Chapter Eighty-Two: The Jealousy Protocol
The mansion was still recovering from the attack. Men in black moved through the halls with quiet efficiency, reinforcing locks, testing cameras, speaking in low, urgent tones. The shattered kitchen door had been replaced within hours, but the memory of breaking glass still echoed in my skull.
I found Taehyun in his study, standing before the window with his back to the door. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clasped behind him—the posture of a general surveying a battlefield, calculating losses, planning counterstrikes.
I knocked softly. "You missed dinner."
"I wasn't hungry."
"Victor ate three servings of my stew. Said it was 'nutritionally adequate.' That's basically a love confession from him."
He didn't laugh. Didn't even turn.
I walked closer, my bare feet silent on the Persian rug. "Taehyun."
"I should have been there." His voice was flat, controlled. "I was in the study. Reading. While someone put their hands on you."
"I'm fine. Victor handled it."
"I know." His hands unclasped, then clasped again. "He told me how you screamed. How you struggled. How he had to shoot a man to get you free."
I stopped behind him, close enough to feel the tension radiating from his body. "He saved my life. I thanked him."
Something in his shoulders tightened further. "I heard."
"You heard?"
"You hugged him."
The words hung in the air between us, strange and heavy. I stared at the back of his head, trying to process. "I… yes. I hugged him. To say thank you for—"
"I know what it was for." His voice was clipped now, sharp at the edges. "Victor is my oldest friend. My most trusted security. I chose him because he's efficient, professional, and utterly incapable of emotional attachment." A pause. "Apparently, I was wrong about the last part."
I moved around him slowly, until I could see his face. His jaw was set, his eyes fixed somewhere on the middle distance, and his mouth—
His mouth was doing something I had never seen before.
He was pouting.
Kim Taehyun. The devil of Seoul. The man who had walked into my wedding with a gun and left with a wife. The monster who made men tremble with a single glance. He was standing in his study, arms crossed, jaw tight, lower lip pushed out in the most ridiculous, childish, utterly devastating pout I had ever witnessed.
"You're jealous," I breathed.
"I'm not jealous."
"You're pouting."
"I don't pout."
"You're pouting right now."
He turned away sharply, stalking toward his desk. "I'm assessing security failures. The perimeter breach, the compromised door, the fact that I wasn't the one—" He stopped, his hand gripping the back of his chair. His voice dropped. "I wasn't the one who caught you."
The room was very quiet.
I walked to him slowly, each step deliberate. "Victor did his job. That's what you hired him for."
"I know."
"So why are you sulking?"
He turned, and the look in his eyes stopped my heart. It wasn't anger. It wasn't even jealousy, not really. It was something rawer. Something wounded.
"Because he held you," he said. "And I wasn't there. Because you screamed, and I didn't hear it. Because for thirty seconds—thirty seconds, Aish—you were in danger, and I was sitting in this room, reading words written by a girl who no longer exists, while my wife was being dragged out of my house."
His voice cracked on the last word. A hairline fracture in the armor he wore so perfectly.
I closed the distance between us, reaching up to cup his face. His skin was warm, his jaw rough with stubble, and he leaned into my touch like a man starving for it.
"I'm here," I said softly. "I'm okay. Victor protected me. And you—" I pressed my thumb to the corner of his mouth, tracing the line of his lips. "You're being ridiculous."
His eyes narrowed. "I'm being ridiculous?"
"You're pouting because I hugged someone who saved my life."
"I'm not pouting."
"You're absolutely pouting." I rose on my toes, bringing my face closer to his. "It's adorable."
His hands caught my waist, pulling me against him. "I am not adorable. I am the head of a criminal organization. I have ended lives for less than this."
"For less than a hug?"
"For the implication that someone else can protect what's mine." His voice dropped, low and rough. "For the sight of your arms around another man."
I laughed, unable to help myself. "Victor told me he was 'statistically uncomfortable' with the hug. He's a robot, Taehyun. A very effective, very emotionless robot."
"I don't care." His grip tightened. "You hugged him. You. Hugged. Him."
"And if I hugged Junho? Or Minho?"
His jaw clenched. "Junho would be relocated to our Antarctica office. Permanently."
"And Jinwoo?"
"Jinwoo would be forced to listen to recordings of his own voice until he developed a personality that wasn't exhausting."
I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. "You're threatening your brothers with psychological warfare over hypothetical hugs."
"This isn't hypothetical." His voice was petulant now, almost childlike. "You actually hugged him. I saw it on the security feed. You pressed your face into his shoulder and everything."
The laugh escaped me then, bright and uncontrollable. I pressed my forehead into his chest, my shoulders shaking.
"It's not funny," he grumbled, but his arms were already coming around me, pulling me closer.
"It's very funny."
"She's laughing at me," he announced to the room at large. "My wife, who was almost kidnapped four hours ago, is laughing at my emotional distress."
I looked up at him, still grinning. "Your emotional distress is extremely cute."
His eyes darkened. "Cute."
