When they arrived home, the mansion was mostly dark, only a few lights glowing in the foyer and the kitchen. Taewoo made his escape quickly, heading for his room before his mother could corner him again. He was almost there...almost free...when a furry blur shot out from behind the staircase and tangled itself between his legs.
"Yah! Gaeul-ah!" he hissed, stumbling against the wall as his brother's demonic cat weaved figure-eights around his ankles. "This suit costs more than your entire nine lives!"
The cat, a fluffy Himalayan with the disposition of a tiny tyrant, meowed smugly and trotted off, tail held high like a victorious general. Taewoo glared after it, then remembered the ruined jacket from earlier and groaned.
Of course. The cat got me too. This is a conspiracy.
He finally made it to his room and shut the door, leaning against it with a heavy sigh. But the sanctuary he'd hoped for didn't materialize. He could still feel Dante's presence like a ghost haunting his skin. Could still hear that soft intake of breath when those grey eyes had found the tattoo.
He knows, the voice in his head whispered. He knows something about that night.
Taewoo stripped off the suit jacket, then the shirt...the gifted shirt, the Savile Row shirt that probably cost more than his rent...and stood in front of the mirror in his bare chest, pants hanging low on his hips. He turned slightly, angling his body so the tattoo was visible in the reflection.
It was a sprawling design, dark and intricate, curling around his right hip and climbing up his lower back. A stylized wolf, its eyes glowing with an eerie light, its teeth bared in a silent snarl. He'd gotten it in a haze of rebellion and desperation, a mark of something he'd been trying to bury ever since.
I was eighteen. Young. Stupid. Fucking around in clubs I had no business being in, trying to feel something, anything.
He traced the lines of the ink with his fingers, remembering the sharp sting of the needle, the strange sense of liberation that had come with the pain. He'd been chasing numbness back then, chasing oblivion. He'd found it, too...found it in bottles and strangers and anonymous encounters that left him feeling emptier than before.
And then there was that one night. The one he couldn't fully remember. The one he'd tried to forget.
I was drunk. Half out of my mind with rut fever. I stumbled into someone...I don't remember who. I don't remember their face. Just... their presence. The way they dominated me. The way they made me feel small when I'd never felt small before.
His hand pressed against the tattoo, as if he could push the memory back down. An Alpha shouldn't be dominated by anyone. But I was. I felt it...that primal command that brooked no resistance. Only an Enigma could do that to an Alpha.
And now that man... Dante Moretti... he knew what it meant.
A shiver ran down Taewoo's spine. He pulled on a loose shirt and collapsed onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.
What does he want from me?
His phone buzzed. He ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. Finally, with a frustrated growl, he grabbed it.
Doyoon: Hey little bro, I need you for another reference session tomorrow. My villain needs more tragic backstory energy.
Taewoo: Go away.
Doyoon: That's the spirit! That exact tone! I'm saving this text for inspiration.
Taewoo: I hate you.
Doyoon: Love you too! Sleep well! 💕
Taewoo threw his phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and landed harmlessly on the carpet. Even his phone was mocking him now.
The next morning, Taewoo was woken by a series of insistent pings from his phone. He groaned, reaching blindly for the device, and squinted at the screen through sleep-blurred eyes.
A message from an unknown number.
Unknown: You looked good in the suit. It suits you better than that attitude you wear like armor. ... D.M.
Taewoo's heart stopped. Then started again, racing.
How did he get my number?
He typed a response before he could think better of it: Delete this number. I don't want to talk to you.
The reply was almost instant: Too late. I already have it. And I have a feeling we'll be talking a lot more.
Taewoo stared at the screen, his knuckles white around the phone. He wanted to throw the device across the room. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run.
Instead, he took a deep breath and typed: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.
Three dots appeared, then vanished. Appeared again. Then the message came through:
I know more than you think, Kang Taewoo. I know about the tattoo. I know about the night you got it. I know you were with someone you shouldn't have been with.
Taewoo's blood turned to ice.
And I know that someone was me.
The phone slipped from his fingers, clattering to the floor. For a long moment, Taewoo couldn't move, couldn't breathe. The world tilted dangerously around him.
Dante Moretti was the one from that night?
The memory came flooding back in fragments: harsh neon lights, pounding bass, the press of anonymous bodies in a club that shouldn't have let him in. The feeling of being observed, hunted. The taste of copper and gin. A voice in his ear, deep and foreign and commanding. You're mine now. And I don't share.
Taewoo had thought it was a fever dream, the product of rut-addled desperation and too much alcohol. But now...
No. No, it can't be.
He scrambled to pick up the phone, his fingers trembling. The conversation was still open, the last message glaring up at him like a condemnation.
He typed: That's impossible. I don't remember you.
The reply came quickly: You were drunk. In rut. I was... careful not to be remembered. But I never forgot.
Taewoo's hands shook as he typed: Why are you telling me this now?
A long pause. Then:
Because I found you again. And I've been looking for you for eight years.
Taewoo stared at the screen, his mind a hurricane of emotions. Eight years. Eight years of thinking he'd buried that night, that person, that version of himself. And now...
His bedroom door burst open. "TAEWOO!" his mother's voice trilled. "Breakfast is ready! And I made your favorite..."
She stopped mid-sentence, taking in his pale face, his trembling hands, the phone clutched in his white-knuckled grip.
"Taewoo-yah," she said, her voice dropping to a worried coo. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that," he muttered, shoving the phone under his pillow. "I'll be down in a minute."
"Are you sick? Should I call Dr. Park?"
"No, Eomma. I'm fine. Just... tired."
She studied him with those sharp, knowing eyes, the ones that had seen through every lie he'd ever told. Then she smiled, soft and maternal. "Okay. But if you're not down in five minutes, I'm sending Junseo up with a tray. He's practicing his barista skills, and I don't think you want to be his guinea pig."
Taewoo couldn't help the snort that escaped him. "He still can't make a proper latte?"
"He puts too much foam. It's a tragedy." She winked and disappeared, closing the door behind her.
Taewoo sat in the sudden silence, his heart still pounding, but the edges of his panic had softened just slightly. His mother had a way of doing that...cutting through his darkest moments with mundane, loving absurdity.
He looked back at his phone. The conversation glowed up at him like an accusation.
I've been looking for you for eight years.
Great, he thought, running a hand through his hair. Just great. I'm being stalked by an Italian mafia heir who apparently tattooed me while I was blackout drunk.
He paused. Wait. Did he tattoo me? Or did I get the tattoo and then...
The memory was too fragmented, too hazy. He shook his head, pushing the thought away. He had to get through breakfast. He had to get through the day. He had to pretend everything was normal.
Normal. Right. I'm a doctor. I save lives. I don't have mysterious pasts with dangerous Enigmas who...
His phone buzzed again.
D.M.: I can hear you thinking from here. Relax. I'm not going to hurt you.
Taewoo typed back: Stay out of my head.
D.M.: Impossible. You're very loud.
Taewoo: I hate you.
D.M.: You keep saying that. It's getting repetitive.
Taewoo: GOOD.
He threw the phone onto the bed and stomped out of the room, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips despite everything.