𝐑𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 || 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐄/𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐖𝐎𝐍

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Anna wasn't amused. Granted, she wasn't easily amused, but the way her boss had been behaving for the past two months made her decidedly unamused. For the past two months? Perhaps it would be more correct to say the past half a year, ever since Mingyu kidnapped Jeon's son and made him his pet—at least that was how Yoongi had reported it to her while she was busy sealing a multi-million deal on Mingyu's behalf in France. At the time, Anna had been skeptical and didn't take Yoongi's words seriously: Mingyu had never shown any interest in men, so she was convinced it was part of some elaborate scheme to make Jeon Taesoo pay. By the time she had returned from France, Anna found the boy already gone, Yoongi given the boot, and Mingyu restless in a way she'd never seen before.

There had been a certain tension about Mingyu, something tightly coiled around his shoulders in the following weeks. The most obvious reason she could think of at the time was that Mingyu had stopped sleeping around, and for Mingyu, it was nearly unheard of. Even Jeon's death hadn't seemed to appease him. If anything, Mingyu looked more on edge after that.

Anna started suspecting the real reason for Mingyu's strange mood when he had asked her to find out everything about Kim Namjoon. With Jeon dead, there could have been only one reason for Mingyu's interest: the beautiful young man in Namjoon's half-embrace. She could almost see the appeal: the boy had very fine facial features and a mouth to die for. Except Anna would have never thought that was Mingyu's type—or anything with a penis, for that matter. But even then, she hadn't suspected the extent to which Jeon Wonwoo affected her normally unflappable, cool-headed boss.

Mingyu's impulsive, unscheduled trip to London had been the first clue. When he disappeared into the night after dismissing his bodyguards, Anna hadn't been amused in the least—with Yoongi fired, security had been added to the long list of her responsibilities, and Anna didn't appreciate it when Mingyu didn't let her do her fucking job. Thankfully, Mingyu had returned to his hotel room a few hours later, safe and sound. But when she let herself into Mingyu's room to let him know how displeased she was, she found him on the floor, gripping a bottle of vodka in his hand and staring at it hungrily.

The sight gave her pause. Mingyu didn't drink. Not anymore.

It was common knowledge that Mingyu's father had died from overdosing when Mingyu was seventeen, but few people knew he had actually been poisoned with drugs. Danil Kim had been a harsh, unsympathetic businessman but an excellent husband and father. He and Mingyu had been very close, and Danil's death had hit Mingyu hard. Anna knew Mingyu had killed the man responsible for his father's death himself. It went only downhill from there. Mingyu had started drinking. It went on for months until eventually he was hospitalized with severe alcohol poisoning. When Anna arrived at the hospital, she found Mingyu's mother clinging to him, crying and begging him not to do it to her and to the girls.

Who's going to protect us if you're gone, too, Gyu? she had said at last when her son had remained deaf to her pleas.

To Anna's knowledge, Mingyu had never touched alcohol again. But he did keep it at hand. When Anna had asked him a few years ago why he kept alcohol if he never drank it, Mingyu told her he liked to test himself.

That was why when Anna had seen Mingyu staring at the bottle of vodka with a scary sort of intensity, his jaw clenched tight, an alarm rang in her mind. When a few days later he canceled his flight to Italy and dismissed his bodyguards once again, Anna was more than a little annoyed. However, when Mingyu called her the next day, she noticed the change in him immediately: he sounded more relaxed, the tight snappishness in his voice gone. When he informed her of his whereabouts so she could send his bodyguards, she almost wasn't surprised to learn that he was at Jeon Wonwoo's penthouse. Almost.

But even then she hadn't known how much everything would change.

In the following weeks, Mingyu had made her reorganize his schedule, delegating most of his responsibilities and leaving London only for the most important business meetings. As soon as the meeting was over, Mingyu would be on his plane, flying back to London. He was also spending a good chunk of his valuable time helping Jeon Wonwoo sort out the mess his father had left.

Anna watched all of that with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. In all the years she had known Mingyu, she had never seen him so...fixated on anyone. She called it fixation for lack of a better word. Granted, she hadn't seen Mingyu interact with Jeon Wonwoo, but since Mingyu didn't allow anyone to get close to him, preferring to keep even his family at an arm's length for their own safety, she concluded it could only be sex.

So she had waited patiently for Mingyu to get over his strange obsession with Jeon's boy, and with every passing week that it didn't happen, her confusion grew stronger.

But Anna knew better than to question Mingyu's decisions aloud. Of course, it didn't mean she couldn't try to interrogate him.

"So," Anna said as soon as Mingyu emerged out of the shower. He had just arrived from the airport fresh from New York City. If the pattern established in the last two months held true, he would finish changing and leave to see his curly-haired boy.

Mingyu let his towel drop and opened the wardrobe. "Yes, Anna?"

She took a moment to admire his physique, musing whether or not her attachment to Mingyu would have been less sisterly if she were fifteen years younger than she was.

"For how much longer are we going to be based in England?" Anna's tone was carefully casual. "We've barely left England for two months."

At her question, Mingyu's hands paused. Pale eyes scrutinized her.

She refused to be intimidated. She was a former KGB agent. She wasn't easily intimidated.

Pressing his lips together, Mingyu pulled on a pair of trousers. "Actually, I want you to start looking for a large building in London. Good, secure location is the priority. The price doesn't matter."

She sucked in a sharp breath. "You mean..."

"Yes," Mingyu said. "I'm moving the main office from Geneva to London."

Anna could only stare at him in silence. Moving the headquarters from a tax haven like Switzerland to the UK wasn't the most practical decision. To put it lightly.

She opened her mouth and closed it without saying a word.

Mingyu let out a sigh. "You have two minutes to voice your objections," he said, shrugging into a fresh shirt and starting to button it up.

"As your employee, it's not my place to object," Anna said before letting a slow grin stretch her lips. "But as your old friend, let's just say I never thought I'd see the day you'd let some baby-faced English kid plait ropes out of you. Smitten is a good look on you."

Mingyu leveled her with a withering look.

Anna flinched but held his gaze, her lips twitching.

Grabbing his keys, he said, "Focus on doing your job, Anya."

She watched him leave, smiling faintly. She had no idea how Jeon's kid had accomplished that, but she was glad. Mingyu worked too much. Anna was the same way, but there was one significant difference between her and Mingyu: she always had a home to return to; Mingyu didn't.

Perhaps that was about to change.