Chapter Fifty-Five: When the Monster Made a Room for Magic
● Flashback
I stood in the hallway, before the heavy double doors that once led to Taehyun's "forbidden room."
"I want it," I'd told him weeks ago. I was half-joking. Half-challenging.
He hadn't flinched.
"If I'm staying here, I want a library. My library. With books I love. Not records of people you've destroyed."
"Done," he'd said simply.
I hadn't expected him to listen.
Now, I pushed the doors open—and froze.
Gone were the shelves of black folders and bloodstained ledgers. In their place: soft lighting, velvet curtains in my favourite shade of deep midnight blue. Plush armchairs with reading lamps that glowed like captured fireflies. Shelves lined with books—not just any books, but my books. Romance novels with dog-eared pages, fantasy epics I'd read until the spines cracked, worn poetry collections that felt like old friends. A vase of white sunflowers sat on the reclaimed wood desk. My favourite.
I stepped inside slowly, fingers brushing the spines. Here was the book I'd sobbed over at sixteen. There, the one I'd thought I'd lost forever. Books that held pieces of me no one had ever asked about—yet he'd remembered them all.
Behind me, a soft voice said, "You're welcome."
I turned.
Taehyun leaned against the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching me quietly. The sharp lines of his suit were softened by the warm light, but his eyes were as dark and watchful as ever.
"I didn't ask you to do all this," I said, my voice smaller than I intended.
"I know."
"You kept all these details?"
He raised a brow. "You talk in your sleep."
I laughed, despite myself. "That's creepy."
"That's love," he said softly, stepping fully into the room. The space seemed to shrink around him, charged with his presence. "You love quietly. I remember loudly."
He walked over, picked a book from the shelf—the one with the blue cover, the one I'd reread a dozen times—and handed it to me. His fingers brushed mine, a fleeting touch that sparked.
"Out of all of them," he asked, his voice a low murmur, "if you had to choose just one—do-or-die—which would it be?"
I didn't hesitate. I pointed.
"Why this one?"
"Because it saved me," I whispered, clutching the book to my chest like a shield. "It taught me what faith feels like. What it means to lose everything and still choose love. It made me believe that broken people can be whole. That there's beauty in healing—even when the scars never fade."
Taehyun was silent for a beat, his gaze intense, dissecting.
"That's real loyalty," he said finally.
I looked up, startled.
He smiled, a cool, knowing curve of his lips. "You try so hard to look untouched. Unbreakable. But I've seen your cracks, little dove. And you're still the most whole thing I've ever known."
I felt my own smile, shy and real, tug at my lips. "The male lead in this," I confessed, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "was my first fictional love. My first… everything, in here." I tapped my temple.
Taehyun's brow arched. "Really?"
I nodded, a dreamy, faraway look in my eyes. "No one could ever be him."
His smile faded, just slightly. "Him?" A thread of something dangerous—not anger, but a sharp, possessive curiosity—entered his voice.
I laughed softly, enjoying this sliver of power. "No one can be him."
He blinked once, slowly. "Is that a challenge, dove?"
I gave him a coy look over the cover of the book. "Let's find out."
Taehyun stepped forward, closing the distance between us. The shift in his energy was unmistakable—possessive, slightly unsettled, completely intrigued. "He is fictional," he muttered, as if the very idea offended him on a fundamental level. "I'm real. I'm here."
"Exactly," I said sweetly, stepping around him toward the shelves, trailing my fingers along the wood. "And still."
He turned, his eyes narrowing. "Still what?"
I glanced over my shoulder, all innocence. "Still not him."
He stared at me like I'd just committed treason. A muscle ticked in his jaw. "I could build you a kingdom," he said, his voice dropping to that low, velvet register that vibrated in my bones. "Burn down the world for you. Love you in every life this cursed universe gives us. And you'd still choose some printed ink over me?"
I smirked, the thrill of the game humming under my skin. "Printed ink never gave me a headache."
He closed the distance in a second, backing me gently against the bookshelf. The solid wood pressed into my spine, the scent of old paper and his cologne—sandalwood and storm—filling my lungs. "Careful," he warned, his eyes glinting with dark amusement. "You're flirting with danger."
"My fictional love was dangerous too," I breathed, tilting my head up. My pulse was a wild drum against my throat. "Maybe that's my type."
His jaw clenched. He leaned in closer, so close I felt the warmth of his breath against my cheek. "Try it, little butterfly," he whispered, the words dark and intimately amused. "Compare me to your fictional saint one more time."
I raised my brows, loving every treacherous second of this. "He had a genius IQ. He could solve unsolvable equations, recite poetry in dead languages, fight his demons without turning into one."
Taehyun's eyes darkened, becoming unreadable pools of obsidian. "And what do I have?" he asked, his voice deadly soft.
I licked my suddenly dry lips. "Money. Power. A brooding face. Mafia connections. A questionable past. A… very questionable present."
