FROM: ALFRED BROWN *
To: Danica Clarke *
Date: 3 August 2021, 10:40 p.m.
Hello Ms. Danica Clarke,
I know it's inappropriate and reckless to email you at this hour for something as trivial as introducing myself to you, but rules aren't my strong suit. I prefer to bend them until they break, to gamble on moments that may burn me alive, just to feel the heat of them.
Well, I wouldn't bore you with unnecessary details; let's get straight to the point.
I am Alfred Brown, the one who helped you find your purse after the World Business Summit wrapped up. I hope you remember the moment as vividly as you remember the exact shade of lipstick you were wearing that night (wink).
Thank you for letting me slide into your inbox. For a split second, I was half-convinced to see a little message from Xmail, notifying me that the user doesn't exist.
With sincerity,
Alfred.
Danica's bones glaciated even as heat clawed up her spine, anchoring her to the place. The words scribbled over her screen had the power to make her go through them thrice, against her will. She was half-furious and half-intrigued by the sheer audacity of the mystery man, Alfred, to deliver the message cloaked in professionalism with a brazen red bow of flirtation.
Shoving aside all the stupid sensations and conflicting thoughts, she typed the reply before leaving the Crown & Caviar. She could deal with them later or never.
Seems like Alfred Brown is going to be my 92nd hit. She exhaled plainly, igniting the engine of her Aston Martin. Good luck to you, Mr. Plenitude of Nerve. Hope you know how to stay alive because someday, I might be the one who ends you.
******************************************
"Stop staring at that tequila glass like it's about to sprout wings and serve you enlightenment," Tae-Hyun Kang, president of Baekho Estate and Alfred's partner-in-chaos since the dawn of time, leaned back in his chair with the kind of casual arrogance that made women swoon and men want to punch him.
Alfred blinked, and the scene before him snapped into disturbing focus, leaving him raw and agonizingly aware of how deep he'd drowned in those feral, sinful, and catastrophically overindulgent thoughts of… her.
"Judging by that thousand‑yard stare," Tae went on, swirling his own drink lazily, "I'd say something apocalyptic is brewing in that skull of yours." His emerald eyes, an unnerving reminder of his Eurasian bloodline, glimmered with something between intrigue and mischief. "And considering our lion‑hearted monster of a friend has been marinating in silence for…what? Forty‑eight hours straight? That's a personal best. Mazel tov."
Alfred let out a jagged breath, more of a growl than a sigh. His fingers drummed against the tabletop, restless.
"It's crazy…"
"Let me tell you what's actually deranged." Tae cut in, his voice low and rough. "You look like a dead man staged in a chair, staring into abyss and staying wordless for hours." He let a silence stretch slim for a beat. "I am starting to loathe myself for ditching a billion-dollar contract in Hong Kong just to watch you fucking rot in whatever darkness you've slipped into."
He dragged a hand through his wavy black-brown hair with a sharp exhale and narrowed his eyes on Alfred. "If we're staring down disaster, whether political, financial, or personal, I don't give a shit. One word from you, and I'll settle it down."
A ghost of a smile tugged at Alfred's hauntingly perfect profile. "I know. But the situation I'm in… isn't about survival. It's destruction, unavoidable and absolute. And it won't be solved by your Band-Aid methods." He loosened his tie, leaning forward, weight pressing into the words. "It demands something stronger. Something solid."
"Funny thing." Tae muttered with a dry, cynical laugh. He tipped the bottle of Silver Patrón, the clear liquor catching the light before sliding into Alfred's glass. "In my experience, every so-called crisis can be avoided or erased entirely with the right method. Murder, hacking, a tidy little kidnapping… or simply mopping up the blood before it dries."
"Then this might be an exception." Alfred countered, equal parts steel and iron-willed. "Because it involves a breathtaking woman with terrifying charisma, a heart full of yearning, and an unhealthy dose of attraction that I can't, won't, and dare not break free from."
Tae blinked. The inevitable frown between his brows eased into reluctant intrigue, the corners of his mouth curling into a taunting smirk. "I should have known better. But, thanks to your desert-dry dating record and zero interest in anyone breathing, you didn't exactly drop any hints."
Alfred dredged up one of his dark eyebrows before taking three consecutive shots.
"Guess you've got a type, then." Tae drawled.
"Yeah. And it's her."
"Good luck. This is the kind of battle you win only by laying down your arms."
"Trust me, I know better." Alfred admitted, settling deeper into his seat, ready to pour his monstrous heart out. "I'd crawl on my bloody knees for her if that's the last road left. Hell. I'd kill for her. I'd tear people limb from limb, rip apart systems brick by brick, and scorch kingdoms to ash if it meant she'd be mine."
The mischievous glint in Tae's eyes was now replaced with mild consternation. "I always knew you were a hopeless romantic, Alfo, but you had incorruptible restraint. Didn't you?" he clucked his tongue. "Now you sound like a pathetic man on the brink of obsession. And trust me, it's not even close to pleasing."
"You can call it obsession. You can call it madness." Alfred set his glass down on the table with a hard clink. "Hell, dress it up as love at first sight if you'd like; I don't fucking care." His grey eyes were now roiling with the intensity of a thousand wild storms. "What matters is this instinct tearing at my chest and screaming that she's the one. The only."
