The moment Yoo-jin gave the order, Kang spoke a single, clipped command into his wrist communicator. The grainy live feed from the alley camera became a chaotic blur of motion. It was not a prolonged, cinematic brawl. It was a display of brutal, shocking efficiency. Yoo-jin's contractors moved with a practiced, violent economy. There were no flashy kicks or wild swings. There were just hard, precise, debilitating strikes to joints and nerve clusters. The two casino enforcers, large and formidable as they were, were simply outclassed. They were used to intimidating desperate gamblers, not fighting men who treated violence as a dispassionate trade.
Within thirty seconds, it was over. The two house thugs were slumped against a dumpster, groaning and incapacitated. The feed flickered and then cut out as the contractor retrieved his camera. The van was plunged into silence, broken only by the hum of its electronics. Go Min-young, who had been watching the entire event with wide, horrified eyes, let out a small, shaky breath and pressed a hand to her mouth. She had just witnessed the brutal reality of the order Yoo-jin had given.
Ten agonizingly long minutes later, Kang's secure phone rang. He listened for a moment, then nodded. "We have the package," he reported to Yoo-jin, his voice as neutral as if he were confirming a lunch delivery. "He's secured. No police attention. The locals are handling their own wounded. They won't be making any official reports."
"Where is he?" Yoo-jin asked, his own voice tight.
"The primary location, as instructed," Kang replied.
The primary location was the same waterfront warehouse where they had first met the contractors. When they arrived, the atmosphere was different. The sprawling, dusty space was no longer a meeting point; it was an interrogation chamber. In the center of the vast concrete floor, under the glare of a single, harsh work light, Jo Min-su was tied securely to a heavy metal chair.
He was a pitiful sight. A fresh bruise was already darkening on his cheekbone, and a trickle of blood ran from his split lip, but he was conscious and not seriously injured. The three contractors stood in the shadows at the edges of the light's circle, their presence a constant, silent threat. Go Min-young, who had insisted on following, stood near the massive sliding door, looking pale and physically ill, a horrified witness to this descent into darkness.
Yoo-jin walked forward, his expensive shoes crunching softly on the gritty floor. He stopped a few feet from the bound man. This was not a negotiation. He had nothing to offer this man, and he wanted nothing from him but a name.
His voice, when he spoke, was cold and completely devoid of emotion. "Jo Min-su. You planted a device at the concert for a man who calls himself Ryu. He paid you fifty million won, which you have since lost. I don't care about your gambling debts. I don't care about your problems. I care about one thing and one thing only: where I can find him."
Jo Min-su, his eyes wide with terror, shook his head frantically, spittle flying from his lips. "I don't know! I swear to God, I don't know!" he sobbed, his voice a high-pitched, desperate whine. "I never met him! I never saw his face! It was all done through encrypted chats, a voice scrambler… He was just a ghost on the internet! Please, you have to believe me!"
Yoo-jin's expression didn't change. He listened to the pathetic denial and then slowly turned his head, his gaze falling on one of the contractors in the shadows. The burly man with the cauliflower ears understood the silent command immediately. He took a single, menacing step forward into the light. The sound of his heavy boot on the concrete was like a gunshot in the silent warehouse.
Go Min-young let out an audible gasp.
Yoo-jin turned his cold gaze back to the terrified man in the chair. "You're a gambler, Jo Min-su," he said softly, his voice a silken threat. "So you understand the concept of risk and reward. You have spent the night making terrible bets. Right now, telling me everything you know is the safest, surest bet you can possibly make. The alternative… has a very low chance of a positive outcome."
The implied violence, the sheer, predatory menace in the room, was overwhelming. Jo Min-su broke. A wave of uncontrollable sobs wracked his body.
"Okay, okay! Please!" he blubbered, tears and snot running down his face. "I don't have a location! I swear, I don't! But… there's another job. He contacted me this morning. He wants me to make a pickup."
Yoo-jin's eyes narrowed. "A pickup?"
"Yes!" Jo Min-su said, desperate to provide something, anything of value. "He needs new equipment. He told me to go to a dead-drop location tomorrow at noon. Locker C-37, at the Samseong subway station. He said there would be a package waiting for me. Equipment for the next phase of his plan."
This was it. A tangible lead. "What is the next phase?" Yoo-jin pressed, his voice sharp.
"I don't know! I swear!" Jo Min-su cried, shaking his head so violently the chair rattled. "He doesn't tell me things like that! He just said… he said it was time to stop sending messages and start 'deleting files.'" He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the exact words. "He said something about 'cutting the head off the serpent's new ally.' I didn't know what he meant! I swear!"
The serpent's new ally.
The phrase hit Yoo-jin with the force of a physical blow. Ryu knew. He somehow already knew about the alliance he had just forged in secret. He was talking about Nam Gyu-ri.
The information changed everything. Ryu wasn't just playing psychological games anymore. He was planning a direct, physical attack—an assassination—targeting the very man Yoo-jin had just recruited. The unholy alliance was already being targeted for elimination.
And the dead-drop at the subway station was their one and only chance to intercept Ryu or one of his agents. It was almost certainly a trap, a test of Jo Min-su's loyalty or an attempt to draw Yoo-jin's forces out into the open. But it was the only lead they had.
Yoo-jin looked at the pathetic, broken man tied to the chair, then at the hard-faced contractor waiting patiently in the shadows. He looked at Go Min-young, her face a mask of horrified disillusionment. He had the information he so desperately needed. But he had gotten it through coercion and the explicit threat of violence, becoming the kind of man he had once built an empire to oppose.
He now had a ticking clock. Less than twelve hours to prepare for a dangerous confrontation in the middle of one of the busiest subway stations in Seoul. Less than twelve hours to figure out how to protect Nam Gyu-ri—the disgraced, unstable producer who was now, terrifyingly, both his most important asset and his greatest liability. The game had just escalated from corporate warfare to counter-terrorism, and he was standing in a dark warehouse, covered in the filth of his own necessary sins.