Page 14 of Marked By Him

When she returns later that evening, she doesn’t suspect a thing. I watch from afar as she toes out of her flats and shrugs the tote bag she’s carrying off her shoulder.

She stretches with her arms high in the air, the arced position showing off the true shape of her body. It often gets lost under the cardigans and long skirts she wears.

There’s no use denying she has a nice figure—her torso is trim and flat but her hips feminine and round in shape, legs long for her petite height. Both her breasts and ass offer handfuls of supple, plump flesh. Just enough curves to be dangerous.

But nothing will distract me from what I have to do. Not even an attractive woman like Monroe.

At 7:48 a.m. on day four of my surveillance, she leaves her apartment carrying a canvas tote bag with an English quote printed in bright bold letters on the side: “It’s a good day to read a book.”

Pathetic.

Monroe walks three blocks and then hops on the subway.

Five stops later, she emerges from the Suyeong station, where she walks the rest of the way to the school.

I remain at a distance, watching her cross through the school gates. She kneels to help a small girl with the laces on her shoe and then guides her inside. The girl seems at ease around her.

So do the children in her class. She teaches fourth graders how to read, write, and speak English.

It seems she has a naturally nurturing spirit.

The way she smiles at her students makes my stomach twist.

But my head is full of derisive thoughts. Judgments over how pitiful and mundane her life is.

No wonder she was so terrified in the alley. She’s nothing more than a skittish rabbit in a world of ferocious tigers that will consume her whole.

At lunch she’s polite with coworkers, Korean and expat teachers alike, but she seems relieved when she has a moment to sit in the corner and enjoy her food alone. A small plastic container of rice and dumplings. Occasionally, she checks her phone.

Monroe doesn’t have many people in her life she’s close with.

She speaks to her mother twice a week. Kelly Daly is the only real friend she’s made since moving to South Korea. The night she stumbled into the alley, she was coming from a date.

Otherwise, she’s single and alone.

Old photos from her social media reveal she once was in a very serious relationship with a man named Elijah Turner. He’s dead now.

Monroe moved to South Korea a year later.

After school, she walks briskly, making a couple stops on the way home. She picks up some groceries at E-Mart across from the subway station and then some fried chicken from a little family-owned restaurant next door.

On Friday, I’m bored. I’ve gathered all I need, ensuring there’s nothing else about Monroe Ross that I need to know before following the Baekho-je’s command.

I’ll be doing it in her home. It’ll afford privacy and the isolated means to end it quick. A simple slit to the throat and she’ll be dead. I’ll have some of my men do the cleanup and disposal.

The tiger marks on my collarbone have barely healed from the other night.

Do-shik will be adding another once I’m through with the stupid girl.

For the first time, as the school semester ends and she’s relieved of classes for the summer, she deviates from her schedule.

In the afternoon she takes the subway and gets off two stops earlier than she usually would.

Intrigued, I follow distantly behind her.

I read the sign before it occurs to me where she’s going—Haneul Children’s Home.

An orphanage.

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