*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ

"Love, listen to me." 

 I held my breath, nostrils flaring as my ex slid the partition to the bedroom area shut. We were now aboard a private jet to only God knows where.

"Don't call me that, you liar!" I spat, sitting myself down in a huff.

"Jungkook, you've been lying to me this whole time!" I complained, "How do I know what kind of person you really are? Will you hurt us? Will you kill me too if you had to?"

"Melanie....w-what did you just say?" Jungkook's expression falters at the incredulity of my words. 

Judging by the way the spark dimmed from his eyes and the deflated look on his face...I might as well've just shot him straight through the heart.

I knew right then and there, that I'd crossed the line. But the confusion and the fear was just getting to be too much. 

I could feel it, all of it, the anxiety pent up and swirling through my whole body like thick smoke.  It made it hard for me to slow my thoughts down. Much less, listen to what Jungkook had to say. I balled my fists in my lap, how was he going to explain any of this? The funny thing was, I bet I'd be happier if I didn't hear it.

These last two days were quite enough. I still felt crazy, as though I were trapped in someone else's dream!  

Jungkook's dark orbs glazed immediately with wetness, his coffee pupils shaking with hurt before he stepped away and turned his back on me.

Was it that he could no longer bear the sight of me after what he did? 

I couldn't be sure.

He raked his strong hands through his thick, dark mane crossing the room. Letting his vigorous frame fall warily into a beige, leather armchair next to the bed.  

His head piled morosely into the cradle of his hands, I watched intently as Jungkook reached his right arm up to slide the tiny airplane window closed without  even looking.

The tight black t-shirt he wore, strained traitorously across the broadness of his back, the muscles of his bare arms flexing as he pushed his fingers through his hair in frustration, once again.

The plane's engine hummed quietly. The only thing to break the deafening silence.

For a moment, I held my composure. 

The both of us at opposite sides of the space, neither speaking while fear, confusion and hurt still rioted through me. Here I was, alone in a room, thousands of feet in the sky with the man I love but I did not feel safe at all. 

This thought alone broke me. 

I love Jungkook, with all my heart, I do and I want him and us so badly to work out but I just didn't know what to think anymore! 

Jungkook has kept so much hidden from me. 

How can I love him without trust? 

The shocking reality of the last two days made every memory, every moment we shared feel like a lie.

Biting down fiercely on my lip, I tried my hardest not to cry. 

Then I heard it. 

A soft sniffle come from Jungkook's corner which made me turn around slowly. 

Only to observe that my ex's shoulders were shaking.

Yes, ever so slightly like a tiny leaf in the wind whilst his head remained bowed in his hands.

"Jungkook...." I enquired, completely caught off-guard. "A-... are you crying?"

Jungkook slowly lifted his face to look pitifully past his fingers. 

Straight away, he'd cornered my feelings with blood-shot puppy-dog eyes. 

My emotions immediately held captive by his delicately trembling lips and the glass-like tears streaming down the soft slope of his cheeks to the end of his auspicious nose.

The handsome man withering before me was nothing at all like the cold blooded murderer I had been led to believe he was.

A familiar warmth exploded inside my chest.

Deep down inside....I knew he was still my Kookie....

"Noona, I'm sorry." he broke down, finally.

I looked on, stunned and shaken as Jungkook sobbed quietly.

"For everything..." He whispered.

Then as if something had switched on inside of me, I swiftly rushed to my ex's side, feeling my stony disposition crumble into nothingness.

I always could never stand to see him cry.

Huddled on the floor at his feet, I reached up to strum my fingers gently through the dark strands that lay softly at his temples. Jungkook closed his eyes as my fingertips ran past his ear and came to rest comfortingly at the nape of his neck. 

"If only you would just let me explain..." He muttered.

"What if you told you," I croaked feeling my own lips quiver, "That I'm scared."

Jungkook opened his eyes to look down at me.

"I'm afraid to hear what you will say...How it might change everything, change us..."

Despite everything the corner of his mouth turned up in a small smile, "For a while there, I thought there was no, us anymore..." He said.

Getting up on my knees, I leaned in and kissed him. The heat of my tears warming my cheeks as I did so. 

Jungkook pulled me onto his lap where I nestled against him, wrapping my arms around his neck. Kissing him urgently and thrilling at him doing the same. He instinctively squeezed my hips before sliding his hands underneath my sweater and trailing their warmth all the way up my back making me shiver.