Alfred dragged a hand down his face, as if the touch alone could steady the chaos eroding every sliver of sanity he claimed to have. "I can already see it, Kang: kids with her eyes, a name that will outlive us both, a legacy carved in stone, and a forever so vivid I could reach out and touch it, as if it's already mine."
But nothing could tame the vicious pull that Danica had wrapped around him like barbed wire, sinking deeper every time he breathed. His blood drew tight, curling with aching need at the mere thought of her being pressed against him, surrendering in his arms… and everything that came after.
It was maddening, voracious, and unrelenting. A hunger that should have filled him with terror.
Instead, he savored the yearn.
Every. Merciless. Inch. Of. It.
"Now you sound even more pathetic," Tae muttered, his voice low, strained between mockery and unease. "But if your insides are screaming, then you should recheck its translation. Sounds less like love and more like a need for a filthy release in something tight …" His eyes slid down at Alfred's groin before snapping back up with a smirk, "not some fairytale romance or delusion of perfect marriages."
"I understand that dealing with two divorces and trash relationships," Alfred let out a derisive grunt, biting back a grin, "has reduced your peace to rubble so thick it's a wonder you can even breathe through the dust. But don't project your ruin on me. It takes a different kind of courage to look truth in the eye and admit it before it eats you alive."
Tae's sharp features softened just enough to be noticed, and the familiar pride and mischief in his eyes gave way to something he despised, guilt tangled with resentment. A bitter cocktail he'd rather chop his dick off than admit aloud.
He squeezed out the air from his lungs, his eyes skittering everywhere. The chandelier, the half-empty branded tequila bottle, the pricey paintings that screamed billion-dollar excess, and even his swirling reflection in translucent glass in front, anywhere but the burning truth in Alfred's smouldering gaze. It was almost tormenting how his best friend always had a fucking point that would slash the wounded nerve to perfection.
An ugly, naked truth that he didn't need right now.
For fuck's sake, he'd blown off a contract meeting and stranded himself on the couch of his high-end Los Angeles penthouse for a half-finished, irritating story Alfred had left hanging—if three words could be called a cliffhanger. Certainly not for some self-discovery therapy or whatever this amounted to.
"If you want her so bad," Tae finally broke the silence, burrowing himself back into the conversation, deliberately sharp, "then go do something that makes that fantasy a goddamn reality."
"That's the problem." Alfred exhaled, his shoulders curving inward as if the weight of his confession might crush him. "I want to get close enough to touch the bruised heart she's hidden inside that thorn-riddled cage. But she's a patch of quicksand. Every step I take forward, she retreats two. I asked for her number; she handed me an email address as if we were in 1998. I complimented her, and she nearly set me on fire with that glare of hers."
Tae's mouth twitched and then broke into a laugh before he tamped it down.
"What do you think, Kang?"
"Are you asking me for advice?" Tae blinked, mock astonished. "The man with two divorces under his belt and whose heart is about as hospitable as a desert cactus? Tread carefully, Alfo. You don't want to end up choking on the consequences."
"I live by an old rule: watch others crash and burn, so you don't waste time doing all the damage firsthand."
Tae narrowed his gaze into something halfway between a glare and a squint. "Is that your idea of a compliment? Or are you taking shots at the man who crawled through emotional hell and came back breathing?"
"A little of both."
"You're an ass."
"Not more than you," Alfred muttered, amused.
Tae pressed his lips into a thin line. "It is taking an ungodly amount of restraint not to smother you with the nearest velvet pillow. But since I'm feeling strangely charitable toward your puny crisis, I'll behave." He let the silence stretch, deliberate, before his tone shifted. "Now, back to your tragic little dilemma. Her unpredictability isn't rejection; it's hesitation. Whether it's professional… or something more than that, she's not leaning in. Yet."
Alfred was listening to him patiently, fully aware of the fact that in matters like this, his ride-or-die buddy was as good as a cigarette in the lungs of a dying man: worthless, mildly suicidal, and hard to refuse. Regardless, he was sure to find a glimmer of guidance beneath the heap of useless advice that were being hurled at him.
"Maybe she has trust issues…" Tae cleared his throat unnecessarily, trying to make sense of words that were slipping past his mouth. "…just like another human on this planet, or maybe she is particularly not interested in you. Or it can be both."
Not. Interested.
Two words landed with far more impact than they deserved. Not being in the vicinity of her scent was already a blade of ice buried under his ribs, but those words sharpened it into a brutal cutlass, razing his powerful frame bone by bone, splitting his chest open until only a hollow ache remained where his heartbeat once lived.
"Are you suggesting I'm not enough to tempt her?" Alfred's jaw flexed in annoyance as he battled to maintain a mask of indifference. "That I don't have it in me to break through her walls to pull her into my orbit?"
Tae forced a grin, the kind that was more nerves than humor. "I'm not saying you're not the kind of man women risk their sanity falling for. I'm just saying…" He gestured vaguely, struggling. "She's probably just… not interested."
"Why the hell wouldn't she be interested?"
