Fair Trade

“Don’t act recklessly if you know what’s good for you. Do you like putting others in trouble?”

“I feel like shit… as if someone used me for a punching bag!”

The man’s expression was strangely twisted by the sharp response. When she tilted her head, he picked up the bottled water that was placed on the side table.

“Drink this first. Now that it’s happened, come to the main hall. Just be prepared.”

What did he mean when he said to come prepared?

“Did… Did Yuri Petrov send you?”

“If it weren’t for Yuri, I’d have let you freeze to death.”

“We don’t have the weather here to freeze to death. Thank you for saving me anyway.”

Grumbling, she stepped down from the bed, rubbing the throbbing back of her head. For a moment, her vision started spinning. Despite the dizziness, her wound appeared to have improved slightly.

Sei, who took out the IV with a deep sigh, approached the man with her folded sleeve down. He couldn’t keep concealing the look of surprise on his face.

In a nutshell, should I say he’s the type who reveals his inner thoughts? He resembles Kirill, who is always clinging to Yuri…

She asked him, “Are you…Kirill’s brother?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m not a fortune teller, so how should I know?”

She didn’t like his sarcasm, so she replied in the same manner, and the man scratched his head, quickly went back to his emotionless expression, and opened the door.

“Go to the main hall.”

She nodded and walked towards the main hall, curiously looking around the mansion where the party atmosphere had vanished.

As she approached the main hall, she detected a familiar odor that grew stronger as she got closer. She was starting to have a bad premonition about what was waiting for her there.

The main hall was surrounded by Giulio’s gang. There was shattered glass at the center of the Steinway piano. Sei gradually slowed down her pace.

Yuri’s condition wasn’t good.

He was kneeling on the floor with an eye patch on one of his eyes, and his hands pulled back and tied to the piano leg. Blood was bleeding out of his wounds. As she looked up along the trajectory of his blood-stained white shirt, she could make out a seriously torn lip.

Surprised, she almost ran away. But her waist was caught in a flash. Giulio, who half-grabbed Sei, frowned as he dropped the cigarette he was holding.

“When did you wake up? Why didn’t you come to report to me?”

“J-Just now. But who is it? Why is he…?”

“Kais Miller. The hacker you mentioned. He walked in on his own this morning.”

Sei slipped out of Giulio’s arms and wrapped her arms around his arms as calmly as possible. Upon hearing her voice, Yuri’s mouth curled up in a smirk. “I told you I’m here to help and to ask for protection. Can’t you understand English?”

At his words, Sei gazed up at Giulio. While spinning a knife out of his pocket, Guilio’s eyes narrowed.

“What can you do for me? And you’d better speak Italian.”

“I’m sorry, but I can only understand it a little. I know why you want to move the route to southern France. It’s because of the Coast Guard. Also, the thing you have to get out this time cannot penetrate the Coast Guard’s surveillance network.”

“Go on.”

“I’ll mess up the Coast Guard’s communications network. It would be useless to manually catch the helm late. Your ship will be out of the sea by then.”

Sei pinched her palms painfully as she alternated her gaze between Giulio and Yuri. There were loud cries of ‘kill the Americans’ throughout the hall. Even Lorenzo warned Giulio, saying, “Don’t trust a mean American.”

Swallowing down the abuse, she hurriedly blocked Giulio. When she looked up straight at him, trying her best to suppress her fear, Giulio’s eyes showed a strange look.

“What’s the matter?”

“Don’t forget, Giulio. He’s a member of the MDP. If you go about this wrong, all the faces and personal information of our members will end up stolen. It’s only a matter of time before it all goes to the FBI. You know what happened to Sergei last time.”

Sergei was a western mafia leader who stood shoulder to shoulder with Giulio. But his mafia head life was ended by one man.

A call came in the middle of a gun battle at a suburban pub. The man said that Sergei had a member of the MDP among those kidnapped and detained by him and told him to release him immediately. If he didn’t listen, they would hand over all the information to the FBI.

However, Sergei ignored the man’s words and shot all the hostages as if he were a bloodthirsty murderer on a rampage.

Only five minutes after he put a bullet in the head of the last hostage, shells rained down over the pub they occupied, and there were no survivors. The MDP took revenge by disrupting the signals of those in counterterrorism operations. At Sei’s words, Giulio glared at Yuri and played with his knife slowly.

“Okay, then I need to know why you’re asking for protection.”

“I’m being chased by the Russian mafia. They say I have their stuff… But, I don’t have anything like that. However, they don’t want to believe it. That’s why I blocked your account on purpose. I had to meet you. I’m sorry.”

This man’s acting skills sure deserve a Golden Globe.

Sei looked at Yuri and bit her lip. Giulio slowly approached Yuri and circled him, staring at his men’s faces one after another.

“Sei.”

“Yes.”

“You will be monitoring him for 24 hours from now. And you, there. Don’t leave Sei’s side. I have to go to the port.”

The man Guilio talked to was the man who brought her in a moment ago.

Sei breathed a long sigh of relief. She wanted to untie Yuri’s hand right away. But her wish was shattered by Giulio, who raised his military knife high.

“Ugh!”

A sharp knife with a curved tip was lodged in Yuri’s shoulder. The red blood stained the white shirt. No one said anything. As Sei stood stiffly, waiting for his next violent action to follow, Guilio brought out the madness he had hidden.

As Giulio pulled out the knife, the thick red blood spattered onto her cheek.

Yuri, who bowed his head, was in pain and was breathing heavily.

Giulio looked down at his open wound with satisfaction, and at his gesture, a doctor came running forward with a visiting bag. He was also the one who treated her head.

“I haven’t severed any of his nerves, so just stop the blood in moderation. Also… Don’t untie his hands for 24 hours and keep an eye on him. I’m sorry, but I… I hate things that are exceptionally white and bright. I don’t like it.”

Giulio wiped the blood off the knife and pressed his lips to Sei’s cheek, who was standing blankly. Her body started trembling but Giulio gently grabbed her by the waist and licked the blood from her cheeks, grinning sullenly.

“Don’t fall for that monster. You have to live a long, beautiful life, Sei. Don’t you think so?”