GH | Chapter 1.1

“Ethan. Baby, I swear, I had absolutely nothing to do with this.”

“Keep that mouth shut, Neil.”

Ethan Roach, the young boss of the Serpente mafia, stood in a perfectly tailored suit and bared his threat pheromones as he roughly grabbed Neil by his blond hair. As a beta, Ethan’s threat pheromones would not pose much of a threat to him, and that made the situation even more unbearable.

Faced with Ethan’s vicious rage, Neil had no choice but to close his mouth, but as someone who had never lied, he was truly wronged by this. Yet Ethan looked nowhere near ready to let go of his anger toward Neil.

“Doesn’t make sense. Your being in my room at the exact moment the security cameras malfunctioned, and the ledger that had been fine just an hour ago disappearing. You expect me to believe that had nothing to do with you? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I know what ledger you’re talking about, but really, it wasn’t me…”

Before Neil could even finish, Ethan drove a shoe into his abdomen. Neil crumpled to the floor under the blow, but Ethan still did not seem satisfied, kicking him several more times.

“Ugh, ngh…”

Neil curled in on himself, unable to resist the violence raining down on him. Ethan grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up from the floor. Once again, with a faint groan of “ngh,” those gray eyes he had loved so much until this very morning turned toward him.

“Neil. Neil Burke.”

Ethan repeated the name while Neil panted in his grip, then kissed him hard. For a brief moment, Neil thought it was an act fueled by anger, distrust, and ridiculous love, but the next second he winced from the pain in his lips and shoved the man away. Blood trickled down the corner of his mouth, and Ethan looked down at him with cool eyes and ground out, low and rough:

“The real Neil Burke, the owner of the name you’re using, was already dead in a traffic accident a year ago.”

“……”

“And he wasn’t a beta, blond, or gray-eyed, either. Even now, is there any reason I should not suspect you?”

Ethan’s voice shook with rage and the sense of betrayal from having been deceived. Neil wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled soundlessly. What did that smile mean? Ethan ground his teeth as he looked at the beta before him, now suspicious in every way.

He drew a pistol from his chest and aimed it at Neil’s forehead, at the man who had introduced himself to him as Neil. Neil had hoped the man would beg at his feet, plead for his life, beg to be spared, but the blond man did not move even with the gun pointed at him.

“Ethan. I’m sorry I lied about my name, I was wrong. If you can’t trust me because of that, then there’s nothing I can do. If killing me would soothe your anger, then go ahead and shoot. Dying by your hand doesn’t sound so bad.”

Instead of begging for his life, he even leaned closer to the gun barrel and smiled sadly, and Ethan frowned. As the boss of a notorious mafia, he did not show it on his face, but he was caught in a severe internal conflict.

All he had to do was pull the trigger, and it would all be over. So why was he hesitating? He had dealt with traitors in the organization, with people who lied to him, countless times. Why was he being so shaken by a beta he had only met ten days ago, a beta who was not even an omega? He couldn’t understand it himself.

“I don’t mind if you shoot me, but please trust me on one thing, Ethan. I swear I have never laid a hand on the ledger you’re talking about.”

At Neil’s upright gray eyes and pleading voice, Ethan’s gaze wavered faintly. Was it the truth, or was it an act meant to toy with him? After a long struggle, he seemed to make a decision, and his finger on the trigger moved slowly.

At the same time, in the pitch-black room, a window shattered and a series of strange sounds rang out, as if something had been pierced. Neil caught Ethan’s body as it began to collapse toward him. With a cough, Ethan, now in Neil’s arms, spat out a mouthful of dark red blood.

His eyes seemed to question why he was the one falling, not Neil, but only for a moment. Then, unable to make a sound, he mouthed Neil’s name weakly. That was the last of Ethan Roach, boss of Serpente, the mafia that had plunged Chicago into fear.

– Time’s up, Ro. Wrap it up and come out.

