Bond Made in Hell || A TAEJIN STORY || Arranged Marriage

6

'Taehyung!?'

Taehyung made his way over to where I was sitting. I was getting drowsy, but I could make out he was furious. His eyes darkened as he looked at the guy sitting next to me.

'Jeon Jungkook.' His voice was low and dangerous.

'Kim Taehyung,' the other man said in a smooth voice. I knew the voice now. I recognized it. It was Jeon Jungkook, the equally rich and affluent CEO of Jeon Corp, the company constantly butting heads with Kim Enterprises. He had proposed to me once and I had turned him down. I clapped a hand to my head as it all came back to me. How could I have been so stupid as to let myself get drunk with this man?

'What are you doing here, drinking with my husband?' Taehyung asked him, eyes flashing. His one hand grappled my waist and pulled me out of my seat and close to him. I yelped and pulled away. 'Don't do that! It h-hurts.'

'Yes, don't do that to your husband,' Jungkook sounded just as angry now. 'If you treat him like that, Taehyung, he won't be yours for long, mark my words.'

'Yeah, you'd just love to have him, won't you?' Taehyung said through gritted teeth.

'Not just love to have him, Taehyung. In a few months, maybe even weeks, I will have him.' Jungkook's eyes glinted as he glared at my husband. 'And then you can go back to your girlfriend. That's what you've always wanted, haven't you?'

Tears rushed to my eyes at the mention of Taehyung's girlfriend. So the news was public, then. Everybody knew I was just Taehyung's husband by name, a mere formality. Why was I getting so upset about it? Was it the drinks? I choked back a sob.

Both Taehyung's and Jungkook's eyes were on me at once. 'Seokji-' Jungkook reached out to hold my hand, but Taehyung slapped it away with a poisonous glare. 'Don't lay your hands on my husband!'

He tightened his grip around my waist and dragged me away, through and out of the crowded bar, still crying loudly. He did not stop once we were outside, just bundled me into the car waiting for us and got in beside me. I cried and cried. Never in my whole life had I received such rough treatment.

'Stop crying!' Taehyung said, fiercely, as soon as we were on the streets and he had drawn the driver's partition down. 'You are already such an embarrassment, no need to add to it!'

'I'm an embarrassment?' I shout through my tears. 'I'm an embarrassment? You're the one messing around with a boyfriend after being married to me and I'm the embarrassment?'

'Yes, you are!' He brought his face close to me and I cried even harder at how angry he looked, his jaw clenched and his eyebrows together in a straight line. His hand reached up and grabbed my chin, hard. I coughed and tried to jerk it away, but he was too strong for me.

'You are an embarrassment. You are a freaking embarrassment! Do you know how much you have already cost my name by being seen drinking with Jeon Jungkook in a bar while I run around looking for you? We are only married for formality, I know that, but that does not give you the right to go around defacing me and my reputation! Atleast have the sense and the decorum to maintain the pretense of our marriage in public, if you can't do it at home!'

I pull my head away, sobbing hard. I can longer make out the difference between my thoughts and my words; they have all blurred into one fuzzy ball of emotions. 'You are a fine one to talk to me like that! Pretense indeed! Weren't you the one who told me that you did not think of me as a husband or as any sort of relation? Why are you so concerned about who I drink and talk with? Let me tell you Taehyung that I am not going to tolerate any of this! I am going to do what I want to and be with whoever I want to. I don't care what you think and you aren't going to make me!'

'I'm not going to make you, huh?' Taehyung's face is white with rage as he glares at me in the dark. 'Well, we'll see about that!'

He lets go of my chin and I fall back onto my seat, breathing and panting hard. The tears flow in torrents down my cheeks. Taehyung folds his arms across his chest and sits in complete silence for the rest of the ride. I turn my face to the window, all this drama on top of the alcohol I have consumed is making me dizzy. I fall asleep on the very glass of the window.

I am shaken awake roughly as soon as we reach home and the car pulls into the driveway. 'Get up!' Taehyung orders, harshly.

'I-I can't,' I whisper, and put my head back on the windowsill. My mind and vision are hazy and I feel terribly sleepy. 'Let me go to sleep here, please.'

'What nonsense are you talking Seokjin? Move!' As I stay rigidly where I am, my eyes shut, I feel a hand on my shoulder hauling me out of my seat and into the cold night air. I blink and begin to cry once more as Taehyung walks or rather drags me back to the house. We enter through the door and he pulls me upstairs, his hand around my collar. I stumble on one of the steps and almost fall; he curses and catches me around the waist to break my fall. 'Look where you are going, will you! The worst thing I could have on my hands right now than a drunk idiot would be a drunk idiot with a broken leg.'

I cry some more as he propels me upstairs. Out of the corner of my eye I see the maids and butlers, still wide awake, watch us in silence. The sheer humiliation of it makes me want to go and sign the divorce papers this very instant and shove them in this asshole's face.

Taehyung takes me all the way to the corridor in front of my bedroom. He pulls the door open and lets go of me, not even bothering to support my weight as I fall heavily onto the marbled floor, crying out in pain as a bolt of electricity shoots up my back.

'My parents are arriving early morning tomorrow,' Taehyung says, staring at me sitting on the floor with absolutely no emotion, no regret. 'Go to sleep so that you can wake up on time. Try not to be a disappointment to them as much as you have been to me.'

He slams the door shut and I hear his footsteps receding in the hallway. The clock in my room strikes twelve midnight.

I lay my face, my swollen, disheveled face on its side on the cold marble, and break down. The tears come easy.

I don't know what to say.