He studied me, his gaze roaming my face as if memorizing the lines of my defiance. "That's all?"
I shrugged, the picture of innocence. "You're not him."
For a long moment, he just looked at me. Then, something shifted. The tension didn't leave, but it changed, coiling into something more potent, more devastating.
"You want devotion?" he said, so softly it was almost a thought given sound. "Fine."
In one smooth, shocking move, he dropped to one knee before me. He took my free hand—the one not clutching the book—and turned it over. His lips pressed against my palm, a kiss that was not gentle, but reverent. Burning. A brand.
"I'd rewrite your favorite story just to be the man you loved," he vowed, his eyes locked on mine, holding me prisoner. "Chapter by chapter. Line by line. No saints. No salvation. Just me—bleeding on every page for you."
I froze. The world stopped. My heart forgot how to beat.
He rose, fluid and graceful, his eyes never leaving mine. He stepped in again, his forehead brushing against mine. "Still not him?" he whispered, his lips a breath from mine.
I was supposed to win this game. I was supposed to walk away untouched, triumphant.
But I'd lost the moment he knelt.
My heart shuddered. My hand still tingled where he'd kissed it.
"Don't," I whispered, the word tearing from me. I pulled my hand back, breaking the contact. "Don't do that."
Taehyun stilled, his brow lifting a fraction. "Do what?"
"Kiss my hand. Kneel like that." I shook my head, my eyes searching his, suddenly overwhelmed. "It doesn't feel romantic. It feels… wrong."
His expression shuttered slightly, a flicker of something like confusion—or hurt—crossing his features before it was gone. "I wasn't trying to make you uncomfortable—"
"I know," I interrupted, my voice soft but firm. I placed a hand on his chest, over the steady, strong beat of his heart. "But I don't want that kind of love."
He stared, silent, waiting.
"I don't want worship. I don't want you kneeling. I want you beside me. With me. In everything." My voice cracked, betraying the raw truth beneath. "I want you in my life. And in the next one. In every cursed, beautiful universe. Not below me. Not above me. Just… with me."
I swallowed, gathering the shattered pieces of my courage. "I just want you as my heaven," I breathed, the confession hanging between us like a sacred, fragile thing. "In both lives. This one… and whatever comes after."
He stared at me, his face an unreadable mask. For a second, I saw it—not the kingpin, not the monster, but the man beneath, laid bare. He looked at me like the universe had just handed him everything he never thought he deserved.
"You already have me," he said, the words so quiet they were almost inaudible. Yet they wrapped around me, tighter than any chain, warmer than any promise.
And I felt it. That terrifying, undeniable warmth. That magnetic pull. Too much. Too fast. Too real.
Wait… what?
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through the warmth. My pride screamed in alarm. I was supposed to be distant. Controlled. An ice queen in a gilded cage. Not… this. Not melting. Not surrendering.
I cleared my throat, snapping back into myself, taking a deliberate step back as if nothing had happened. I crossed my arms, a flimsy barrier. "I wasn't talking about you," I said, my voice carefully casual, laced with a teasing smirk. "I was talking about someone I'll fall in love with. You know… eventually."
His face didn't change immediately. Then, slowly, a dark, delicious annoyance kindled in his eyes. Oh, I'd pricked him.
"And what exactly do you think this is?" he asked, gesturing between us with a slight tilt of his chin.
I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "A moment. A mistake. A mood. Maybe just a sugar crash?"
He stepped forward again, eliminating the space I'd created. He lowered his voice to a warning rumble. "You keep pushing me away like that, love… one day I might stop chasing."
A spark of defiant fire lit in my chest. I held his gaze, unblinking. "Good. Then I'll finally be able to breathe."
I leaned in then, so slowly he had to feel the intention in the air. I moved until my lips were a hair's breadth from the shell of his ear. My whisper was a silken threat. "You think I kneel because you're winning? No, baby. I kneel because I know what happens when I stand back up."
My breath caught. A shiver, equal parts fear and thrill, traced my spine.
He didn't retreat. Instead, he slid one hand to my waist, the other coming to rest lightly on the small of my back—a touch that was both a claim and a cage. "You talk about falling in love with someone, someday," he murmured, his lips now brushing my temple. "But you're already falling, aren't you?"
"I'm not," I insisted, too quickly.
His smile was wicked, triumphant. "You are," he countered, his voice a dark caress. "And it's driving you crazy that I got under your skin. Into your head. Into that guarded little heart you swore no one could ever touch."
I swallowed hard, my defenses crumbling.
"And you hate it," he added, his mouth hovering a whisper from mine, "but not enough to stop."
I was frozen. Caught.
His gaze held mine, a universe of dark promise swirling in their depths. "You want to run?" he whispered, the challenge clear. "Run. I won't stop you."
The unspoken end of the sentence hung in the fragrant, book-scented air, more binding than any chain:
But I'll always be right behind you.