Neil frowned at the flat voice that came through the tiny earpiece in his right ear. He looked toward the window from which the sniper round had flown, the shot that had pierced Ethan’s heart cleanly, and complained with visible irritation.

“What the hell was that, Upsilon? I told you I could take him alive!”

Neil protested in a voice thick with complaint, as though facing an unexpected situation, but there was no answer from the other end. He clicked his tongue softly at the silence and checked the magazine of the pistol Ethan had dropped.

It was still full of the blank rounds he had secretly swapped in that morning. Ethan did carry it for self-defense, but it seemed the part where he had said it was a beloved gun he only used for special occasions had been true. Even if Ethan had pulled the trigger, Neil would not have died, but in the end, Ethan had never pulled it. Even if Neil’s pleas of innocence had been lies, Ethan must have wanted to believe him.

If you thought of Serpente’s boss, known for his cruel nature, it was the kind of story no one would believe, but people in love changed, no matter who they were. Just as Serpente’s boss, Ethan Roach, had changed on the day he lost his life. Neil let out a small sigh and closed Ethan’s eyes, which had gone still without even shutting.

He was the boss of a mafia that had driven countless people into suffering, a wicked man through and through, but this was the last bit of decency Neil could show him, as the man who had briefly played Ethan’s lover. Neil laid Ethan’s body flat on the floor and turned his gaze toward the large wardrobe on the far wall.

If things had gone according to plan, Ethan should not have been shot. The source of this mess was hiding in there, the one who had been unable to escape after Neil suddenly entered the room and had hurriedly hidden himself there. Neil stood before the wardrobe and reached for the handle, but before he could open it, the door burst open first, and the black figure inside lunged at him.

“Damn it.”

Having anticipated this situation, Neil easily evaded the attack from the person who burst from the wardrobe and came at him, seized him by the collar, slammed him to the floor, leaped onto his back, and violently wrenched his arms behind him.

“Ngh!”

The man, helplessly subdued by Neil, glared fiercely at him. Even with nothing around them, his skin prickled, suggesting that the man beneath him was an alpha and was instinctively releasing threat pheromones. To Neil, a beta almost completely unaffected by pheromones, it was a threat that meant nothing at all. Neil spoke quietly to the man pinned under him, still struggling to break free.

“You’re the reason this went wrong. I’ll give you credit for the skill it took to steal a mafia ledger and the nerve to frame me and try to slip away, but I need you to hand that ledger over to me. It’s not something you should be handling.”

Neil’s tone changed all of a sudden, and his words struck right at the man’s weak spot. The man flinched. For a beta to seize the role of Ethan Roach’s lover, the alpha boss of Serpente, with nothing but his face, that was a kind of talent too. That had been the man’s evaluation of Neil.

He had thought Neil either lacked fear altogether or had been blinded by the money and power the boss of Serpente possessed. Either way, a pathetic type. But what was this situation he had just inadvertently seen from the wardrobe, and this situation now where Neil had so effortlessly subdued him, even though he had lived for years as a mafia member?

“How did you know I stole it?”

At the man’s question, Neil took out his phone with a nonchalant expression and showed him the screen. Red dots flashed and moved on it, and beneath them were names listed like labels, each one indicating who the red dot represented. The man’s eyes widened when he checked the red dots and the familiar names on the screen.

The positions of Serpente’s executives and key members were being displayed in real time on the phone of the man called Neil. When Neil even swiped the screen sideways, cameras installed throughout the mansion, including the boss’s room, were broadcasting live.

“If I hadn’t seen you break into this room, that body would have been yours instead of Ethan’s.”

It meant he had known from the beginning that the man had been hiding in the wardrobe because he could not get out of Ethan Roach’s room in time. So the timing of this beta’s appearance, just as the ledger had been obtained, had not been a coincidence? The man stared blankly at Neil, who spoke as if he had entered the room only because he had no choice, to save the man’s life.