Chapter Eleven: Blood-Stained Vows
The altar was a gilded cage.
White orchids dripped from the vaulted ceiling like frozen tears. A thousand crystals in the chandelier above fractured the light into cruel, glittering shards. The air smelled of lilies and cold marble.
I stood beside Park Jihoon.
My wedding dress was a masterpiece of Italian lace and silk, a prison stitched with pearls. It weighed more than I did. The corset bit into my ribs with every shallow, terrified breath I managed to take. My hands, clasped around a bouquet of blood-red roses, were numb.
Jihoon's hand closed over mine on the bouquet. His grip was proprietary, his skin cool and dry. A businessman sealing a deal.
"Smile, my darling," he murmured, his voice a silk-covered blade. The endearment was for the cameras, for the rows of Seoul's elite who watched with avaricious eyes. "The stock ticks up with every photograph."
My parents sat in the front row. My mother's smile was a triumph of cosmetic surgery. My father's nod was one of satisfaction. The merger was complete. Their daughter, traded for a infusion of capital and a shield against debts they'd hidden in offshore shadows.
The priest, a man with a face like wrinkled parchment, opened his mouth.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today—"
CRASH.
The sound wasn't a bang. It was the death scream of solid oak. The double doors at the cathedral's end didn't just open—they exploded inward, splintering off their hinges and slamming onto the marble floor with a final, deafizing thunder.
Screams, sharp and sudden, sliced through the hymn. Then silence, heavy and stunned.
He stood in the wreckage of the doorway.
Professor. Stranger. Shadow.
Taehyun.
But the professor was gone. The man who smirked in libraries was erased. This was something carved from the city's underbelly, dressed in a suit blacker than a starless night. No glasses. No teasing glint. His eyes were flat, obsidian pits reflecting no light. Behind him, flanking him like a dark tide, were men—not students, not academics. Their suits were expensive but cut for movement, not boardrooms. Their faces were blank slates of violence. And in their hands, held low and ready, were guns with matte-black finishes that drank the light.
He didn't run. He processed. Each step down the scarlet runner was deliberate, a predator claiming territory. The click of his Oxfords on the marble was the only sound in the suffocating quiet.
My mother stood, her couture gown rustling. "How dare you interrupt! Security—"
Taehyun didn't even look at her. He lifted a hand, a casual, almost bored gesture.
One of his men moved. A soft phut from a suppressed pistol.
My mother's indignant expression froze. A perfect red flower bloomed in the center of her forehead. She sat back down gracefully, as if overcome by a sudden faint, before slumping sideways onto my father's shoulder.
A beat of incomprehension. Then my father roared, surging up, his face purpling with fury and terror. "You animal! Do you know who I—"
Phut.
He crumpled over my mother's body, a marionette with its strings cut.
The world did not tilt. It shattered. The screams that erupted were raw, primal things. Guests scrambled, overturning chairs, hiding behind pillars. The beautiful ceremony dissolved into a panicked fresco.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. I was a statue of ice and lace, watching my parents' blood seep into the white runner, two dark stains spreading until they touched and became one.
Jihoon's grip on my hand became a vice. He didn't look at my dead parents. His gaze was locked on Taehyun, and for the first time, I saw the polished CEO's mask crack. Not with grief, but with feral calculation. He yanked me hard against him, my back to his chest, an arm like an iron bar across my collarbone. With his other hand, he produced a sleek, silver pistol from inside his jacket, pressing the cold muzzle to my temple.
The metal bit into my skin.
"Stop right there," Jihoon snarled, his breath hot and panicked against my ear. "She dies before you take another step."
Taehyun stopped. Ten feet away. His men fanned out, a silent semicircle of impending death. His eyes finally left Jihoon and found mine. In their black depths, I saw no reassurance, no gentle promise. I saw a cold, terrifying certainty that scorched through my fear.
"You're going to take that gun away from her head," Taehyun said, his voice low, conversational, yet it carried through the cathedral like a judge's decree. "And you're going to kneel."
