Chapter Twenty-One: Vow Over Coffee & Ash
The wind on the rooftop had teeth, but the cold inside me was sharper. I wrapped my fingers tighter around the cheap ceramic mug, the heat a futile protest against the chill seeping from my marrow. The city sprawled below, a glittering, indifferent beast. Up here, with the scent of over-roasted beans and urban decay, it felt like the edge of the world. The perfect place for a confession that wasn't a confession, for a vow spoken into the void.
Detective Choi looked less like a man and more like a stain against the twilight—a worn trench coat, eyes the color of wet pavement. He didn't touch his own coffee. He just watched me, a scientist observing a volatile compound.
"I want the truth." My voice was flat, a stone dropped into a still pond. "Even if it breaks me."
He didn't flinch. "Truth often does."
A simple, devastating agreement. I leaned forward, the metal chair groaning in protest. The storm I'd been caging rattled its bars. "And if Taehyun has anything to do with it—with the holes in my head, with the life I can't remember—if he's the architect of any of this pain…" I let the sentence hang, feeding it my fury. "I swear to God, I will destroy him. I will unmake every brick of his empire and bury him in the rubble."
The words tasted like gunpowder and felt like a lie on my tongue.
Choi's gaze was a physical weight. He let the silence stretch, thinning the air between us until it was hard to breathe. Then, a ghost of a smile touched his lips, humorless and cold. "You don't seem like someone who could destroy a man like him."
The condescension was a spark to tinder. "You don't know me," I hissed, the control splintering. "I may look like something that needs to be kept in a glass case, but if I find proof he's been playing me? Lying to me? Using me?" I pushed the mug away, a sharp, angry gesture. "I will burn everything he loves to the ground."
I painted the picture with my voice—vengeance, righteous and clean. But beneath the table, my hands trembled. I pressed them against my thighs, hiding the treason of my own flesh. My heart hammered a frantic, cowardly rhythm against my ribs.
He observed the tremor I couldn't fully suppress. "Do you hate him?" he asked, as casually as inquiring about the weather.
The question was a trapdoor. I plummeted.
Images, unbidden and cruel, flashed behind my eyes. Not of blood or violence, but of him. His hands, deft and gentle, braiding my hair one quiet evening, his touch so careful it felt like an apology. The memory of waking to the smell of ginger and scallion—a simple soup he'd left steaming on the bedside table after a night of nightmares. The press of his lips against my temple in the deep watch of the night, a gesture so instinctive, so possessive, it felt less like a claim and more like a pilgrim reaching for a relic. The way his eyes, so often shuttered and cold, would sometimes find mine and just… rest. As if my face was a quiet room after a lifetime of war.
I looked away, fixing my gaze on a rusted ventilation pipe. "I can't answer that," I whispered, and the crack in my voice was answer enough.
He let it lie between us, a surrendered weapon. Leaning back, he tapped a cheap biro against the grimy tabletop. Tap. Tap. Tap. A metronome counting down to something. "You're scared."
It wasn't a question. I met his gaze, forcing steel into my own. "Scared? Of him? I've been marinating in fear since the moment I opened my eyes in that mansion. This is just… maintenance."
"Maintenance?" A grey eyebrow lifted. "This feels more like obsession."
The word landed like a physical blow, winding me. Obsession. His? Or mine? The line had blurred into oblivion. "Obsession isn't always a cage," I heard myself say, the words foreign. "Sometimes it's the only thread keeping you from falling."
He studied me for a long moment, the city' hum a dissonant soundtrack. "You know him," he stated. "Better than anyone."
A bitter laugh escaped me. "Better than anyone should have to."
"And yet," he pressed, relentless, "you trust him."
Trust. The word was a key turning in a lock I'd thought was sealed. It opened a hollow, aching space in my chest. I lifted the mug again, seeking its pathetic warmth. "I don't know if I trust him," I confessed to the rising steam. "But I can't… I can't make myself hate him. Not completely. Not yet."
"And if you discover you've been wrong?" he asked, his voice dropping, intimate and dangerous. "If the foundation of this… whatever it is… is just another one of his lies?"
"Then I'll burn him," I repeated, the vow ash in my mouth. A shiver I couldn't control betrayed me.
He chuckled, a dry, papery sound. "A heavy vow to make over bad coffee."
"It's the only one I have left."
The tap-tap-tap of his pen ceased. The world seemed to hold its breath. The wind died. The distant sounds of traffic faded to a murmur. There was only the low hiss of the espresso machine inside and the deafening thunder of my own heart.
"You're afraid of his power," Choi said finally, his voice so soft it was almost carried away. "But I think you're more afraid of what happens if he doesn't have power over you. If he's just a man. A flawed, broken man who… cares."
I went very still. "What I'll feel?" The question was a whisper, stolen by the rooftop breeze.
"Yes. You can choose vengeance. Or you can choose to understand. Both paths will change you irrevocably. The question is, which version of yourself are you more afraid of becoming?"
I looked down into the black swirl of my coffee. My reflection was distorted, a stranger staring back. "I don't forgive," I muttered, a mantra I'd clung to like a life raft.
"Then you must decide," he said, standing abruptly, the chair scraping like a gasp. "Which is the greater tragedy: to let hatred corrode you from the inside out, or to allow the man you swore to ruin become the scaffolding that holds you together?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He slid the pen into his coat pocket, a man who had delivered his verdict. "He protects you," he said, pausing at the door leading back inside. "Even when it looks like cruelty. Even when it feels like a prison. Even when you are convinced he is the monster under the bed. Remember that, when you go digging in graves. Some ghosts are better left buried."
Then he was gone, swallowed by the stairwell, leaving me alone with the creeping dark and the echo of his words.
He protects you.
The phrase twisted inside me, a serrated knot of contradiction. Protection that felt like suffocation. Safety that walked hand-in-hand with terror. A guardian who was also my jailer.
I sat until the coffee went cold, until the lights of the city blurred into a single, glowing wound. The vow I'd made—to destroy, to burn—still hung in the air, but its shape had changed. It was no longer a clean, sharp weapon. It was a question, heavy and unresolved.
Could I destroy the man who, in his own twisted, absolute way, had become my only constant? The man whose proximity was my punishment and my only solace? The man who called me 'wife' with a possession that scarred, and 'little angel' with a tenderness that unmoored me?
I didn't know. The detective was right. I was caught in the riptide of an obsession that was no longer solely his. It was ours. A shared madness, a dark romance written in blood and whispered comforts, in threats and steaming soup, in the unbearable intimacy of a knife held but not used.
I stood, my legs unsteady. The cup was cold in my hand. I didn't drop it. I carried it with me, a pathetic token from the edge where I'd sworn to become an arsonist.
I would still seek the truth. About Venice. About my past. About the accident that wasn't an accident. I would chase it into the darkest corners.
But now, a terrifying new question followed me down from the rooftop, quieter than a vow but more persistent:
What would I do if the truth I found didn't set me free, but bound me to him forever?