Chaser Lover | Bbangsaz

Chapter 25

Hanni

"What have you done?" Yuta accuses again.

He's in a furious rage that would have once scared me, but I'm not afraid anymore. Minji asked me to be brave. Minji knew this would happen.

"The answer was always no," I hiss at him. "You were never allowed to take from me. And now you'll pay."

Another pop.

My eyes close for just a moment, and then Yuta's attacking me, he balled his hands to a fist and aimed for my throat. I screech and wriggle but halt my movements the moment hot blood gushes over my bare chest. When I reopen my eyes, I'm both horrified and elated in one single breath.

He's dead.

Yuta, the monster from both my nightmares and reality, is nothing more than a blown out skull sitting on an unmoving body. It baffles me how one moment the room is rippling with evil and the next moment it's completely snuffed out.

He's heavy, but I manage to push him off me.

My mother cries out in a raspy voice from down the hallway. On shaky legs, as blood drips down my naked body, I make my way to her room. Sadness washes over me the moment I see her frail form curled up in the bed. When she sees me, she reaches out to me as if she's trying to hold onto a dream that's quickly slipping through her fingertips.

"Momma," I sob as I wobble over to her. I crawl into bed next to her as we frantically hug one another.

"Y-You're really here," she cries. "He told me you were coming, but that I wouldn't live long enough to see you. Oh, baby girl."

"H-He said he would kill you. That's w-why I l-l-left all those y-years ago," I stutter out through my tears.

"Shh, honey. Shh. You're here now. That's all that matters," she coos.

I'm still hugging her when two strong arms grab at me from behind. I start screaming like a wild banshee but then fall limp when I smell her.

Minji.

She came for me.

She killed the monster just like she promised.

"I'm here, Hanni," she murmurs, her lips pressing kisses all over me. She covers me with a blanket and hugs me tight. "I'm always here."

"I-I was b-brave," I chatter out.

"I know you were. I never had a doubt."

The past week has been a whirlwind. Cops. FBI. Dealing with my mother moving to the city. I've been walking around in a fog. If it weren't for Minji, I'd have let all the stress swallow me up.

But Minji is more than the storm.

She's also the calm within it.

With the patience of a saint and the smooth tongue of a sinner, she's woven a tale they believe. Her private investigator Dusty had all sorts of information on Yuta. After Minji shot the men, Rae took the gun and casings with him. There wasn't any evidence for the police to find. Not that they were truly worried about Yuta and his goons. Once they discovered it was someone on the FBI's wanted list, their efforts switched from wanting to find the killer to finding the missing women that were believed to be hidden away by Yuta somewhere. I was able to tell them what I knew about his old stomping grounds and past residences. And with the intel they had from Dusty, they were able to piece together some locations. The same day Yuta was murdered, the FBI found the warehouse where seventeen girls and women between the ages of fifteen and thirty were found. Most were drugged out of their mind. Many were raped beyond reason. All were rescued and returned to their families.