Aveline
That was my mistake. My stupid, reckless, unforgivable mistake.
I was with Alia at the café, laughing, sipping coffee, pretending life was normal for a little while. Then—my phone buzzed. A voice I thought I could trust told me to step outside for just a minute. Just a minute. I didn't even think. I told Alia, "I'll be right back," and walked toward the door like a fool.
I knew why I'd gone outside. I'd been blackmailed — ugly little threats threaded into my life like poison. The message had said things I didn't want anyone to hear, names that would burn everything if they came out. They wanted me alone. They wanted me scared. So when the call came while I was with Alia, a voice saying "step out, one minute," I told myself I'd handle it. I told myself I could bluff my way through it. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
That's when everything went black.
Two men came out of nowhere. Masks. Gloves. One of them pressed a cloth over my mouth before I could scream. The stench of chemicals burned my lungs, my vision blurred, and then—nothing.
When I woke up, I was no longer in the café, no longer safe. My wrists and ankles were bound to a splintered wooden chair. My muscles ached, my head throbbed, and every inch of my body felt heavy. The air reeked of oil and rust, thick with the stench of a warehouse forgotten by the world.
My clothes were torn, my skin stung from the rough ropes biting into it. I wanted to scream, but my throat was dry, raw. My chest tightened as reality sank in.
I'd been kidnapped.
No security. No phone. No Ruby.
The walls were shadows, the silence broken only by dripping water somewhere in the distance. Every creak of the old building made my heart pound faster, my breath shallow. My eyes burned, tears slipping down as I tried to blink the fear away.
I knew—God, I knew—Ruby would tear the world apart to find me. She would burn every city to the ground if she had to. But in that moment, sitting alone in that dark, empty room, my body trembling in torn clothes, I was terrified.
Because love or not—rescue or not—I was already trapped in someone else's game.
And I had no idea what they wanted from me.
---
Now, strapped to a splintered chair in a cold warehouse that smelled of oil and old metal, the memory of the café — the sunlight, Alia's laugh — felt like a different life. My wrists chafed the rope bit into raw skin. My shirt was torn in places I couldn't remember. Every sound was too loud, every shadow a new enemy.
I tried to pull my legs in, to curl around myself like I could make myself smaller, safer. Nothing helped. I was pinned, exposed, and the chair groaned when I shifted. Out there, someone had my picture. Someone could be watching the exact moment I thought of Ruby. The thought was like acid. Ruby. Of course Ruby would flip the world if she knew. She'd tear the sky for me. But I couldn't think about that—not straight away. Panic was a thicker thing than hope.
I forced my breathing slow. Panic makes you clumsy, and clumsy gets you hurt. So I counted the squeaks of the building instead: one, two—another drip—four. I scanned the dark for anything useful: a loose nail, a shard of broken glass, the frayed end of a rope. The light above me hummed, an old fluorescent that buzzed like a bee caught in a bottle. There was no phone, no help, only the distant echo of footsteps I wasn't sure I heard or imagined.
Whoever took me had planned it. They'd come prepared — masks, a gag, whatever they'd fed me to make me black out. They meant to silence me. Blackmail wasn't about the money alone it was about power, and right now they had it. I tasted copper on my tongue and felt stupid for answering that call. I felt stupid for thinking I could play them when really I'd walked into their script.
But even stupid, I wasn't helpless. My fingers brushed the edge of the chair and I remembered a lesson Ruby never meant to teach me "don't let fear make the decisions for you." Count the sounds. Look for patterns. Find the thing that's not like the rest.
Outside, the world kept spinning. Inside, in the dark, I sat with the knowledge that someone had put me here on purpose. That they wanted leverage. That they were banking on my silence.
If they wanted anything from me, they hadn't deserved it. If they wanted me to be afraid — fine. I was terrified. But fear had never been my only answer. Not when there was a name that would set fire to the world if it needed to Ruby.
And that thought—wild and reckless and honest—was the only small thing that steadied me. I'd been stupid. I'd made a mistake. But I hadn't given up. Not yet.
My fingers kept finding the same useless edge of wood, worrying it like a talisman. Ruby had taught me once, in a stupid, stubborn lesson that felt half like flirting and half like survival training — how to hold a gun, how to breathe when the world bends. I hadn't brought it. Of course I hadn't. I'd thought I was clever. I'd been wrong.
