𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓐𝓼 𝓘𝓬𝓮 [𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖊𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖊]

2

Roseanne Park could move with frightening efficiency, even in the guise of the perfect executive assistant. It had taken her longer to get rid of Olaf than the others, and she was afraid she was going to have to use force, but in the end, she'd done her job and the chef had decamped in a righteous snit.

Not that Rosé would have minded using force. She did what she had to do, and she was very well trained. But she preferred subtlety, and brute force left bruises and bodies and too many questions. In the end, Olaf had left, Chanyeol was primed and ready to step in, and they were
Just about to make their well-planned move.

The girl, however, was a problem. She should have known Kai's law would send someone young and pretty to keep him happy. They didn't know enough about Kai's complicated appetites to realize anyone would do.

The papers she bought with her were another question—were they simply an excuse or clue to something more important? Kai hadn't seemed the slightest bit interested, but then, Kai wouldn't.

She had to get the woman off the boat, fast, before the could put their plan into motion. They would get the go-ahead in the next few days, and she didn't want any stray civilians to get in the way and complicate things. The assignment was relatively simple—nothing she hadn't done before, and she was always very good at why she did, but timing, as always was everything.

Ms. Kim was getting in the way, and the sooner she gets rid of her, the better. She's a woman who avoided collateral damage, and she wasn't about to change her ways at this point, no matter how important the mission. And while she knew only a part of Kim Jongin's maniacal Rule of Seven, she knew stopping Kim Jong-in was a very important mission indeed.

She knew what they called her behind her back. She was entitled to be Cold as Ice. Both for her ice-cold control, and her particular expertise. She didn't care what the called her, as long as she got the job done.

Ms. Kim would have to go before it was too late. Before she was forced to kill her.

She remembers her cat-like eyes as they'd looked through her. She shouldn't have mentioned the crossword puzzle—that was something she might remember if someone started asking her questions once the job was finished. But no, she'd played her part well enough. She'd looked at her and hadn't seen her, and that ability to vanish was her stock-in-trade.

She'd be no threat to their mission. She was bright, sexy, gorgeous, and really clueless, and she was going be back in her safe little world before anything bad could happen. And she'd never know how close to death she came.

--

Madame Lee looked out over the bare tree branches outside her nondescript office in a nondescript building near London's Kensington Gardens. She was slim, Elegant, and ruthless chic, with creamy ageless skin and cool piercing, ageless eyes. She stared at the tree, looking for a sign of life. It was April, after all, time for the thing to come alive again.
But it always took longer in the city, where pollution slowed the natural evolution of things. An for some reason the trees and gardens near the office of the Park Financial Consultants, Ltd., tended to die.

If Madame Lee were a more fanciful person she'd think it was a sympathetic reaction to the actual work they did. Park was nothing more than one dozen covers for covert work done by the Committee, a group so steeped in secrecy that Lee Chae-rin was still just learning some of the intricate details, and she'd been in charge for more than a year.

It was April, and time was running out. The Rule of Seven was in play, backed by Kim Jongin's brilliant brain and seemingly limitless recourses, and they still didn't know nearly enough about what it was. Seven disasters, orchestrated by Kim Jongin, to plunge the world into chaos, the chaos that the world somehow is turned to Kai's benefit. But the whens, the wheres, the hows were still maddeningly unclear. Not to mention who—Kai couldn't be doing this without help.

Whatever it was, it was deadly.

And it was the Committee's job to keep deadly things from happening. No matter how high the body count happened to be.

She wasn't feeling good about this, and she'd learned to trust her instincts. Rosé was the best they had, a brilliant operative who'd never failed a mission. But she had the unpleasant feeling that all that was about to change

She shook herself, returning to the spotless walnut desk that held nothing but a Clairefontaine pad and a fountain pen. She kept everything in her head, for safety's sake, but sometimes she just needed to write.
She scrawled something, then glanced down at it.

The Rule Of Seven.

What the hell was Kim Jongin planning to unleash on an unsuspecting world?

And would killing him be enough to stop it?

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I hope you like it I would love to hear what you think about it.
-dumpling