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His heart pounding but his face a blank mask, Jungkook entered the night club.  The jazzy strains of a rhythm and blues song danced upon his ears as he headed for the table at the back corner.  He could see his quarry already seated there on the red velvet bench.  He was clearly enjoying a meal at his private table.  As he did every Friday afternoon.  Like clockwork.  According to Bora anyway.  The raven-haired man, a generation older than Jungkook, was flanked on either side by a tall man standing at attention.  Clearly, they were his bodyguards.  There were more such characters standing near the exits to the restaurant also.

Jungkook was completely surrounded.  Even his appa’s bodyguards wouldn’t be much help to him if Bora’s father decided to have him dragged from the club and beaten to death.  Just then, he heard the bell above the door sound again.  It was a faint tinkling mostly overridden by the jazz music being played from the tiny stage in the opposite corner of the large room.  But the men who walked through the doorway could never have hidden in plain sight.  Their presence was too overpowering.  Appa’s bodyguards had followed him into the club.  They were clearly taking their job quite seriously.  Each one sidled up to one of her father’s bodyguards until the men with Jungkook outnumbered the men opposed to him.  Jungkook had somehow scored two extra men.  Apparently, his father was afraid he was going to get himself killed.

Jungkook felt the tension inside of him increase several notches.  He knew her father was not a man to be toyed with.  Still, Jungkook seemed to approach him confidently.  He strode across the room before coming to stand before the seated gentleman.

Jungkook bowed before him.

“Lee Kwangjo,” his voice was almost reverent as he continued in his bent-over stance a moment longer before he stood to his full height.  Just two inches shy of six whole feet.  “I know you hate me.  And I also know that you believe you have good reason.  But I never attempted to kill your son.  I merely wished to stay alive.  

“And I love your daughter.  With all my heart.  So I am here to beg you to let her go.  To let her marry me and leave this life behind.  I no longer work for my father.  I want a simple life.  On the outside.”  He glanced toward the nearest window.  “And so does Bora.  A life untainted by darkness or bloodshed.”

Jungkook fell silent, but his obsidian eyes fenced with her father’s.  After a moment, the older man laughed roughly.  “You think you can march into my establishment with a battalion of your father’s bodyguards and demand my daughter’s hand in marriage while you insult my business, and I’ll just comply with your request?”

“No,” Jungkook’s response was a simple breath.  “I do not.”  He shrugged.  “But it was worth a try.  I thought perhaps your love for Bora might just help you see reason.”

“Reason?”  His eyes raked over Jungkook.  “You are a boy.  A foolish boy steeped in infatuation.  In another six months, you will forget Bora, but she will always be my daughter.”

“I am hardly a boy,” Jungkook countered.  “I’ll be thirty come September.”

“I don’t care if you’re sixty.  I will never agree to any marriage between you and Bora.”

Jungkook held his gaze steady with his own.  “Not even if I agree to work for you?”

The older man laughed harshly.  “You?  Work for me?  You won’t even work for your father.  Rumor has it you wouldn’t carry out any of the grislier tasks he asked of you.  I’ve heard that he refused to look you in the face after that.”

It was all true.  Jungkook looked away from Bora’s appa.  He had to convince this man to give him a chance.  But if the man insisted on witnesses, it would be hard to outwit him.  Jungkook swallowed.  He changed tactics.

“I told Bora you’d never believe me.  But she insisted I try.”  His lips twisted wryly.  “The beautiful girl thinks she loves me, you know.  She’s growing to hate you.  Threatening me like you did.  

“I told her you’d never hurt me, that you would never be that foolish.  Seeing as you’d start a war with my father.  You might kill his son, but then he would turn around and kill your daughter.” Jungkook could feel the older man’s tension rise.  “And Bora and I will then have become worse off than Romeo and Juliet.  

“But she insisted you didn’t care one whit what she wanted.  That you’d destroy me – and her along with me – if she defied you.  I came here today to see for myself.  To see if you’d be willing to work with a reasonable man.  But I have found you to have about as much sense as my own father.  Ruthless.  Bloodthirsty.  After no one’s interests but your own.  Certainly not favoring your daughter.  Your own flesh and blood.  

“When I found her the other night, she was contemplating ending her life, you know?  How she could have fallen in love with me in six weeks, I do not know.  But there’s no explaining a woman’s actions, is there?” Again, that wry twist of his lips.

Her appa had gone cold; Jungkook could feel it.  It was all he needed to know.

“You want me to believe you’re in love with my daughter, yet in the next breath you threaten her?”

“It’s not nice to be on the receiving end of threats, is it?  I imagine you don’t like it any better than the next man does.  But you misunderstand me.  I’m no threat to Bora.  However, she may be a threat to herself.  But that, I do understand.  Who wants a mob boss for a father?”  

Jungkook shrugged.  “I know I sure didn’t.  And he didn’t have much use for me either.”  Jungkook’s eyes dueled with his.  “Do you have much use for your daughter?  Planning to marry her off to a man who just wants higher up in your company?  So she can live out a miserable existence until the day she takes too many pills with her soju simply to escape the life you forced her into?”

Jungkook was feeling desperate.  And angry.  Why had he believed this would work?  How could he possibly work with her father?  With her brother?

He must have lost his mind.  Over a beautiful girl.  And a sweet one too.  He felt despair swamping him.