The King and The Beggar

03. The beginning of the war

Lee Tasso looked at his daughter, sighing in displeasure, as she herself leaned over his desk, resting on her hands, eyes glaring angrily. "You know I'm ready and that it's not fair!" his daughter insisted and Tasso nodded in agreement.

"I'm fully aware, but we both know I have no choice if I want to keep our family's positions!" Tasso calmly argued his decision. "Damn it! Then why didn't you pick someone else? Someone who isn't a damn slimy snake!" she thumped the desk, standing up and her father rolled his eyes.

"Gyo Ki is an excellent choice, just like anyone else I could have chosen, besides, you are a perfect couple!" he growled, watching his daughter's anger only grow. "Fucking crap!" she hissed and stormed out of her father's office, slamming the door behind her so hard he could have sworn he saw a few shards of wood flying after the impact.

In a world where power was everything, women had little place. Lee Tasso knew it. He loved his only child, after his wife was killed, Tasso had made sure that their daughter was not left defenseless.

She was trained on an equal footing with their men, but he tried to preserve her feminine side as well, her strongest weapon. The heiress of the Lee family grew up strong, tenacious and, if only she had to, absolutely deadly.

However, her abilities were kept secret, hidden behind a black mask and hood. Her beauty, charming smile and incredibly warm heart remained on display. This duplicity sometimes killed her, and her father knew it.

But he also knew that despite her protests, his primary duty as a father was to keep his child alive and well. Here was Gyo Ki, who would take over her role after their wedding. He would be her protection when Tasso left this world.

But with her notorious stubbornness, she refused to accept his decision and submit to a man she considered weaker than her. Tasso understood that, but she refused to understand why he had chosen Ki in particular.

The Gyo family were also strong, not as strong as Lee, but they came the closest of the others. The two families would make the perfect pact, shooting the alliance to the top. Even higher than those Bangtan dogs that messed with his health.

Yes, Ki was a sneaky snake and Tasso knew it, but part of the deal around their marriage was that he couldn't harm his daughter in any way, or else power over Lee would pass into the hands of Tasso's right-hand man.

Gyo Ki had agreed, not for power, but because he had been pursuing Lee Tasso's daughter for years, claiming to be in love with her. And everything pointed to Ki not lying. The young man looked at her sweetly and hungrily, and this guaranteed the father a proper attitude towards his child.

But he himself had no idea just how wrong he had been in his judgment. The news that his daughter had been killed pushed him over the edge. How, who, was she unknown in their midst? Gyo Ki suffered along with his father-in-law-to-be, washing his eyes.

The body of the Lee heiress wasn't found, it was claimed that the Han River had swallowed her. The only evidence that there had been an accident, there on that bridge, on that fateful night, were the painted Bangtan sign and a few bullet marks.

Lee Tasso had thought he had done everything to protect his daughter. He had never appeared in public with her while he stood in the shadows, she graduated from university, opened a small cafe where she worked, nothing connected them on the surface, even she had her own place, only appearing in the mansion under the guise of a mask and her hood.

Those who once knew of her existence were now dead, Tasso and Ki remained, but none of them would ever hurt her. Thus, only the Bangtan remained, who had somehow discovered her, and Tasso didn't fail to blame them.

The Lee family and Bangtan were fighting a silent war. They took territory or reclaimed it, blew up each other's hideout, killed someone, but never anything serious that led to a serious clash, at least according to their imaginations, there never was.

And so, the Bangtan were accused of something they had not done against someone they hadn't even suspected existed, and war broke out, leading to regular and heavy clashes, often with huge human and material losses.

The accuser never found out how the Bangtans had found his daughter, nor why they had killed her, since each of them was known to be a gentleman, even to the lowest of whores, no one had ever seen them touch a woman, and all the girls, once passed through their hands, even if it was for a short time, were always respected, both by Bangtan and the world beneath their feet, otherwise the boys dispensed justice in defense of the honor of the girl in question.

Still, the news that the Bangtan killed Lee Tasso's daughter swept the underworld like wildfire, proving time and again that the boys would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. Thus, the fear of them increased even more.

Too busy waging war, the Bangtan simply ignored the talk about them, and didn't mind the cowering stares in their presence. Frequent raids on their holdings kept them out of the loop, with the only rumors they heard coming from their informants' reports.

Apart from their adventures as a mafia group, the seven friends also dominated the techno market, running a legitimate company trading in high-tech inventions - Bang Technology Corporation.

With one foot in the limelight and the other in the underworld, Bangtan were a force not to be underestimated. The boys moved freely and in their own waters in both worlds, building a reputation that even the devil would envy if it really existed.