Page 123 of Lethal in Pink

Jae: Meet me after work?

The snark evaporates from my fingers, leaving my hands suddenly, sickeningly heavy over the screen. After work. At the clinic. Where the cameras are. Where every move is logged.

I flip the tablet back over. Penelope’s warning still blinks on the screen, a reminder that the Board doesn't wait for schedules to clear.

I look back down at the phone. The countdown hasn't just sped up; it's broken entirely. If I go to him tonight, I’m walking into a fishbowl of flashing lights and live microphones to make a choice I can't take back.

What other choice do I have though? I’m already in over my head.

My thumb taps out four final words, hits send, and lets the silence close in.

Me: I'll be there.

Chapter forty-five

Jae

The city at midday through the windshield looks washed out, bleached by the punishing California sun. Traffic is a crawl of brake lights and shimmering asphalt. I’m doing ten under the limit in the right lane of the 10, one hand loose on the wheel, the other tapping a rhythm against the center console.

The conversation with Amiyah happened last night in the vet clinic parking lot, both of us leaning against my car while camera crews loitered at the entrance like they were hoping the building might spontaneously produce something worth filming. She looked perfect—pink blouse, blonde hair pulled back, the kind of composure that makes other people look like they’re forgetting how to stand—and she took the whole Kai Ryu thing with the specific, devastating grace of someone who’d already decided not to be surprised.

“So you’re a K-pop star,” she’d said, not a question.

“Was,” I said. “Very was. Past tense. And I sure as hell don't plan on going back to it.”

“You have fan accounts.”

“Fan accounts have me. There’s a difference.”

She laughed, the sound bright and quick in the thick air, and it should have closed the loop. Should have been enough. The secret’s out, she’s fine with it, we move on. Except something in her eyes didn’t quite land. Something about the way she held her shoulders, the fractional distance she kept between us that hadn’t been there two days ago when I had her bent over my couch making noises she would deny under oath. Not cold. Not cutting. Just slightly out of reach, like a call dropping mid-sentence, the connection thinning to static before the words finish.

The possibilities run on a loop, none of them useful. The identity chaos spooked her—fair enough, finding out your whatever-he-is spent three years on international stages tends to recalibrate expectations. She’s pulling back from whatever we’re building because the building got complicated overnight. There’s someone else, though the thought lands like a rock in my stomach and I push it away before it settles. Or—and this one feels most likely, which is its own special brand of humiliation—I’m just too far gone over her to read anything clearly anymore, projecting my own anxiety onto the blank spaces between her sentences like a man translating a language he doesn’t speak.

The radio hums. Some pop track I’ve heard six hundred times. I let it play.

My phone rings through the car speakers.

The name on the dash display stops the thought mid-cycle. Kiho. Two in the morning in Seoul, which means he’s either still gaming or something is catastrophically wrong. Given that he typically texts before he calls and his last text was fourteen hours ago asking if I’d seen a specific patch note for a game I don’t play, the math doesn’t favor gaming.

I hit accept.

“Hey,” I say, the greeting automatic.

“Hyunjae.”

My name. My full name. The one he uses maybe twice a year, when whatever he’s about to say requires the gravity of all three syllables. My jaw tightens before he says another word.

“Listen to me,” he says, and his voice is stripped. Flat. The easy energy he carries like a second skin has been surgically removed, leaving something careful and measured in its place. “I need you to listen, and I need you to not—” He stops. Starts again. “Just listen. Don’t interrupt.”

“Okay.” My hand finds the wheel, grips.

“Nari heard something.” His girlfriend. Rising act, Baek Sound Group, the kind of talent that gets featured on every end-of-year list before she’s even dropped a full album. “She was at the company building late. Overheard Minjun and Director Baek in one of the private rooms. The walls are—you know how they are. Not as soundproof as they think.”

The name lands in the car like lead. Baek. Seo-jin Baek. Chairman of the board at Baek Sound Group, the man who has spent the last decade watching Crown & Throne outpace his label at every award show, every chart, every distribution deal that mattered. The man whose smile in industry photos never reaches his eyes.

“Baek took out a hit on you,” Kiho says. Each word placed with deliberate weight, like he’s reading coordinates. “A contract. On you specifically. Possibly on the family too, but you’re the priority. The heir. The one who walked away.”

My first response is a flat, almost bored “A hit.”