The club was suffocating. Smoke curled through the air, the bass thrummed beneath my skin, and the sickly-sweet perfume of women pressing too close burned in my lungs.
But I didn’t see any of it.
I only saw her.
Min-Ji Han.
She moved like a specter, untouched by the chaos around her, slipping through the bodies like she was made of mist and illusions. But she was real. Too real. And that was the problem.
Because I couldn't shake the feeling that I had met her before.
It was ridiculous.
I would have remembered a woman like her—sharp eyes veiled behind a mask of innocence, lips that curved in a way that made you wonder if she was about to kiss you or kill you.
And yet…
Something about her scratched at the edges of my mind. A memory buried so deep, it refused to surface, leaving only a whisper of familiarity.
I leaned against the balcony railing, my fingers wrapped around the crystal glass of whiskey. The ice clinked softly as I swirled it, my gaze locked onto her. She was speaking with Kyung-Min, low murmurs exchanged over the heavy pulse of the music.
I hated not knowing things.
I hated unsolved puzzles.
And Min-Ji Han was a puzzle I suddenly wanted to tear apart, piece by delicate piece.
She shouldn’t intrigue me. Not now. Not when I was getting married.
The thought made my jaw tighten.
An engagement I hadn’t even planned. An announcement I hadn’t wanted to make.
I was searching for someone else that night.
Taerin Yang.
The woman who had disappeared without a trace.
A ghost from my past, lingering in the corridors of my memory, haunting me in ways I couldn’t explain.
She had been nothing—no one. Just a daughter of a man who betrayed us. A casualty of war. And yet, the night she vanished, something had shifted in me. A wound that never quite closed, festering beneath my skin.
And so, when I thought I had found her again, when I saw that girl—the one who looked like her, spoke like her, moved like her—I had announced my engagement with Hae-I Hong on impulse.
It was supposed to be a power move, a public claim to what I thought had once been mine. I should have been focused on fixing it. On dealing with Hae-I I had mistakenly bound myself to be in front of the world. On playing the perfect heir, the perfect fiancé. But if I break off the Engagement both of our family would be broken and mad at me and that's where my downfall could begin
But instead, I was here, watching Min-Ji Han.
A woman who shouldn’t exist in my world.
A woman who felt too much like the past I had been chasing.
My grip tightened around my glass as I pushed off the railing, moving through the crowd with slow, deliberate steps. I wasn’t sure what I was doing until I was standing right behind her.
She didn’t turn.
But I felt it—the way her shoulders tensed for just a fraction of a second, like she had felt me before she saw me.
A slow smirk curled at the edges of my lips.
Interesting.
I reached out, my fingers wrapping around her wrist before she could slip away. Her skin was warm beneath my touch, her pulse steady controlled.
Too controlled.
“Min-Ji Han,” I murmured, just loud enough for her to hear over the music.
She turned to me, her expression unreadable, her lips tilting into a polite, detached smile.
There it was again. That whisper of something behind her eyes.
Recognition.
Familiarity.
But it was gone before I could grasp it, buried beneath a mask of indifference.
I lifted her wrist slightly, feeling the quickened thrum of her pulse beneath my thumb. “You can’t escape me that easily.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look afraid.
Instead, she tilted her head slightly, studying me like I was the one being hunted. Like she was the one in control.
“I wasn’t trying to escape,” she said softly, a hint of amusement in her tone. “You were never chasing me to begin with.”
A slow, dark chuckle rumbled in my chest.
She was bold.
She had no idea what game she had just entered.
I let go of her wrist, but I didn’t step back. I stayed close, just enough to hear the quiet hitch of her breath, just enough to watch the way she swallowed hard, like she was bracing herself.
Like she had something to hide.
And that—more than anything—made me want to ruin her.
“Tell me,” I murmured, leaning in just enough for my lips to ghost against the shell of her ear. “Why does a woman like you seem so familiar?”
She didn’t move.
Didn’t react.
But I could feel it—the way her body betrayed her. The way she tensed for just a fraction of a second.
“You must be mistaken,” she whispered, voice smooth, unwavering. “I’ve never met you before, Mr. Lee.”
A lie.
I knew a lie when I heard one.
She stepped back, her lips curving into something too polite to be real, and then, just like before, she slipped into the crowd.
I watched her go, an unfamiliar sense of frustration curling in my chest.
She thought this was over.
That I would let her walk away.
She was wrong.
I hadn’t even begun to chase her yet.
And when I did—when I finally caught her—I would tear apart every deception, every carefully woven lie, until she had nowhere left to run.
Because I didn’t believe in coincidences.
And Min-Ji Han wasn’t just some woman passing through my world.
She was something else.
Something stolen from me.
And I always took back what was mine.
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