The gray light of dawn crept through the high windows of the club, mingling with the faded remnants of neon lights. Inside the private suite, a heavy silence prevailed—not the silence of comfort, but the silence of a fracture followed by sudden regret. Jinho stood before the mirror, buttoning his new silk shirt with hands that trembled slightly, despite his desperate attempts to conceal it. His features had regained their icy detachment, but his eyes reflected a profound self-contempt.
On the sofa behind him, Ivan still lay, watching Jinho's back with a calm, possessive gaze, as if admiring a masterpiece he had just finished painting with his own blood and desire.
"Are you running away so quickly, Jinnie?" Ivan asked in a hoarse voice, brimming with sadistic satisfaction. "Your breath hasn't even settled yet, and still you try to rebuild your damn walls."
Jinho turned to him abruptly, his gaze as sharp as a scalpel, saturated with a hatred so genuine it was terrifying. "Do not think that what happened tonight changes anything, Ivan. You are nothing but a fleeting error in my calculations, a filthy moment of human weakness that will not be repeated. Look at yourself... you think you own me, but in reality, you took nothing but an exhausted body. My soul still sickens at the mere thought of being in the same room as you."
Ivan chuckled softly, unmoving. "Disgust is the mask of cowards, Jinho. You are disgusted with yourself because you enjoyed falling with me. Go... run back to your father, and pretend to be that cold machine. But you and I both know that you left a piece of yourself here, on this skin."
"Keep it as a souvenir of your upcoming defeat," Jinho replied with bitter sarcasm as he grabbed his coat. "Because the next time we meet, there will be no walls for you to hide behind, and I will make sure the taste of your regret is more bitter than this cocoa you take such pride in."
Jinho exited the suite with rapid steps, leaving Ivan behind. The moment he stepped into the cold Moscow air, he felt an urge to scrub his skin with acid. He got into his car and sped toward the Kuznetsov mansion, his mind whirring like a maddened data-processing machine. He wasn't thinking about Ivan; he was thinking about the "loophole" he had left behind.
Upon arriving at the mansion, he noticed unusual activity. In the East Wing, Larissa, his father's wife, stood behind the window watching his arrival. Her gaze was not the usual one; there was a malicious glint of suspicion in her eyes. Larissa, who had spent years trying to marginalize Jinho, began to sense a "hidden alliance" growing between her outcast stepson and the family's greatest enemy, Ivan Sokolov.
Jinho headed straight to his room, and instead of sleeping, opened his encrypted laptop. A few command lines were enough to breach the mansion's internal communication system. He began monitoring Larissa's recorded calls from the past few hours.
His expression remained calm as he listened to a recording of a call between Larissa and Sergey: "Sergey... your son Jinho is spending entire nights away. And yesterday, I saw him leaving the 'Neon Tsar' club in torn clothes and looking ominous. There is something between him and Sokolov, I can feel it. He is planning to sell us out, Sergey... just like his damned mother, Hayoon, used to do."
Jinho's fingers froze on the keyboard at the sound of his mother's name. Larissa wasn't just suspicious of him; she was digging into the graves of the past. He discovered through her old messages saved on the "cloud" that she harbored a deep-seated hatred for Hayoon; a hatred stemming from jealousy because Sergey, despite his cruelty, never loved a woman the way he loved Jinho's mother. Larissa saw in Jinho the "male version" of Hayoon—the threat that had to be eradicated to secure her own children's inheritance.
"So, you've started planting the seeds, Larissa," Jinho whispered to himself, his eyes darkening terrifyingly. "You think you hold the strings of the game because you discovered my 'relationship' with Ivan? You all fail to realize that I am the one who designed the game, and I am the one who will decide who dies in it first."
Jinho stood up from his chair and walked toward a hidden safe in the wall. He pulled out the small "hatchet" he had used to cleanse the harbor. It still bore dried spots of Andrei's blood, spots Jinho had intentionally left as a reminder of the night he transformed from a victim into a butcher.
