Chapter 213.1

Chapter 213.1

Despite the sudden, rude intrusion, Lee Wooshin did not flinch. He only watched Kia tear off the Roman collar with a cold stare, and clicked his gun into battery.

Tension crackled between them like sparks. Kia shrugged out of the neat robe that had hung to his calves, rolled his shoulders so the tight black rash guard training suit stretched across his frame, and readied himself.

I lived in that small house with Kia for half a year. Seoryeong’s voice had suddenly slid through his mind.

Wooshin swallowed his feelings until his throat burned.

He could not decide whether to see the Kia before him as his wife’s sibling, a robber to be torn apart, or Joo Seolheon’s murderer, but one thing was certain: he wanted to put a bullet through that hardened body right now.

There was no time. In a crisis like this, he could not be swayed by useless emotions. Gritting his jaw, Wooshin swung the long barrel.

Kia, rummaging through the Gurkha mercenary’s corpse, dodged with practiced ease, but the buttstock caught him, and he staggered.

The two of them locked on like birds of prey, trading blows even and fast. Blood split his lip, and he tasted iron.

“You’re blind in one eye, so I’ll drive,” Kia said.

“Make up some story about the Kremlin,” Wooshin snapped as he grabbed him by the collar, his voice low and ominous.

“Whether it ends up looking like the mafia opened fire during an illegal break-in or IS started acting up again, we make sure the U.S. doesn’t catch even a whiff of it. If they find out the one America took is Sonya, fuck, things get even more complicated.”

“Oh, so it was the Americans?”

“…”

“I thought everything was finally cleaned up, but did that worm hatch its eggs?” Kia muttered, as if the killings could never end. Wooshin watched his expression closely. He still did not know how much Kia had learned.

It was top secret, above top secret, that Sonya’s mind held all of Rigay’s legacy. Joo Seolheon had not recorded that poisonous information in any of Winter Castle’s files or anywhere else, she had only told Wooshin.

Even Deputy Director Damon had no clue where the research materials were. So Damon must have tried to use Rigay’s daughter as a bargaining chip to find the files.

That was the starting point of the Bird Box operation, and the reason Kim Hyun had been sent into the mission to protect the Owl.

But even after Damon died, he relentlessly tried to retrieve Sonya. He had interfered with and tightened the reins on her from her birth, and Wooshin ground his teeth at that thought.

Maybe it was an obsession with humans carrying first-generation chips, or maybe Sonya was simply the only Korean survivor from Winter Castle. Either way, she remained the single lead.

With the Ukraine war fracturing alliances, and Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi militias dragging everyone into the vortex of war, the United States was making bold moves. Recently, after long standing aside, they had finally intervened in the Yemen conflict and struck the Houthi rebels.

In such turmoil, the desire for brainwashing technology that could change the balance without bloodshed may have returned urgently.

But if saving hundreds of millions required sacrificing Han Seoryeong… if my wife’s head had to be split and used like fertilizer…

Some missions demanded a life spent entirely on the line, that was what responsibility meant, Joo Seolheon’s voice lashed at him like a whip, Wooshin. What you had to give up was not guilt, but the undeserved greed to be loved.

“The Owl must never be exposed to the world,” Joo Seolheon’s voice stuck to him like a lash.

“If you truly cared for that child, don’t lose to the weak Lee Wooshin.”

It felt like swallowing fire, his throat burning from the inside out. For Seoryeong’s sake, Wooshin could stomach any filth, even the disgust of joining hands with the lesser evil.

Just then, Na Wonchang’s report came through his earpiece. Without hesitation, Wooshin grabbed Kia by the collar and dragged her along. Together, they hurried down the stairs, the wrecked central hall coming into view.

The place was a warzone. Shattered decorations and furniture were scattered everywhere, and not a single servant was left alive. Kia let out a low whistle, impressed.

With every step, their boots squelched in blood, and spent shells clattered underfoot. Wooshin inhaled the acrid scent of gunpowder and shoved open the front doors. When he pressed the car key, the sports car parked in the garden flashed its headlights. Kia took the lead and asked over her shoulder,

“What kind of tracker did you put on Sonya?”

“A bio-capsule.”

“You went for the expensive kind. Where’d you put it?”