It had been about three hours since Seo Seung-hyun and Jang Young-hee had gone out.
Lee Young-jin had been holed up alone in his room throughout the 3 nights and 4 days in Bogotá, just as he had been doing. The room was dark, and only the dim light flowing from the monitor faintly illuminated the surroundings. The minute hand of the large desk clock placed beside the bed was nearing the number 1. The bubbling, classical second hand moved tirelessly with a tick-tock sound.
Knock, knock, knock.
The knock resonated in the serene room.
Lee Young-jin’s shoulders, which had been rigidly still, twitched slightly. For a moment, he turned his head to look at the door. A few seconds passed. Then he promptly shifted his gaze back to the monitor. His hand moved quickly, but was never hurried.
The windows on the monitor began to close, one after the other.
A map with dozens of routes tangled haphazardly, a CLI (Command-Line Interface) screen featuring thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lines of complex code, someone’s schedule, dozens of real-time surveillance camera feeds shining somewhere…
Lee Young-jin slowly stood up.
He approached the door.
Quietly, he pulled it open just a crack. 3 centimeters, or maybe 2. That much space revealed the sturdy black silhouette of Alpha standing firm.
It was Jang Young-hee.
Lee Young-jin peered through the gap for a moment, then pulled the door further open.
“Mr. Young-jin.”
Jang Young-hee spoke with a polite demeanor. The door opened wider.
“What is it?”
“It’s urgent. You’ll need to come with me.”
Behind Lee Young-jin, the faint light from the computer flickered, casting a shadow of anxiety onto his pallid face. Without a word, he nodded his head. Turning, he walked toward the wardrobe and pulled out a coat. Jang Young-hee, who had been waiting at the door, led the way.
A hefty sedan awaited them at the mansion’s front gate.
Rather than being parked, it seemed as if it had driven up, braked to a halt, and someone had immediately exited the vehicle, leaving it slightly tilted on the surface of the road.
Jang Young-hee opened the passenger-side door. Lee Young-jin awkwardly climbed in and fastened his seatbelt. Seated in the driver’s seat, Jang Young-hee, grasping the steering wheel, spoke.
“We have to bring the CEO.”
Jang Young-hee’s voice was deeply somber, yet beneath it, a subtle oscillation of unhidden anxiety and a trace of anger fluttered. Although Lee Young-jin couldn’t precisely discern it, he blinked, recognizing that the voice was different from usual. His heavy eyelids lifted and fell, and his eyelashes fluttered. Within the dim interior, illuminated only by the electronic dashboard’s light, his black eyes glistened brightly.
“Bring him?”
“Right now, the CEO…”
Jang Young-hee’s hands calmly turned the wheel, and his foot pressed the accelerator without a hint of hesitation, but at least his mind seemed to be floundering, scrabbling for the right words in the present situation.
“He is immobilized.”
“Pardon?”
Lee Young-jin’s voice cracked.
It was a bolt from the blue. His small mind swelled to a stark white, and the moisture inside his mouth evaporated in an instant. Lee Young-jin tried somehow to moisten the stiff root of his tongue, striving to formulate words again.
“Is, is he hurt?”
“No.”
“Then….”
“He’s in a place I cannot enter. Given that he’s not coming out when it’s time to, there’s surely a problem. That President Yang.”
Jang Young-hee paused once again.
“…President Yang is a woman who is collaborating with us and maintaining an old cartel here. The CEO is with her right now.”
“Did she betray us?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she would… but she’s an inscrutable woman, and given the situation where we can’t contact the CEO, it could be the worst case.”
Jang Young-hee’s perplexity was now overt. It was exceedingly rare for this incredibly lucid Alpha to use sentences with unclear syntactic relations, yet moments ago, he hadn’t even noticed his own babbling.
“So how can I….”
“Mr. Young-jin, I need you to go in and assess the situation. It would be even better if you could bring the CEO out with you.”
“But I, I haven’t had any training for infiltration or anything like that…”
“It’s probably not what you’re thinking.”
At those words, Lee Young-jin just gaped, blankly staring at the sturdy profile of the Alpha in the darkness.
The limousine raced alongside the Andes foothills and a well-kept private forest. To the left, thickets mingled with mate and lime trees whisked past.
The bright neon signs of the city that never sleeps swiftly approached. The road, where people and cars blended in half, exuded a hot energy even at dawn. 2 A.M. The limousine entered an alley between brightly lit buildings. Just a block off the main road, darkness and silence descended instantaneously.
Jang Young-hee, having parked the car, quietly spoke.
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