Jinho went to the back garden, which was drowned in thick fog, wrapping around the silent marble statues like gray shrouds. The birds were not singing; the frost at this time of year strangled every living sound. Jinho walked with steady, deliberate steps over the frozen grass, which crunched like shattering glass beneath his boots. He wore black leather gloves and carried a small leather bag in his right hand that looked disproportionately heavy for its size.
He stopped at the ruined fountain in the center of the garden and didn't turn around when he heard the rustle of a silk dress behind him. He didn't need to look to know who was approaching; the heavy scent of "Chanel" perfume that Larissa wore always preceded her, attempting to mask the stench of hatred seeping from her pores.
"The early bird gets the worm, Jinho," Larissa said in a tone that blended arrogance with mockery. She stood a few steps away, wrapped in a precious mink stole, her narrow eyes watching Jinho with the intense focus of a snake ready to strike. "But in your case, I wonder... did you come out to look for worms, or to escape the stench of shame radiating from you?"
Jinho turned to her very slowly. His face was entirely devoid of expression, his blue eyes so cold they seemed to freeze the fog around them. "Shame is a word used by women who hold no power outside the bedroom, Larissa. As for me, I only know the language of 'results.' And the results say that I secured the shipment your favorite men failed to."
Larissa took a step forward, a malicious smile forming on her crimson-painted lips. "Results? Do you call spending the night in the arms of our sworn enemy 'results'? I saw you, Jinho. I saw your looks, and I saw the state you returned in. Ivan Sokolov allies with no one; he merely owns them. And you... you sold your father for crumbs of Ivan's filthy obsession."
Jinho let out a short, dry laugh, entirely devoid of amusement. "You speak of buying and selling as if you're an auction expert. Perhaps because you spent half your life trying to sell your 'loyalty' to my father in exchange for a status you never dreamed of. Did you think I didn't hear your calls last night? Do you think I don't know you're digging into the history of my mother, Hayoon?"
Larissa's features morphed instantly. The smile vanished, replaced by blazing anger. "Don't you dare utter her name! That damned Korean was nothing but a summer cloud in Sergey's life. She didn't belong to us, just as you don't belong to us now. She was weak, a dreamer, and ended up a lifeless corpse in a foreign land. And you... you are nothing but a living reminder of his biggest mistake."
"My mother was not weak, Larissa," Jinho said in a very quiet voice, yet it carried a tone that made Larissa step back involuntarily. "She was so pure that a polluted woman like you couldn't comprehend her existence. The malice you harbor toward her is what makes you tremble right now as you look into my eyes... because you see her in me, and you see your failure to break her memory."
Furious, Larissa pulled a small, gold-plated pistol from the pocket of her stole and aimed it directly at Jinho's chest. "I've had enough. I am ending this disgust right now. Sergey will mourn a little, but I will convince him that you were a traitor and that Sokolov was the one who killed you. The world will be better off without the little 'Crow'."
Jinho didn't blink. He didn't step back. Instead, he began to laugh mockingly, a sound that shook the stillness of the garden. "A golden gun? Really, Larissa? You're living in a cheap dime novel. Do you think this little thing will stop what I've started?"
With a lightning-fast movement, Jinho opened the leather bag he was carrying. He pulled out the small "hatchet," its gleaming steel blade stained with patches of dark, dried blood. He raised the hatchet in front of Larissa's face. She froze in her tracks upon seeing the real blood—neither gold nor silk, but the remnants of a life extinguished in cold blood.
"Do you see this?" Jinho whispered, running his leather-clad finger along the edge of the stained blade. "This blood belongs to a man who thought himself as powerful as you. He thought he had a plan. And now, he is nothing but a memory in a wooden box. Larissa... I am no longer that child who can be frightened by a gun or words about the past. I have become the 'Butcher' that even Ivan Sokolov fears."
