(ONE WEEK BEFORE STORM)
Footsteps padded quickly over the marble floor. Jessica appeared in the doorway, breath slightly uneven, her neat bun already coming loose. "I'll have one of the guards bring your favorite cocktail, Ms. Song," she said, already halfway to the comms panel.
Jessica had been too busy scrubbing bloodstains from the last 'guest'. She never dared asked the source of the bloodstains and never dared to bring it up to Mr Song ever.
Haseul's lips parted, ready to scold on why hasn't everything been unpacked yet. But the words stalled.
Jessica—steadfast, silver-haired Jessica—had been folding blankets in her nursery before Haseul even took her first steps. She still brewed that awful ginger tea whenever Haseul so much as sniffled.
Her hand lifted slightly, then fell into a lazy wave. "That won't be necessary," she muttered frositily
She crossed the room instead, grabbing the leather jacket from the back of a chair. Beneath it, tucked carefully where no eyes could land, was the mask. Midnight-black. Seamless. Etched with a subtle black panther sigil near the edge.
Jessica's eyes never drifted toward it. Just as she never asked where Haseul went on nights like this.
In the elevator, Haseul held it in her lap.
But once the car door clicked shut behind her, she slid it on—slowly, precisely. Like stepping into another skin.
The engine rumbled low beneath her fingers, steady and alive—unlike the chaos twisting in her chest. She kept one hand on the wheel, the other drumming out a restless rhythm on the leather.
No driver. No shadows trailing behind her. Just her.
For the first time in months.
The city blurred past her windows in streaks of color—amber streetlights, scarlet taillights, violet signage. It wasn't safety she sought. It was control.
With one hand, she slid open the drawer beside the steering wheel, pulling out the sleek, slithering weapons hidden inside. She concealed them expertly beneath her clothes and around her body, disguising them as mere accessories. Tonight, she wasn't dressed in her usual black suit. Instead, she wore a blood-red blouse that clung to her curves like a second skin, her hair cascading over the silky fabric—looking even smoother and more lustrous than the blouse itself. Over it hung a muddy brown trench coat, its worn fabric heavy but loose enough to move freely—never so loose as to get in the way if a fight erupted.
She didn't slow as she turned sharply into a narrow alley, the tires splashing through a shallow puddle. Neon lights flickered overhead, staining the walls in blood-red and electric blue.
At the far end stood the bar—its front guarded by thick steel doors and men who never flinched. Smoke curled from the side entrance, mingling with laughter that never reached the eyes.
She cut the engine. Let the silence settle.
The same emblem—Red Dragon ink, curling around a blade—glared from a nearby poster half-torn on the wall.
Holding the sign of the great seven ghosts, the seven inner circle members.
The same seven Inner Circle members, once seated on their thrones of power, had stared down the cold barrel of her threats just hours before.
She stepped out of the car anyway.
Because recklessness wasn't a mistake tonight.
It was the point.
"Let them think I've lost my edge tonight... let them believe they have the upper hand," Haseul—now Helena—muttered under her breath into the earpiece, hidden flawlessly beneath her hair.
Seoul's nightlife glittered on the surface, but beneath, it all pulsed under one name—the Red Dragons. Every flickering sign, every velvet rope, every bouncer with a coiled wire in his ear—it all traced back to the Kim brothers.
Haseul's lips thinned as she stepped over the threshold.
She should've listened to Areum. Bought a few of these bars. Carved a corner of this city for herself in this business too.
Too late now.
But tonight, that was going to be her weapon—cold, silent, and merciless.
Hana's voice echoed in her comms—low, certain: "None of the core brothers have been seen there in over a year."
"It's better for them if they wish to keep it that way tonight. But far more fun if they don't." Harin's voice crackled through the comms next. Helena could picture her with unnerving clarity—the way she'd be twirling those violet strands around her fingers, that slow, serpentine smirk creeping across her face.
'Typical Harin', Helena thought, her mind laced with equal parts exasperation and anticipation of how tonight would change everything. Though none of that touched her tightly composed facade.
The moment she crossed the bar's threshold, her senses recoiled. Heat rolled off the crowd, thick with unwashed desperation and expensive cologne. Laughter cracked like glass, sharp and hollow. Beats pounded against her ribs, rhythm matching a pulse not entirely her own.
Smoke curled in ghostly trails under pulsing lights. A woman in red brushed past, her perfume clawing at Haseul's throat. Another man leaned in too close, eyes glazed with intoxication.
Haseul didn't pause. She slipped through it all like water through cracks—silent, invisible.
In the far corner, shadows clung to the booth like armor. She slid into it, back to the wall, eyes sweeping the room with surgical calculation.
Her phone buzzed once. A brief confirmation.
Hana had already cleaned the digital slate.
No cameras would remember her being here.
But the night might.
And so would some boys too.
The moment she crossed the threshold, a shift rippled through the room—too subtle for most to catch.
But not for him.
From a shadowed balcony above, Kim Hyunjae tilted his glass slowly, the amber liquid catching the light as his gaze followed the woman below.
Earlier after the meeting's unexpected abrupt ending due to Black Panther's digital onslaught, Jaehyun's storm had raged through the mansion like a tempest—shouts ricocheting off marble walls, furious footsteps pounding down endless corridors. Every guard felt the sharp edge of his wrath, voices silenced beneath his roar.
By nightfall, the brothers had retreated outside, leaving the mansion wrapped in uneasy quiet—waiting for Jaehyun , the tyrant, to exhaust himself into sleep.
Hyunjae had chosen this place—their infamous bar—to spend his evening. None of the brothers had set foot here in a long while. The one in charge ran it well enough that there was never any real reason to check in. But tonight, for some reason even he couldn't explain, Hyunjae had ended up here.
Though underage, he had secretly started drinking on occasion. If any of his hyungs found out, he knew exactly what would follow: endless lectures from each of them, paired with brutal training sessions courtesy of Junseo and Taeyang. A punishment served by the hyung line. He knew he was in the wrong—but wasn't it ironic?
He was expected to seal manipulative deals in drugs and weapons, to twist truths and trade in blood-stained currency. And no one ever scolded him for that. In fact, they taught him how to do it well.
But the moment he reached for a drink? Suddenly, rules mattered.
Not that he could blame his older brothers. None of them truly enjoyed the world they'd been forced into. Not really. Lost in thought, he absently traced the RD initials etched into his mask. A cursed mark. One he'd trade his soul to be free from—a curse he wished would vanish from his life, and more than that, from his brothers'.
The whiskey burned—just like his hyungs' disapproval would if they knew.
And then his gaze landed on her—that familiar figure in that familiar mask.
And in that moment, he was glad he'd come.
Helena hadn't noticed him.
Maybe.
But he'd noticed her.
After the chaos she'd left in her wake—hacking into their systems with a precision that burned through pride and left suspicion smoldering—he wasn't about to let her disappear again. This was his best shot at uncovering who she really was.
A faint smirk curled at his lips as he tapped the earpiece.
"The Queen walked right into the den."
His voice was smooth, flirtatious as ever—but it carried weight now.
The hunt had begun.
The only question was…
Who was hunting whom?