Page 58 of Fallen Starboy

The leisurely napat the hotel was over too soon. Fucking labels had to go and ruin everything, man.

Ari’s phone blasted the most annoying ringtone known to mankind, waking us up an hour after we’d laid down to sleep. She stirred in my arms, but damned if I wasn’t reluctant to let her go. Every other time I’d let her go, she hadn’t come back. She’d run away from us, from me. And I didn’t wanna take that risk again.

“Come on, Jun, that’s the company,” she mumbled into my shoulder as I tightened my hold, her hand already bending backward to reach for the damn phone on the stand. “Jun!”

“Fine, fine,” I muttered, reluctantly releasing her. “I’ll just lay here and freeze to death without your warmth.”

“Dramatic,” she chuckled, switching on her professional voice as she answered the call. “Simmons.” A pause. “Right now?” Her whole body tensed, and suddenly I was the nosiest person on the fucking planet. “I suppose we could, sir. But why now?”

I frowned as the other half of the conversation took shape by context clues. Someone wanted us to go in to the office, rightnow, after being shot at and threatened and scared shitless. The fucking audacity of it all really chafed my ass. But what choice did we have? The label was the label, regardless of what country we were in and who was holding the reins.

“We will see you in an hour, sir.” She snapped the phone closed and turned to me with a sigh. “Put your shoes on, Jun. We’re wanted at the office for some debriefing and a formal report.”

“They don’t seem to care that we were all put through something traumatic just now, do they?” I rolled out of the bed, grumbling the whole way. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but she was within range, so she got my irritation, like she’d always done in the past.

“The upper management phrased it like they were working to ensure the utmost safety for you, so perhaps let’s not act like a dick when we get there, yeah?”

Forty five minutes later, we stepped out of the car on kNight Entertainment property. Two hours after that, we’d been put through the wringer, and now all the big wigs knew we had a past with each other. We’d been forced to disclose our previous relationship and lay it out on the table, thanks to the forwarded information from the police report.

But now, there was no need to hide our relationship. Well, whatever the fuck you wanted to call what we were now. I held Ari’s hand in mine as we stepped out of the main building and into the night air, feeling freer than we had in a long ass time.

She’d called herself Yejin’s mother.

I couldn’t deny that it made me feel giddy to hear that come from her. I was glad we left Yejin with Pujin at the hotel, but when we got back to the room, I planned to wake her up and explain it all. Everything, we’d tell her anything she wanted to know. I just hoped she’d accept Ari for who she was, that shecould understand. She was seven, not three. She was mature for her age.

“Jun, you don’t have to hold onto me like the wind might blow me away, you know.” Ari tugged on her hand, perhaps under the impression I’d release her if she asked.

I just gripped it tighter and tugged her against me. “I want to.”

She shrugged, but she didn’t fight me anymore. She might’ve even leaned into the embrace just a little as we approached the parking garage.

I was on cloud nine, floating on the feeling of having everything I’d ever wanted. It was a miracle I spotted the man on the other side of the parking lot when I did. My brows furrowed as he approached, because none of the guards we’d brought with us seemed concerned with this stranger closing in on their boss.

“So the company wants to release a mini-tour schedule on the continent. I was thinking we could aim for mid-fall, because that would give you enough time to practice with your new staff, and it’s a bigger buffer than you’re used to, so the workload won’t be as heavy?—”

I only partially heard the words she spoke as her thoughts ran a mile a minute. I knew she was just preparing the business end of things, but I didn’t have any capacity to focus. Something felt off, and it set my teeth on edge. Made my skin crawl.

“Do you guys see the dude over there by the company cars?” I asked a guard to my left, my voice stronger, more confident than I really was. “He’s not one of ours.”

The stranger in question suddenly glanced up and locked eyes with me, and then, as if this was some underfunded B-list action flick, his hand moved in slow motion, the gleam of metal catching in the moonlight as he brought a gun up and pointed it at me.

And then turned it in the direction of Arista with a feral snarl on his twisted lips.

“Die, bitch!”

I didn’t think. I didn’t breathe. My hand yanked Ari against me as I wrapped my arms around her and spun, turning my back on the shooter as the bullet left the gun. She screamed, flinching against me as the sound echoed ominously against the concrete. The bodyguards finally closed ranks around us, but it was too late. The searing burn in my shoulder told me I’d taken the bullet meant for her. She was safe.

Ari was safe.

And that was all that mattered, as the world went dark and I sank to my knees, the sound of her screams ringing in my ears until I blacked out.

Chapter

Twenty-Five

ARISTA

“He’ll be fine,but he’s going to be out of commission for a few months at least, if not longer. Lucky it didn’t hit anything vital.”

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