Larissa's hand began to tremble as she held the gun. The look of quiet madness in Jinho's eyes, coupled with the sight of the bloodstained hatchet under the gray dawn light, made her realize she was no longer facing an ordinary human being. She was facing something that had been shattered and rebuilt to be an instrument of absolute murder.
"If you pull the trigger," Jinho continued, stepping toward her slowly, the blade gleaming in his hand, "make sure the bullet goes straight into my heart. Because if you miss, I will make sure your death is very slow... so slow that you'll wish you never met Hayoon or her son."
Larissa spat bitterly on the ground, but she lowered the gun, her eyes filling with tears of sheer frustration and fear. "You're a devil... you and Ivan Sokolov are two sides of the same filthy coin."
"Perhaps," Jinho replied, coldly returning the hatchet to his bag. "But in this world, it's the devils who survive, while the snakes... get their heads chopped off and are left to rot in luxurious gardens. Go, Larissa... keep planting seeds of doubt in my father's head. I want him to doubt. I want to see this mansion burn from the inside, and I will be the one to light the final match."
Jinho turned and left the garden, leaving Larissa alone in the fog, shivering not from the cold, but from the terrifying truth she had just discovered: Jinho Kuznetsov no longer had anything left to lose...ever.
Jinho silently closed his bedroom door behind him, leaning his back against the cold wood. The room was submerged in deliberate darkness; the heavy drapes refused entry to the dawn light, as if Jinho was trying to protect himself from seeing the truth screaming in his face. The room reflected his current personality: obsessively neat, devoid of any warm touch, and as cold as a luxurious prison cell.
He sat on the edge of his bed, placing his head between his hands. Larissa's words about his mother, "Hayoon," were like a scalpel ripping out the stitches of an old wound he thought had closed forever. And the memory began to creep in... no, it began to violently storm his mind, shattering all the mathematical defenses he had built.
Her room in the East Wing of the mansion was vast and adorned with the most luxurious furniture, yet it felt like a suffocating dungeon. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn tightly to block the sunlight, while the air was thick with the scent of premium oud incense, mixing unpleasantly with the bitter smell of sedatives. "Hayoon," the woman who once rivaled camellia flowers in her delicacy, sat on the expensive Persian rug. Her silk dress was wrinkled, her long black hair scattered around her pale, haggard face. She was going through one of her dark episodes, where her tender love mutated into a hurricane of rage and despair under the crushing weight of the Kuznetsov family and the bitterness of "Sergey's" abandonment.
The oak door slowly opened, and little "Jinho" stepped in. He was barely five years old, dressed in elegant, neat clothes like a little prince, but his features bore a premature calmness that was unsettling. He carried in his small hands a heavy crystal glass filled with water, treading extremely carefully so as not to spill a single drop.
He approached her with silent steps, kneeling beside her. "Mama..." he whispered in his soft, childlike voice. "Are you in pain again? I brought you water... Please, drink so you can smile. I don't like seeing you sad."
Suddenly, Hayoon jolted as if struck by lightning. She turned to Jinho with bloodshot eyes—eyes entirely devoid of maternal warmth, replaced by utter madness. She didn't see her child; she saw the features of the man who had destroyed her. With a violent, unexpected movement, she rose and raised her hand, slapping Jinho so hard he fell to the floor. The crystal glass flew from his grasp, shattering against the marble, and its sharp shards scattered, cutting his small palm.
"Why are you here?" Hayoon screamed, her voice cracking with hysterical sobs that filled the suite. "Why are you looking at me with those cold eyes? You look like him! You look like that man who ruined my life! You have his mind, you have his coldness, you have that damned intelligence that terrifies me!"
