Chapter 283: Through Taerin’s eyes

Taerin’s POV

"Well?" I ask.

"Miss Kang, we haven’t seen captain for a long time" the man on the phone says, and I shut my eyes.

There’s a low and painful thudding in my head.

"What do you mean by that?" I say calmly. I’m not calm right now, I feel anything but calm.

Taesan, you stupid fool, where are you?

Kang Taesan is as stubborn as a mule, and I know he can’t die. I’ve seen him suffer through different kinds of pain.

My grandfather once starved him to the point where his stomach started to eat itself, and he survived.

He can’t die.

"Ma’am?" the man I’m on the phone with calls, and I drag air into my lungs.

"Yes?" I ask, refusing to believe what he just said about my brother.

"We can’t find boss...and there’s bad news; I don’t know if you’re aware" he says and I grab my hair.

"What’s the bad news?" I ask in a hoarse voice.

I’m getting too old for the hyperactive life of the underworld, too much bad news, too much pain.

"Grandfather Kang is dead" he says and I fall into my seat.

"Apparently he was murdered by a person who revealed himself to Shin Yechan, and this is as recent as two days ago" he continues to tell me.

"Why didn’t he tell me?" I shout before I can stop myself.

Why is Taesan like this? He could have called me, and I would have doubled security!

"Why didn’t that idiot man tell me? Shin Yechan is mentally unstable" I say as if the man on the phone can do anything.

My baby brother doesn’t know just how insane the man is; he doesn’t know the things I know about that man.

Yechan escaped from a psych ward and threatened to butcher the doctors unless they declare him okay and ’wrongfully arrested’.

"Did Yechan state what he wants from my family?" I ask, grabbing my hair even tighter.

I’m going crazy.

"He keeps saying he wants Seoha" he says and I nod.

Of course, he’s here for the illegitimate child he blatantly rejected.

While I lived as the secret member of the Kang family, I spent time learning the ’who’ and the ’what’ of the underworld.

I go through my computer to see the record I compiled about him.

I never knew I would need it. I had only been gathering information for my safety’s sake.

I’m just a woman in a messed-up society, so I needed to get myself at least one thing I would have an upper hand in.

Shin Yechan was a married man with a son.

It’s known that he got himself an innocent lover, the daughter of an ex-worker, a soft man who used to be a small-town fisherman.

Yechan got Minji pregnant, but he gave her an ultimatum to abort the child, or end their secret relationship.

Minji kept the little boy with a strong hope that Yechan would change his mind about the pup.

He didn’t.

He only visited the woman for sex and pleasure. He made her into his free-of-charge prostitute, while avoiding the baby, Seoha, like a plague.

But suddenly his legitimate son, Hanbin, left the family. And Yechan, who is in desperate need of an heir, went back to Minji and her son.

Minji was happy to have Yechan, but Seoha had grown up and didn’t want anything to do with his father.

That was when he met and fell in love with Daeshin, the bastard my grandfather sent as a tool.

Daeshin, the bastard who abused Seoha psychologically and robbed Seoha of his first child.

"Why is Yechan suddenly back?" I ask myself, biting on my fingernail as I search my brain.

It doesn’t make sense.

"Ma’am?" the person on the call says, and I clear my throat, leaning on the table to look at the computer screen again.

There’s nothing that can be of help right now.

"Find Taesan, confirm whether he’s alive or not. I want answers in thirty minutes" I order and end the call.

I call Junho and he picks up immediately.

"Noona" he says over the noise of his environment.

"Have you heard from Taesan?" I ask.

"No. Is everything okay?" the right-hand man asks back, and I can hear him moving away from the noisy place.

"He’s missing and hurt. Someone sent an image that looks like he’s dead, but I didn’t look at it, and I don’t believe it" I update him.

"Damn it, I was trying to tell him about S.Y.C" he says with frustration.

"Shin Yechan" I give him the name.

"What? But he’s dead" Junho says and I laugh bitterly.

"He should be, but he’s not, Junho. Call everyone, I need to know what’s happening to my brother" I say and he ends the call immediately.

Taesan can’t be dead.

If Yechan can kill grandfather, then he will certainly kill Taesan. But again, killing Taesan is equal to killing Seoha.

I gasp with realization.

If Taesan dies, it means that a part of Seoha will die because they share a mating bite bond.

Seoha is in shock because of the picture, aside from that, he’s fine. That can only mean that somehow...Taesan is alive.

"Oh my goddess" I call Junho again, and the beta accepts the call.

"He’s alive!"

"He’s alive"

We both say at the same time.

"How do you know?" I ask.

"Jisu! The kid saved him, she said she followed him and saved him. She also said she was late, but he’s in a hospital in another city" Junho says and I breathe a sigh of relief.

"He’s safe" I say, and the tears I refused to shed suddenly fill my eyes.

"We need to plan and strategize, it’s dangerous for us" I tell him and he agrees.

"But don’t hurry yourself, worry about your boyfriend and the pup" I say with my hand on my chest.

My brother is alive.

"Noona, call me if there’s anything I have to do"

Just as soon as the call ends, the door bursts open and Yuki barges in.

The younger woman’s eyes are wide.

"What’s wrong?" I ask and she points at the door.

"He’s gone" she pants.

"What?"

"SEOHA IS GONE."