I sobbed into his mouth and Jungkook whimpered in response, love and lust seeping from the both of us. I felt like I was losing it, like nothing else mattered. I just wanted to prove something to myself. That I knew the man in my arms. To feel close to him again, like I used to. 

"Melanie," Jungkook moaned against my lips, "Baby, I love you."

"I love you too."

"I would never hurt you," he said.

"I know." I mumbled, feeling sorry.

Planting one final, indulgent kiss on his mouth I then stopped to look him in the eyes. They looked back at me, deep and sincere and I smiled, feeling much better than I did before.

"Okay...go on." I said softly, utterly beside myself with uncontrollable compassion for the man I loved, feeling my heart ache in confusion and longing..... desperate for answers! 

"I think I'm....ready to listen."

Jungkook drew in a deep breath and swallowed his tears so he could finally speak.

"When I was a boy...." he began cautiously, "....at the age of twelve, I found out that my father was a section chief in the KSS counterintelligence bureau."

A heavy, buzzing silence hung in the air as he paused again. 

Knitting my brows in determination, I placed a gentle hand on his knee, encouraging him to go on.

"What's the KSS?" 

Jungkook swallowed, looking down.

"Well, at first, I too didn't really understand what that meant but the older I got, the clearer it became that my father wasn't an ordinary man. He was a spy, a member of the Korean Secret Service."

The Korean Secret Service?

I recited in my head, both enlightened and doubly mystified at the same time.

"Did you ever wonder why Ji and I were left on our own so often while my parents were away on 'business trips'?" Jungkook made a 'quote en quote' action with his fingers before continuing on, "Why my family always moved around so much when we were younger? My father is a spy and one of Korea's deadliest assassins. That's why."

I pursed my lips together, not wanting to interrupt. After the information I saw on the screen back at the hide-out in New York, sure I was still shocked to hear the words come straight from Jungkook's mouth but I was not at all, surprised. 

How else do you explain having a kill-count of over a thousand people?

Better yet, how the heck else do you explain having a kill-count, at all in the first place?

"In my early childhood, we all moved around together... dad, mom, Ji, Hye-rin and I but my mother quickly became resentful of that. She wanted a stable life for us but we were sadly, never really able to put roots down anywhere."

I frowned at Jungkook's words. My family wasn't picture perfect either but I knew what is was like to have a place to call home. 

"Instead we moved from place to place, changing school after school while my dad roamed the world, constantly disappearing off on one secret mission after another...it was a different way of life but we learned how to cope with it." Jungkook nodded. 

"That must have been really hard on you guys growing up?" I said.

"It was," Jungkook answered truthfully. "That's why eventually, my mom sent us to stay with grandmother for a while and that was..." His eyes shone with nostalgia, "That was great." He finished.

I saw his jaw clench again with emotion when he stopped speaking suddenly, so I caressed the back of his neck again for him to carry on.

"It didn't last forever though, we would eventually leave there too. And that's when we moved to Terry Oaks and....I met you." He smiled.

I returned a little one before Jungkook's faded from his lips again.

"Little did I know," He said darkly, "That it was all a part of my father's inevitable plans for me."

"Plans?" I sputtered, "What plans...?"

"For me to take his place in KSS someday as 'geodaehan' and leader of the Jeon family Clan."

This all sounded so un-real! I couldn't have made up the stuff that I was hearing on my own, if I tried.

I held my breath in reluctant anticipation of the rest of Jungkook's story. 

"When I turned sixteen, It was time to reveal that my dad had elected me to be his successor in the KSS. He would always take us two boys out on activities. Naturally, I enjoyed them but Ji...not so much. And rightly so....some things were strangely intense and taxing on the body. We learned archery, how to hunt and shoot, rock-climb, all of that and more, you name it from my dad. Sometimes we wondered why he would push us so hard when we were supposedly only out there to have fun. These camping trips and father-son retreats...they were all tests. When Ji-Woo didn't exhibit the same traits that I did: exceptional strength, agility, complex critical thinking abilities..."

I rolled my eyes with a smirk, "Right..." I commented. 

And Jungkook smiled a little. The both of us enjoying a brief moment of light-heartedness in the midst of such an intense conversation. 

"... dad decided on me. Secretly, he had chosen me all along."

