“I’m going to lose her,” Jungkook whispered. “Again. I’m going to lose the only woman I love. I can’t beat him. And I can’t join him,” he breathed brokenly.
Then he set his forehead down on his appa’s desk and wept.
Gwan Bongju stared down in shock at his son. He had never thought he’d see someone break him. The boy had always been too sentimental, but he had known that this tiny spark in his soul wasn’t just an effect of his eomma’s raising him. Truthfully, his appa had always had a similar soft spot. But, unlike Bongju, his own appa had not indulged such sentimentality in his son.
He winced as he recalled what his father had done the first time Bongju had shown weakness. But he himself had never had the ability to do such a thing to Jungkook. Truthfully, he adored his son. He had always hidden it from him, though. And from the rest of the world. If his enemies knew that he loved his son, such knowledge would make Jungkook even more of a target than he already was.
But, for the first time in years, Bongju found himself powerless to stop himself from reaching out to Jungkook. He bent forward and touched the top of his head. Then he ruffled his hair.
And the years tumbled away.
A boy of four tender and beautiful years, Jungkook knelt before him. His midnight locks framed his chubby face gorgeously as the little boy grinned up at Bongju.
“Appa! Appa! Eomma gave me a horse!” The little boy exclaimed as he made his stuffed pony run around the ground upon which he knelt.
It had been a rare day. When Bongju visited his son at his mother’s house. But Bongju remembered it like it was yesterday. All the pain was just as fresh in his heart as it had been that day.
It had been Jungkook’s fourth birthday. His face had lit up like the sun when his father had entered the tiny apartment. Bongju had wanted to keep her in better style than that. But Danbi had refused every favor but the simplest after she had discovered she was pregnant with his child.
She’d refused Bongju. He’d wanted to marry her. But she had cried out passionately that she would never marry a company man. That she would never raise her child to destroy other people’s lives. She had claimed to have found loving Bongju irresistible, but she would not allow her only child to be formed by the criminal world.
She had threatened to kill herself to protect the child growing inside of her. Bongju had been horrified, for he had truly adored her. He had sworn he would never force their son to do anything he wasn’t willing to do. He had promised whatever was necessary to keep them both alive. She had been all that was good and light in his life. She had, in fact, been the only good thing that had ever come his way.
Until Jungkook was born.