"I am just assuming."
"Tell me, then. Do I look undone to you? Ugly?" Alfred thundered on. "Do I look any less like a person with a god complex?"
Tae's gaze slid over him, unhurried and razor-sharp, cataloguing every detail as though assembling evidence. Alfred sat there, carved out of something heavier than flesh, his sheer presence consuming the space, absorbing the room whole until the walls seemed to shrink inward. His shoulders were broad enough to make menace look effortless, the deep navy fabric clinging to him like it feared tearing apart. His face, perfectly symmetrical and meticulously crafted, felt less like nature's gift and more like a warning. And those granite eyes were demanding, punishing, and waiting for judgment.
Finally, Tae's mouth tilted into a careless smirk. "Flawless. Infuriatingly so… like me." His tone was casual, but there was an edge behind it. "And all I'm saying—"
"Why did you divorce Elise?" Alfred interjected, his voice calm but tainted with command, his hand closing around his glass before taking a slow, purposeful sip.
The interruption felt closer to a strike aimed straight at the gut than a curiosity.
Elise.
One name was enough to detonate Tae's thoughts like a brutal aftershock, piercing the corners of his mind and slamming him with memories that had no right slipping past the shell of impassive, cold-blooded control he believed he possessed
"You are a fucking coward!"
"I was sitting here all day, waiting for your arrival like a fool!"
A vein pulsed at his temple, his shoulders heavy as if bearing the compounded weight of moments he wished he could trace backward, unwind, and stop before they took shape. The more he gave in to the misery, the clearer the voices became. Hers. His.
"Elise! Stop the car right now!"
"I didn't tell you to marry a heartless maniac."
The piercing sensation crystallized into burning resentment, swallowing him whole before he forced it down with two more shots of tequila.
"Why are we dragging my first marriage into this?" Tae's voice was iron-flat. "And let's get the facts straight… she left me. Pushed divorce papers across the table on our third anniversary. Hell of a gift."
"That's tragic." Alfred responded, sounding anything but sympathetic. "I'm just studying the mechanics of how a marriage derails and explodes on impact." He arched a brow. "So go on. The more catastrophic the story, the better the lesson. I promise I'll get more out of your trainwrecks than whatever advice you've been pretending to give."
Tae's fingers curled slowly into a fist. "If you weren't my friend, I would have killed you in a hundred unimaginable ways, dumped your lifeless body thousands of feet beneath the graveyard, and slept like a baby on it."
"I am too aware." Amusement flickered across Alfred's face. "Fortunately, I rank very high on the untouchable list." He let the silence pulse between them for a second before leaning in just slightly. "Now, start talking."
Tae grudgingly ran a hand through his hair, more defiance than nervous tick. "Well, Elise was half-American and half-Korean. Daughter of Vito Romano, who was a gangster in a tailored suit masquerading as a high-society tycoon. We were forced into marriage. I was…"
"I didn't ask for a family tree or how you got trapped into a twisted arrangement." Alfred settled back, clearly enjoying the frustration creeping over his friend's heart-shaped face. "I asked you to narrate what went wrong in the marriage."
"Everything." Tae emphasized. "We fought every damn day. Once, she hurled a vase at my head, which I barely dodged. Another time, I was seconds away from her father's men putting a bullet in me. Take your pick of disasters."
"Now you are the one sounding pathetic."
Tae's brow slashed together at the cutting remark.
"You could've avoided the mess if you'd been…" Alfred pressed on, his tone edged with disdain. "…steady as a rock and as compliant as a saint kneeling for judgment."
Tae scoffed.
"I'm dead serious. When Danica is my wife, and she will be, I'll never let her go to bed angry. Not once. I'll do whatever it takes: fix it, say the right words, kiss the fight off her mouth, and rock her world apart in every way I know, making sure she never forgets how inescapably whipped I am for her. And I'll never let something as small as pride or a petty argument put space between us."
"You'd do that because you love her. My marriage was all business and hatred."
Alfred's gaze hardened, but his voice was a shade gentler. "You always have a choice, Kang."
"Whatever." Tae's voice turned more resolute, suggesting he was too cooked up to debate his ground any further. "We're not dredging up my first marriage. Or my ex-wife. Or anything in between. That grave stays buried."
A faint smile touched Alfred's lips as he stood, shrugging his midnight trench coat across his shoulders with a casual elegance that felt almost calculative.
"As you say. But I've already found the answer I came here for."
"You know I am just a call away. In case you ever feel the urge to strangle your future marriage with those very same hands that once swore they wanted a fairytale ending."
Alfred slipped his leather gloves on. "That will never happen, because unlike you," his gaze turned unyielding and cold, "I don't run when it gets ugly. I own the inferno, even if it feasts on ashes of what I am."
The smirk on Tae's face plummeted in a split second, exposing a seam of darkness that made him wish he could undo all choices that had conspired to drag him to this exact, punishing moment. The one where he was forever bound to his dirty work and bloodstained business dealings, rather than the life he might have had if he was with Elise. Only if he hadn't killed—
"Va a ser un largo y tormentoso año." He forced a lungful of air out, watching Alfred leave with finality.