"Woah," I mouthed, almost in a whisper, "So does this mean that, you're a spy too...I mean, a secret agent.... assassin?" I asked, not believing the words coming out of my own mouth. 

"Yeah," Jungkook answered, some-what shyly.

"The Jeon Clan has many agents in the KSS. Its not just father and me. I have many aunts, uncles, cousins who are all agents but there can only be one chosen geodaehan at the head of each Clan and that's my father. When he turns sixty, it will be me."

Jungkook could probably tell from the look on my face that I was visibly, struggling to take this all in. 

 "Mel, you see... the KSS only handpicks its league of agents and assassins from seven, long-established Korean families. Our family is one of them, so is Jimin's, Namjoon and Yoongi's. They are secret agents too and will be the future geodaehan's of their Clans."

"So that's how you know each other?"

"No. That's how our families know each other. When we met at school, we were just ordinary kids. The four of us found out about all this around the same time in High School and it made perfect sense then why my dad had moved us to Terry Oaks. The other three families who lived their true identities in the US all called on my dad to devise a plan for the next-generation 'geodaehan' to come of age and train together. I gotta say it was nice to make other friends in people who could share the same burdensome secret. It made us close, like family."

"Woah..." I breathed out in shock. 

Jungkook had just opened my mind up to a whole new world and I scrambled to put my last two remaining brain-cells together to try and process the complexity of it all. 

"Ok, so let me get this straight- your dad is some super-spy assassin dude and you're gonna be just like him too... a geo...a geo-what?"

"geodaehan'" Jungkook quipped.

"Right." I said quickly, "......and I'm guessing that all this crazy stuff that happened over the last two days has something to do with this?"

"Well, yes." he answered.

"But why is this all happening now, Kookie? Why haven't I, in all the years we've known each-other...seen you get into in some shady, dangerous situation like the one we're in now? Where you had to.... I mean, I've seen you kill people?" 

I could feel my blood pressure rising again by just asking this.

"I mean, if you guys are really spies, shouldn't everything you do, be done in secret?" I pressed.

Jungkook remained calm, allowing me to vent my thoughts to him.

"How did I get involved? Why did the some freak hold a gun to my head? Why did I get followed from the hotel? Why is someone trying to kill me when I never had a clue about any of this?"

Jungkook pushed his fingers through his hair again before letting go a slow breath.

"Mel, its a long story." He replied so I folded my arms again over my chest to show him that I was listening.

"About three years ago, one of my dad's colleagues, a man called, Jung Dong-il, was suspected of selling secrets to the Russians—. A catastrophic breach that would cost the entire agency's reputation and eventually, the lives of all its agents."

Jungkook stood up, gently allowing me to slide off of his lap and replaced me into the chair while he stood and proceeded to circle the small space of the air-cabin as he explained.

"Every agent that joins the KSS knows intimately how one broken rule can cost lives. Luckily, my dad got wind of the breach early on and reported Dong-il before anything could go too far. But because of Dong-il's age and rank as geodaehan of the Jung Clan, they were lenient with him."

Jungkook clenched his fists, "That's where the KSS fucked up. Everything came back to bite them in the ass. They should have killed-off that mother-fucker when they had the chance!"

"Jungkook!" I gasped at his un-characteristic outburst. 

I'd never heard him talk like this before. 

"Sorry, love..." He looked at me apologetically before continuing.

"Dong-il, fresh off a six-month suspension, was itching to hit a notorious Japanese drug cartel where it hurt, in order to prove his worth to the agency again. In my opinion, he should have never been given the chance."

"So what happened?" I asked, nearly ready to start nibbling on my nails in suspense.

"Shit hit the fan, is what happened! Taking down an entire cartel was a mission that would be extremely high risk and requires the involvement of several tiers of agency to ensure its smooth execution! But Dong-il, foolishly took it all upon himself."

Jungkook bit his lip, closing his eyes in what I know, was suppressed fury.

"The crime boss, Sota Hiroki, caught wind of Dong-il's plans somehow. With all the intel Sota had, Dong-il didn't stand a chance then against such a sadistic cartel leader."

'Oh my gosh, did he kill him?" I asked, curling my legs up into the chair.

"No." Jungkook said flatly, "Things quickly spiralled out of control when the cartel captured the Korean Prime Minister's own teenage daughter along with an innocent bystander who we guessed was a friend of the girl."