Jihoon barked a hysterical laugh. "She's mine. The contract is signed. The bloodline is secured. She belongs to Park!"
"She was never a Park." Taehyun took one step forward. The air pressure seemed to drop. "She was never theirs to sell." Another step. "She has been mine since the moment I decided the world wasn't worthy of her."
He was close now. The scent of him cut through the coppery smell of blood and spilled perfume—sandalwood, gun oil, and winter frost.
"Last chance, CEO," Taehyun murmured, his eyes never leaving mine. "Your finger off the trigger. Or I remove the hand."
Jihoon's arm trembled. I felt the minute shift of his muscles, the insane, tipping-point decision to pull the trigger out of sheer spite.
Taehyun moved.
It was too fast to follow. A blur of black. The sound wasn't a gunshot, but a sickening, wet crunch followed by a scream that was all Jihoon. The silver pistol clattered to the marble. Jihoon stumbled back, clutching a wrist bent at an impossible angle, bone gleaming white through torn skin and fabric.
Before the scream faded, Taehyun closed the final distance. He didn't use his gun. He grabbed Jihoon by the throat, lifting him effortlessly off his feet.
"You looked at her," Taehyun growled, the words vibrating with a barely-leashed fury I'd never heard. "You touched her. You thought you could own her."
Jihoon gagged, legs kicking uselessly.
"This is what happens to men who covet what's mine."
He dropped Jihoon. As the CEO gasped on the floor, Taehyun placed the sole of his shoe on his chest. He looked down, his expression one of utter disdain.
"Aish," he said, still looking at Jihoon.
My name. Not a question. A command to witness.
He lifted his gaze to me. "Close your eyes."
I didn't. I couldn't.
He pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Jihoon's body jerked, then lay still, his eyes wide open to the cathedral ceiling he would never own.
Silence, once more. Deeper. More absolute.
Taehyun turned from the corpse. He walked toward me, stepping over the ruin of my wedding, through the stillness of the chapel. His men formed a wall, their backs to us, guarding this horrific intimacy.
He stopped before me. I was trembling violently, the roses fallen at my feet, crushed and bleeding petals. My dress was spattered with fine droplets of blood—my parents', Jihoon's.
He reached out. Not for my hand. His fingers, warm and terrifyingly gentle, traced the path of a tear I hadn't felt fall down my cheek. They came away wet. Then he slid that same hand behind my neck, his grip firm, anchoring.
"They were chains," he said, his voice a rough caress. "Every one of them. I just cut you free."
I stared up at him, into the face of the monster who had been my professor, my tormentor, my shadow. "You killed them." The words were a broken whisper.
"I erased them." His thumb stroked the frantic pulse at the side of my throat. "There's a difference. They would have spent a lifetime draining your light, bending your will, selling pieces of you until nothing was left. I gave you one moment of darkness to buy you a lifetime of dawn."
His other hand came up, cradling my face. He was so close I could see the faint scar near his eyebrow, the dark stubble along his jaw, the absolute, unshakeable conviction in his eyes.
"You can hate this," he murmured, his lips inches from mine. His breath was warm. "You can hate me. Scream it. Fight it. It won't change the truth."
"What truth?" I breathed, trapped in the heat of his proximity, the iron of his hands, the coffin-scent of the air.
"That you are mine." The words were a vow, sealed in blood and gun smoke. "You have been since you scowled at me over a spilled coffee. You will be until the last star burns out. This…" He glanced at the carnage around us, then back to me, his gaze burning. "This is just the receipt."
He leaned in. Not to kiss me. To press his forehead against mine, a gesture of terrifying possession. His voice dropped to a whisper that vibrated in my very bones.
"The world tried to give you away today, little one. But the world doesn't get a say. I do. And I said no."
He finally pulled back, but only far enough to sweep his gaze over my ruined wedding dress, my tear-streaked face. A dark, possessive satisfaction glowed in his eyes.