Footsteps came then — not hurried, not clumsy. Calm. Slow. Confident. They moved through the warehouse the way a cat moves through a room full of mice: deliberate, measured. My heart slammed so hard it burned my throat, but I forced my breath to even out. Panic is loud; you don't want to be loud.
He didn't need to step into the light for my brain to pull the shape of him. The gait — the lean of the shoulder, the way his boots scuffed the concrete — it matched the stories Ruby had tossed at me like warnings. Kim Da Hyun. The name had been a scar in Ruby's voice the first time she said it: cold, dangerous, familiar. I'd only ever seen him through pictures, through warning glances.
He paused a few feet away. The fluorescent light hummed above, painting his profile in the kind of harsh white that made someone's face look carved out. He removed his mask slowly, like he was peeling off a costume between acts. There was a small, almost indulgent silence as the cloth fell to the floor.
"I should have guessed you'd be a brave little sun," he said. His voice was smooth, clinical—like someone who keeps promises and breaks them with the same calm hand. "Or were you always this careless? Answering calls alone. Walking into strangers' traps." He smiled, and the smile had no warmth.
My mouth went dry. My head catalogued everything: his watch, the small scar at the corner of his lip, the steady way his eyes tracked me. This was the man Ruby had warned me about; this was the reason the world had to hold its breath when his name was spoken.
"What do you want?" I managed. The words came out thin, but steady enough. Fear is loud; a steady voice tricks the mind into thinking you've got a plan.
Kim Da Hyun walked closer, each step a punctuation mark. He crouched, as if to be level with me, but his eyes stayed far colder than his posture. "I want what I asked for. I want leverage. I want you to remember the call. And I want you to keep remembering, Aveline Sun." He said my name like he was tasting it, rolling it around to see how bitter it could be. "Ruby doesn't play nice. But you… you're useful. You have things she wants. People she cares about. Do you understand leverage?"
I swallowed. The ropes dug into my wrists; every breath felt rubbery. My chest felt like it was trying to rearrange itself around the panic. I pictured Ruby's face — the way she tightens when she's about to tear something down — and the image steadied me for a second.
Kim Da Hyun stood up slowly, the light catching the talon of a ring on his finger. He tapped the chair beside me with the toe of his boot like a bored conductor waiting for applause. "Soon," he said, voice soft as if sharing a secret. "Very soon, your little life will be the price for a lot of things. Watch them scramble, Aveline. Watch them burn. That's the pleasure."
He moved toward the shadow where some other men lingered, and the sound of their quiet laughter filled the room like rust. I forced my jaw not to tremble. I had nothing but my own stupid resourcefulness and the echo of Ruby's training in my muscles. If he wanted a show, fine — I would not give him the satisfaction of a broken sound.
"Tell Ruby," I said instead, voice low. "Tell her I'm not stupid enough to plead. Tell her I'm not her weakness."
He looked back with a slow, almost impressed lift of his chin. "Oh? Then teach her that, Sun. Teach her what matters." He turned and walked away, his footsteps the same calm clockwork as before.
The warehouse swallowed the sound, but the threat hung in the air — heavy, specific. I tasted iron on my tongue and the cold calculation of survival settled in my ribs. They wanted leverage. They thought they had it. They didn't know how much fire Ruby had in her chest.
---
He came back up to me like a shadow sliding over my skin. Before I could blink, his hand clamped over my mouth—hard enough that my teeth bit down on the flesh and pain exploded through my jaw. I gagged, air stolen, panic burning hot behind my ribs. He held on a second longer, as if enjoying the sound I couldn't make, then let go with a soft, amused laugh.
He crouched again, close enough that I could see the sick amusement curling his lips. Up close his smile was worse than a knife: polite, slow, and absolutely merciless. "Do you know what I gave your lion?" he murmured, his voice silk over steel. "Threads. Threats. Little knives to prod at her pride. Every time she came… every time she snarled, she told me, 'Don't you dare.' And she meant it."
He leaned in, eyes cold as a blade. His fingers grazed the torn edge of my clothes like he might tear them himself. "And you?" he said, soft, deadly. "You're here. Helpless. Naked in the dark. If I ripped those clothes off right now, who would know? Who would care?
He let the words hang, tasting them. Then he smiled that same terrible smile and straightened.