Despite the blood starting to ooze from his hand, and despite the pain that reddened his cheek, Jinho did not cry. Instead, he crawled slowly over the rug, approaching her once more. He reached out his small, trembling, bleeding hand and tried to wipe away her falling tears. "Mama, don't cry..." he said in a shaky voice, trying to hold himself together. "I'm sorry I look like him... I'm sorry my face makes you hurt. Hit me more if it will make you feel better, but please, don't cry."
These innocent words did not console her; rather, they broke what remained of her sanity. She grabbed his shoulders with a grip that pained him and screamed in his face: "I wish I had never given birth to a boy like you! I should have only kept Jin... Jin who has a heart, Jin who laughs! But you... you are just a human machine born to torture me with his memories!"
At that moment, "Jin" appeared at the threshold of the door, frozen in fear, watching the heart-wrenching scene in silence.
Seconds later, the suite doors burst wide open. The head butler rushed in, accompanied by the family's private nurse and two maids. They ran immediately toward Hayoon; the maids gently but firmly grabbed her arms to pull her away from the child lying on the floor, while she screamed and resisted hysterically. The nurse quickly injected a sedative into her arm. After moments of struggle, Hayoon's body went limp and she began to lose consciousness. The servants lifted her and laid her carefully on her massive bed.
The servants withdrew quietly to clean up the mess in another corner, while Jin crawled toward his twin brother in the dark corner of the room. Jin took a clean piece of cloth from his pocket and began wiping the blood from Jinho's hand and cheek, his tears streaming endlessly.
"I am angry at her!" Jin sobbed in a tearful, childish voice, trying to muffle his sound. "Why did Mama do this? She hurt your hand, Jinho! She is mean, she said very bad things... I don't like her when she does this!"
Jinho looked at his twin with blue eyes utterly devoid of emotion, as if something inside him had extinguished forever. He spoke in a quiet voice, a calmness ill-suited for a five-year-old: "Don't be angry at her, Jin... Mama isn't lying, she's just hurting a lot inside. I am the reason she is crying. My face reminds her of the bad man."
Jinho fell silent for a moment, then added in a dead tone: "If I go far away... to the sky... maybe Mama will be happy again, and she will play and laugh with you. I should have died so you both could live happily."
Jin's eyes widened in terror at his brother's words. He gripped Jinho's shoulders tightly, bringing his tear-streaked face close to his brother's, making a childish oath that would become the constitution of his life: "Don't say that! If you go to the sky, I will go with you! You are my brother... You are not a machine, Mama was just angry."
Jin wiped his tears fiercely, and the look in his eyes shifted to an irreversible determination: "Listen to me, Jinho... When I grow up, I will become very strong. No one will ever hit you again, and no one will ever make you hurt. I will be the shield that protects you from everything, and I will be the hand that strikes whoever bothers you... even if it's Mama. I will stay with you always, and you will never be alone."
Jinho opened his eyes in his dark room. His breathing was heavy, as if a boulder rested on his chest. The memory wasn't just images; it was the feel of her hand on his face, the smell of incense, the impact of her lethal words.
Jin had been true to his oath; he had transformed into an executive machine, obeying Jinho blindly. Not out of fear of him, but because he saw that moment when their mother disowned Jinho, and so Jin decided to become his brother's entire world.
Jinho felt a strange burning in his eyes. He tried to summon physics equations, he tried to think of Ivan, of Larissa, of "anything"... but his exhausted human heart won in this moment.
Down his pale cheek, a single tear rolled.
It wasn't a tear of weakness, but a tear of final farewell to his childhood buried in that cabin. It was an expression of the pain seeping into his marrow, of his feeling that despite all the power he held now, and despite Ivan's obsession with him, he was still that child his mother wished she had killed.
He wiped the tear quickly with the back of his hand and sat up straight. The marble-like features returned to his face, and the trace of sorrow vanished behind the cold mask.
"Larissa was right about one thing," he whispered to himself, looking at the hatchet lying on the table. "My mother didn't belong in this world... and neither do I. But I will make sure everyone else leaves it before me."
To be continued............