I gasped audibly and Jungkook sighed heavily, sitting back down again on the bed next to me.

Hiroki wanted Jung Dong-il and the head every other KSS-assassin family's geodaehan on a plate—literally, including my father's.

"Oh, no!" I whimpered at the thought of dismembered heads rolling around or being shipped to the cartel leader in blood-stained cotton sacks and shook my head to clear the gruesome imaginings from my mind. 

"Hiroki gave the KSS seventy-two hours to deliver, or they would execute the girls live on social media."

I clamped my hands over my mouth in terror.

"With the clock ticking, Dong-il, like the fucking coward that he was, went off the grid. Little did the KSS know, he had teamed up with Hiroki all along and this was just an elaborate sham to get rid of the other six families' geodaehans, who were all now his current enemy."

Tears of anger swam in Jungkook's eyes now.

"Mel, I was so angry." he said, "I had no choice. To save the girls and our families, I would have to become a man who I swore to myself, after the job was done, I would never be again. I would have to be a ruthless, avenging killer without limits or mercy. That's when I reached out to fellow snipers, Jimin and Yoongi. Namjoon wasn't especially skilled in fire-arms but his intel and skills in secret intelligence still played a major part in helping me. Together, we assembled an ad hoc group to identify and neutralise every threat. That included Sota Hiroki's entire cartel, the Jung clan and Jung Dong-il, himself." 

"Why wipe out the entire Jung Clan when Dong-il was the traitor?" I asked, feeling like I had woken up in the middle of some sort of alternative universe or latest blockbuster movie!

"Because Mel, I suspected as any good KSS agent would, that the other members of the Jung Clan could become traitors too. Once we had completed the mission and annihilated their geodaehan, there would be too much at stake. On top of that, judging from Dong-il's own actions alone, lack of remorse for his wrongs against the KSS and his need to strike vengeance on the other families even after betraying us all in the first place-   anyone from his clan could be corrupted."

Jungkook clasped his hands together, squeezing his eyes closed as he spoke from memory.

"I had to take the rules into my own hands. The second generation of KSS geodaehan would  have to clean up the mess that our fore-fathers had created. We would make up for their past mistakes and do the right thing, no matter the cost. So I embarked on a treacherous odyssey that pit me as the prime target against some of the drug underworld's most skilled and ruthless operatives. Not to mention, the full force of the Hiroki cartel, itself. After we wiped the cartel clean, I embarked on a desperate hunt for the traitor, Dong-il and his accomplice Sato Hiroki."

"Jungkook..." I muttered through my fingers, "Are you sure that was the right thing to do?"

Jungkook sighed, "At the time, I thought it was. I was young and sure of myself....maybe too sure. With the fate of the country on the line and a pair of  newly-seasoned but highly skilled, assassins by my side— I was certain we would be able to stop the threat from inside before it was too late and all this shit got splashed all over the news."

"This is a lot for me to process," I admit to Jungkook, "But your explanation only answers half of the most important question here...."

"What do you mean, about what any of this has to do with us?"

"Yes," I replied, trying my best to put the pieces together and failing, "......was what happened at Ji- Woo's wedding this weekend going to happen at ours? Is that the reason you disappeared?"

"Mel, I disappeared because....because. In completing that mission....something went wrong. Horribly wrong and it was my fault. I..." Jungkook broke off, his eyes swimming with regret.

"What happened?" I enquired, feeling as if I were teetering at the edge of a cliff.

"Jimin and Yoongi made a clean job of eliminating all targets but it was a little too late when they realised that the son of Dong-il was missing. Jung Hoseok had escaped being hit. I didn't know this yet at the time. It was only after I'd finished off Sota and Dong-il, got the girls and delivered them back to safety, that I made one big mistake."

Jungkook swallowed harshly and I felt my throat go as dry as sand-paper.

 "After everything was over, at the end of the mission I relaxed, a rookie error on my part. Thinking all threats had been eliminated, I revealed my face on my way out of Seoul. Dong-il's son, Hoseok used intel to pick up the images of who had killed and murdered his father and the rest of the Jung Clan. He saw me exit the facility where they'd been hit. Now my secret mission was not so secret. Hoseok still doesn't know of anyone else's involvement, only that I was behind the orchestration of his father and the Jung Clan deaths. Now in return, he wants me dead and he won't stop until he gets what he wants."

My blood ran cold. 