---
"I don't give a fuck, Kim Da Hyun. She's coming for me. And when she does… she'll tear you apart."
The words burned out of me before I could stop them. His face twisted—then his palm cracked across my cheek so hard the world spun white. My skin stung, my jaw ached, and I tasted blood. He smirked like he'd won something, like breaking me would be the sweetest game.
But then—
The air shifted.
The sound of boots cutting against concrete echoed through the dark. A chill ran through me before I even saw her, because I knew. I knew.
Ruby.
She stepped out of the shadows, her figure backlit by the faint light bleeding through the broken windows. Her suit was torn, blood staining her shirt—but those eyes… those eyes weren't human anymore. They were molten red, burning, a storm about to consume the whole damn room.
Kim Da Hyun's smirk faltered for the first time.
Ruby didn't care about the men raising their guns. Didn't care about the bullets that hissed past her, tearing into the walls. She came straight for me—unshaken, unstoppable, her whole body screaming lion.
"Ruby—!" My voice cracked, but she was already there, already breaking through them like they were nothing.
She dropped to her knees in front of me, her hands shaking as she ripped at the ropes binding my wrists. Her breaths were ragged, fast, fury tangled with panic. When the last knot fell free, she didn't wait. She pulled me against her chest, holding me so tight it hurt—but it was the only place I could breathe again.
"I've got you," she whispered against my hair, her voice rough, raw, trembling with rage and relief. "They'll never touch you again. Not while I'm alive."
And in that moment, with her arms crushing me against her, I believed it.
---
---
I wanted to stay with her. Every part of me did.
But Ruby kept pushing, voice clipped like steel. "Adam — take her out. Now."
"No. No. No. I'm not leaving you, Ruby. I want to stay." My hands shook as I tried to push free. Fear made my words loud and stupid; love made them louder. I wasn't ready to be dragged into whatever war this was.
She closed the distance between us anyway. Up close she smelled like metal and smoke and something that was only hers — a sharp, dangerous perfume that steadied me. When she cupped my face, it was painfully gentle, like a thief who'd stolen everything and was suddenly afraid of breaking what she'd taken.
"Rabbit," she said, and the nickname sounded like a prayer coming out of a mouth that usually swallowed prayers whole. Her fingers were warm, trembling at the edges. "I'm here. I promise I'll come back to you. Alive."
Her red eyes searched mine with a hunger I hadn't seen before — not for me, exactly, but for the life she was determined to protect. I could see the war inside them the person who took whole empires and the person who would crawl through fire for one person. I wanted to believe her with every inch of my bone, but the world felt thin and fragile at the edges.
"Promise," I whispered.
She bowed her head and pressed her forehead to mine — a clumsy, broken benediction — and then, steady and fierce, she said, "I swear on my life."
I nodded because my throat was full of stone and there was nothing else I could say that would be true enough. The last thing I felt was her thumb tracing the line beneath my jaw, slow and certain, like an anchor.
Then the room folded. Noise became a smear: the report of footsteps, a flash of light, the distant crack of a gun. Heat, a smell of metal. Someone shouted a name I didn't recognize. My vision went white at the edges, small and bright, and then everything went black.
When I woke, I was in a hospital that smelled like antiseptic and old flowers. My mouth tasted of iron. Light bled through blinds into a room buzzing with low voices.
Everyone was there — my family, Ruby's family, faces I loved and faces that looked like stone. They gathered around me in a ring of exhaustion and fury. Their eyes were sharp with questions and the kind of fear that sits in the chest like a held breath.
Ruby wasn't at my bedside at first; that absence hit harder than any shouted accusation. When she finally came in, wrapped in bandages and blood and whatever mess she'd walked out of, the room didn't notice. I did. Her face was bruised, her hair stuck to her temple, but she moved like a miracle: careful, fierce, alive.
They were all tense — Adam steady with a bruise I hadn't seen, Luna's jaw clenched, Mr. Han's hands folded too tight. My family's faces were hollowed with worry. The whole room felt like it had been waiting for a verdict.
I wanted to reach for her. To tell her I'd waited. To tell her I'd been brave in my little corner. But the words landed like pebbles in my mouth. Instead I watched her from under half-lidded eyes.
No one spoke. No one had to. Her fingers found mine and squeezed — that same promise without words. I let myself hold on to it, because it was the only honest thing left in the room.
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