungkook he saw before him. Only the one he wanted him to become.

At his side, his stepmother dug her flawlessly manicured hands into the flesh just behind his knee, prompting a response to the mayor's proposition. Jungkook clenched his teeth together. "If that's what he tells you, then it must be true."

Of course, the mayor didn't know about the drug operation he ran with his best friend. About the number of school days he'd skipped to meet with a client. About the knife always kept on him, even now, when he was seated down to dinner to be presented as his father's perfect son. Jungkook was nothing his father wanted him to be.

"He's not the top student in his class, but he's one of the brightest," his father boasted. The proud gleam in his eyes was so real that even Jungkook almost believed him for a second. "If he just applied himself a little more, there would be no doubt of it."

If, if, if.

If he applied himself a little more.

If he'd just do as he was told.

If he was the son he wanted.

There were so many ifs that encircled Jungkook's life. So many things that would make everything easier in a perfect world.

But this wasn't a perfect world. And the sooner he realized that the better.

A rustle of swaths of silk brushed past his shoulder, jerking him from his thoughts. His stepmother flashed a feral grin at him, a knowing glitter in her eyes. "You haven't touched your food," she purred under her breath, her hand still resting on his knee.

Jungkook stiffened as she slipped her ringed fingers down another centimeter. "I'm not hungry."

"Well, I am." With her free hand, she snatched a piece of meat from Jungkook's plate, her ruby-red smile growing as she popped it into her mouth. Jungkook fought another shudder.

When he was ten years old, his mother passed away. She'd been sick for a long time but deep down, Jungkook had believed that they'd have more time. She'd get to watch him graduate grade school, graduate university. Watch him get married. And when he was a little older and discovered he found himself more attracted to broad shoulders than curvy hips, he hoped she would have approved. He hoped she would accept whoever he chose to love, not because of their gender or social status, but because they were special to him.

Instead, when he was just twelve years old, his father remarried. She was much younger than his mom, looking like she could still be in university. How could his father just replace her like she'd never existed? Like he'd never loved her?

His new stepmother wasn't nearly as nice to him.

And when he grew up and her treatments got harsher, his father turned a blind eye.

When he screamed into his pillow every night, when he winced with every slight movement. When blood stained his shirt every time the wounds across his back reopened and a strangled cry escaped his lips because he couldn't hold back the pain any more. When she cornered him in the corridors at night, that same cruel smirk on her face as she dragged a manicured finger down his chest and left whispered threats all along his skin.