BLOOD MONEY || bts mafia au

twenty five.

Tension clogged up the room, permeating the air until one felt like they were choking on it, as the people gathered within collectively held their breaths, lungs burning from the effort.

But they barely felt the pain. They kept their eyes on the black-haired male seated before them, fearing more what they would find swimming in his inky gaze than the discomfort. They knew what they would hear, what they would most likely witness.

On the floor before him kneeled a messenger, a small, shaking boy whose eyes flickered about the stone surface beneath him. An already swelling bruise was blooming across the side of his face, the welcome that had received him once he had returned home from his patrol alone, a testament to what the boy in front of him was capable of when angered.

"Speak then," the boy before him growled, an animalistic sound that seemed to send an automatic flinch through the crowd.

The kneeling boy nearly choked on his sobs as he tried to stutter through his story. "W-We were on the edge of the territory when they... when they attacked. They came out of nowhere. By the time we even realized they were upon us, half of us were dead. There was no time to run. I-I thought I was going to die."

He looked up then, meeting the depthless eyes before him with a tear-stained face. "He... He spared me. He said he had a message he wanted me to give you."

The black-haired boy straightened up in his chair at these words, the edges of his lips forming a thin, cruel slash of red as he beckoned for him to continue.

"He said that this is your last chance. He's conquered all of the other gangs around him and he doesn't plan to stop there. He says that if lower your guns now, if you surrender to him, he will allow you to remain in a position of high favor-"

That was when the tension expanding throughout the room hit its breaking point.

What spilled forth was much worse.

Without warning the boy seated before them shot to his feet, a snarl of fury that seemed to make the people around him jump just as much as the glasses he sent scattering through the air from the nearby table with a crash, shards littering the floor, his chest heaving with the strain of holding back the flood of anger.

The soldiers shifted uneasily in the room, bracing for his next action.

The boy whirled back around to face his soldiers. He was used to their terror. Had come to savor it, even, revel in it. It meant that he had something he never seemed to get without it - power.

Slowly, he glanced up through the locks of dark hair that had fallen in his eyes. "Surrender?" he echoed, his voice low.

Startling the people closest to him, the black-haired boy let out a sudden laugh, the normally soothing sound given a sinister edge as it spilled out of his mouth.

The two boys who had been standing behind his chair exchanged a glance.

Not caring about the expressions arranging themselves across his soldiers' faces, the boy continued to laugh, almost doubling over with the force of which it poured out of him. And then it stopped as quickly as it had begun, giving way to the violent temper they knew prowled beneath his skin, a hungry lion stalking the length of its cage.

"They want me to surrender." he repeated, his voice hardening like a layer of ice over water as he started forward. "They want me to surrender!"

Grabbing the nearest soldier, the black-haired boy yanked him close, pinning him in place with his fiery stare. "Who am I?" he screamed, demanding the answer from the cowering man in his grasp.