"My true identity is no longer a kept secret from the enemy target, Mel. And everyone knows that the wider a secret is broadcast, the more dangerous it gets for the people at the centre and anyone close to them. You, at the time, would have been the closest to me..." 

Jungkook took my hand, his eyes filled with sorrow and remorse, "I just couldn't let him hurt you, love."

He bowed his head, lips gently touching the back of my hand while a tear slipped from his eye.

"On the morning of our wedding I got word that Jung Hoseok had uncovered my other life abroad. He knew about our wedding and had planned a target X mission.."

"Target X.." I muttered, "What does that mean?"

"It means...Mel, it means no survivors."

At that, Jungkook broke down in sobs and I could do nothing else but envelope him in the tightest hug I could manage. 

I could finally sense the depth of Jungkook's heartache he must have been carrying around all these years, his pain. And now, I realised that all of this was much harder for him than I could have ever known. 

Not only was that special day stolen from me, it was taken from him too.

"I decided to take immediate action and do what it took to call off the wedding. So I stood you up. There was a car chase that ensued that no-one but my dad and the KSS know about. I used it to lure attention away from the wedding. Then after that, Hoseok lost track of me for a while and I distanced myself from you. I needed a way to make the divide between us public and what better way to do that than to become famous? I went from a life of top-secrecy to being thrust into the public eye. The ideal method to divert the attention of anyone trying to harm me, away from you."

"Jungkook...I had no idea" 

"Of course you didn't, love." He smiled sadly and caressed my cheek with warm fingers.

"With my dad's help, he devised this grand scheme to keep me hidden in plain sight which is where my career as a pop-star came in. Dad knew very well of all my talents and this was a good opportunity to use one of my strong suits to my own benefit.....singing. So, after pulling a few strings here and there with the KSS' connections in the States and using my father's privilege as geodaehan, I rose to fame quickly."

"But I still don't get it..." I wondered out loud, "If every move you made was more public as a celebrity, then why didn't Hoseok just attack you at anytime when it was so easy to find out where you were at all times?"

Jungkook smirked bitterly.

"The Jung clan love to operate in secrecy. It's their Clan trade-mark more-so that any other of the seven Clans. In the KSS, they even called them 'shadows'. Hoesok is big on tradition and even more so now in light of his father's death. We knew that anything Hoseok would attempt, would be low-key and well calculated. He would want to rip me up from beneath the surface. Start at the roots and watch me fall... like a great tree. The KSS deployed a team of handlers and security to cover me 24/7 and it worked for a while but this only delayed the problem. Now, here we are..."

Jungkook sighed and hugged me tighter.

"In a way I am glad that this happened, Mel....I'm sick and tired of running. Delaying the inevitable..."

"What do you mean, the inevitable?" I gasped, "Letting this Hoseok guy kill you?"

"No Mel," Jungkook grimaced seriously. He lifted the window shade and we both gazed out to see that there was land coming into view below.

"In the world I come from," Jungkook whispered slowly, looking out, "There's only two options; to kill or be killed."

I held my breath, feeling cold as he turned back to me slowly. He circled me in his strong but gentle hold, letting his fingers wander lightly over the curve of my stomach. 

My heart hurt.

"Jungkook," I let the tears flow freely from my eyes, "What if...."

"Don't worry, love. You just have to trust me," he whispered, holding a gentle finger to my lips.

Jungkook's gaze hardened as  the plane swooped lower over the tarmac.

"At the end of this fight between Hoseok and I, only one of us will be left standing." He said. 

This only made me sob harder but Jungkook was quick to comfort me with a kiss.

"Look at me, Love." he demanded.

I sniffled, trying to focus my blurry gaze on him through the puffiness of my eyes. 

"I want you to always remember two things...."

"What?" I garbled, pouting while Jungkook kept his eyes fixed warmly on mine.

"....that I love you and I have absolutely no intention of dying."

                                                   *:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ

    💕Vote! Comment! Tell me how you really feel! LOL!💕

                                               ✨BJF✨

A/N: OMG! So that was long as hell! But I explained everything....I hope. hehe! 

It took me some time but this chapter is important. The most important in the entire book so I finished it like a week ago but just couldn't publish it until I felt it was right. This is the closest I have come so far to it being how I wanted lol.

What a word-soup of crazy BS! But if you got this far, thank you for reading. xx

I wonder what's next? .....