"Very cute. Pouty and jealous and dramatic. Like a very dangerous cat who's mad his person petted another animal."
"I am nothing like a cat."
"You sulk like one."
He pulled me tighter, his face dropping to my neck, his lips brushing against my skin. "I don't sulk."
"You're sulking right now."
"I'm scent-marking. There's a difference."
I laughed again, but it turned into a shiver as his mouth found the spot below my ear. "Taehyun—"
"Maybe," he murmured against my skin, "I need to remind you who you belong to."
"Victor—"
"Will be conducting perimeter sweeps for the next three hours." His teeth grazed my earlobe. "Plenty of time."
I pushed at his chest, not hard. "You're impossible."
"You hugged him." His lips traced down the column of my throat. "You're going to have to make that up to me."
"You want me to apologize for thanking someone who saved my life?"
"I want you to apologize for making me watch you put your hands on another man." His voice was rough now, the playfulness giving way to something deeper. Something real. "For making me sit in that room, watching the security feed, knowing I should have been the one catching you. Holding you. Keeping you safe."
I pulled back, meeting his eyes. The jealousy was still there, but beneath it—beneath all the posturing and the pouting—was fear. Raw and real and barely contained.
"I'm here," I said again, softer this time. "I'm safe. And you—" I pressed my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. "You're the only one I want to catch me. You know that, don't you?"
He was quiet for a moment. Then, almost reluctantly: "You like Victor."
"I like that Victor is very good at his job. He's also terrifying and calls me 'statistically valuable.' Not exactly romantic."
"His security protocols are excellent."
"I'm sure they are."
"Better than mine."
"Maybe." I smiled up at him. "But he doesn't braid my hair. He doesn't make me tea when I've had nightmares. He doesn't look at me like—" I stopped.
"Like what?"
I looked away, my cheeks warming. "Like I'm something worth protecting."
His hand came up, cupping my face, turning me back to him. His eyes were very dark, very intense, very him.
"You are something worth protecting," he said. "You're the only thing worth protecting. Everything else—the business, the reputation, the fear people have when they say my name—it's all noise. You're the signal. You always have been."
My throat tightened. "Taehyun—"
"If you want to hug Victor, hug Victor." His jaw was tight, his voice strained. "If you want to be friends with him, if you want to laugh at his terrible jokes and eat his 'nutritionally adequate' stew, do it. He's a good man. Better than me, probably. Safer."
I opened my mouth to argue, but he kept going.
"But if you ever—ever—let him hold you when you're scared, let him be the one you reach for in the dark, let him be anything more than the wall between you and danger—" His voice broke. "I don't know what I'd do. I don't know who I'd be. Because I've been a monster for so long, Angel. I don't know how to be anything else. But with you—"
He stopped, his jaw working.
I waited.
"With you," he finally said, "I want to be human. I want to be the one you want. Not because I'm dangerous, or powerful, or because I have the best security team money can buy. I want you to want me."
I rose on my toes and kissed him.
It wasn't a soft kiss. It wasn't gentle or patient or forgiving. It was the kiss of a woman who had almost been taken from her home, who had watched a man bleed for her, who had spent months fighting something she was only now beginning to understand.
When I pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
"You," I said, "are the most infuriating, dramatic, jealous man I have ever met."
His lips twitched. "That's not a denial."
"It's not an admission either."
"You hugged him."
"I'm going to hug him again tomorrow. Just to see you pout."
His hands tightened on my waist, pulling me flush against him. "Try it and see what happens."
"Is that a threat, Mr. Kim?"
"It's a promise, Mrs. Kim."
I smiled, and for once, I didn't try to hide it. "Then I guess you'll just have to make sure I don't want to."
His eyes darkened. "I can do that."
"I'm counting on it."
He kissed me then, deep and thorough and devastating. His hands slid into my hair, tilting my head back, claiming my mouth with a possessiveness that should have scared me.
It didn't.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against mine, his breathing uneven.
"No more hugging Victor," he murmured.
"I make no promises."
"Angel."
"Jealousy looks good on you."
"It feels terrible."
I laughed, soft and warm. "Good. Then maybe you'll understand how I feel every time you look at that diary."
He went very still. "The diary?"
"The one you smile at. The one you whisper to when you think I'm sleeping. The one full of words from some perfect, poetic woman who apparently wants you in her next life."
He stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he started to laugh.
"I'm not funny," I said, pulling back. "I'm being serious."
"You're jealous of a diary."
"I'm not jealous."
"You're pouting."
"I don't pout."
He cupped my face, his thumb tracing my lower lip. "You're pouting right now."
I smacked his chest. "I hate you."
"You're jealous of words written by a stranger."
"She's not a stranger. She's someone you wish you'd seen. Someone who wrote poetry about your back and called it faith." My voice came out smaller than I intended. "I can't compete with that. I don't even know who I am half the time."
His expression shifted, the teasing fading into something softer. "You're not competing with anyone. There's no competition."
"She wrote about wanting you in her next life."
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