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The thing is, Cha Young had known Vincenzo was lying.
Have you ever done it yourself?
Are you asking if I've ever killed someone before? No. I'm a lawyer.
She had let it go, then. Maybe it was because in that short moment in Vincenzo's apartment, him in his expensive silk robes and Cha Young on the sofa, something between them had felt almost vulnerable. The softness of his gaze, the fact that he had quite literally just beaten up two gangsters to protect her, it had all made her a little too dizzy and warm to break the spell he had put on her.
So she had taken the lie he offered and hadn't asked the questions that were trying to force her lips open.
But she had known.
She had known he was a killer the second she had seen that gun in his hands. She remembers the cold chill that had started from her neck and taken over her whole body when his gaze met hers over the barrel of his gun. It wasn't the gaze of someone who couldn't pull the trigger.
It had been all for show then, fake bullets and fake blood, but she had known. He leaves traces of his ruthlessness in everything he does and Cha Young has been watching him closely enough to put the pieces together. It's in the way he holds a gun. The sureness of his grip on it, the way his fingers caress the trigger like an old lover. The old anger lingering around his eyes. The emptiness.
She recognizes it in herself too and it scares her.
But the point is, she had known, he had lied about it anyway and now they were in deep shit.
"The consigliere of the Cassano family… You sure know how to work your knife, don't you."
The prosecutor throws the pictures on the table in front of her and she has to suppress a flinch.
"Just how many people did you kill?" the prosecutor asks with a mocking smile and Cha Young wants to punch his teeth so deep in his skull that they'll pierce the back of his neck.
Vincenzo is sitting next to her, his hands cuffed with metal and eyes looking anywhere but at her. Cha Young wants to punch him too. Not his teeth though, his face is way too nice to be ruined like that. Maybe his gut, then?
She blinks away the sudden desire to beat people up and stares hard into the ugly prosecutor's eyes.
"Arresting him without any definite evidence is a violation of the law." It's the only thing she can say, really. They haven't agreed on a cover story because Vincenzo had fucking lied to her like a fool and now she has no idea how to turn the situation in their favor. He's not helping either, refusing to make eye contact and being all broody and cold and mysterious.
She examines the pictures in front of them instead.
They are gruesome. Bullet wounds and burn marks and so much blood. And that bloody C like a twisted autograph in every single picture. She curses him for his dramatics. How in the fuck is she going to explain all this away and get Vincenzo away from here when he has all but announced his involvement in the murders with a pretty little business card. Fucking idiot.
"These pictures show no ties to Mr. Cassano. And you need more than a few photos to arrest him," she says calmly.
She can't stand the prosecutor's ugly face. Maybe once they get out of here she can make Vincenzo use his gun on him and then he can be added to this little photograph collection he seems to love so much, maybe even get his own autograph.
The thought makes her almost snort but she covers it up with a grimace.
The whole situation is such bullshit. She watches as they start dragging him away and even though she's angry she wants to make sure he knows she's on his side. Because she is. Completely. She hasn't properly realized it before but she realizes it now.
"Sit tight. I'll do whatever I can." She puts all her sincerity into the words and hopes he gets it. She will get him out, no matter what, whatever she has to do, she will.
Vincenzo looks at her for the first time since he got handcuffed. His eyes are too steady, too contained. Cha Young can't read his face even after all the staring she's been doing lately. He shrugs and says: "It's fine, I can take care of myself."
She rolls her eyes and gets ready to give him a piece of her mind about where 'taking care of himself' has gotten him, but just then Mr. An strolls in like a man on a mission and saves the day. Cha Young decides then and there that she's going to ditch Vincenzo's lying ass and start hanging out with Mr. An instead. Sure, he may not be as pretty as her mafia consigliere but at least he doesn't give her unwanted sass and hair loss from all this stress.
It's on the car ride home that the fear and anger finally hit her full force. She jumps on the driver's seat and holds her hand open for the keys.
"I'll drive."
There must be something in her tone because he doesn't put up a fight, just hands her the keys and gets on the passenger seat. She starts driving. Her hands are sweaty and she's gripping the wheel a bit too hard, she knows, but she can't relax. Her mind is a mess and she feels like if she doesn't have something to do with her hands she will reach over and grab Vincenzo by his shirt collar and shake him until his bones rattle.
She's anxious. She's angry.
And she's terrified.
Not of him. Never of him, not even when she'd seen the pictures of the bodies he'd left behind in bloody puddles, not even when he had stood there at the underpass, blood on his neck, gun in hand and three unconscious bodies at his feet. No, Cha Young has never been scared of Vincenzo.
What terrifies her is that despite knowing what he has done, the only thing she feels angry about is that he lied to her.
She feels the anger bleed into her veins like a cold, pulsing through her body with each heartbeat. It roars in her ears with the petrifying realization that she has stepped too far on the road of revenge to ever turn back around. She recalls the feeling from last night when she was holding the controller in her hand, pressing down, down, down and watching the three despicable people wither in pain and fear as she was slowly killing them.
She had felt powerful, then.
Now she just feels exhausted. The feeling of power has turned into the fear of everything she's capable of, fear of the darkness inside her own heart. She looks at her hands gripping the wheel and sees the potential to kill, to hurt.
"Partners, my ass," she hisses with more venom than she means to. Vincenzo startles at her sudden words.
She's being unfair, she knows. After all, he had asked her permission to hurt people and she had given it. He had told her about his intentions to kill Babo and she had supported him. Maybe it isn't any of her business what he has done before coming to Korea, maybe she doesn't have any right to get mad.
But she had asked if he'd ever killed anyone and he had lied.
She hadn't asked just for the heck of it either. It was simply something she needed to know in order to protect him, to prevent these asshole prosecutors from touching even a hair on his head with their disgusting, greedy hands. That's what partners do, after all. Protect each other.
"Is something wrong?" Vincenzo asks carefully, like he's sensing the explosives going off in Cha Young's head and trying hard to not step on any obvious mines.
"I'm upset," is all she says.
She takes the last turn to the Geumga Plaza and parks the car. Neither of them makes any move to leave the car.
"Why?"
What to say, Cha Young wonders. How much will be too much for him? How much of her care can he accept before it's too much and he flees back behind his sky-high stone walls?
Villains don't deserve to love.
Why not?
Not everyone deserves to love. Those who harm or hurt others don't deserve to love. To them, love is nothing but an accessory.
Then, do you deserve love?
Cha Young has a violent impulse to knock those damn walls down so she can finally look him straight in the eyes and scream at him that maybe love isn't about deserving, maybe it just exists and no one had any say in whether it chooses you or not.
The silence stretches and Vincenzo starts to look uncomfortable. He lowers his eyes and his fingers are curling around that lighter of his. She doesn't know what his deal with fire is. She suspects he's just a pyromaniac. He clears his throat and asks: "Because of the photos?"
Oh. Of course he would think she was upset about the photos.
"Fuck the photos," she declares easily.
Vincenzo's lips twitch. Then, just like that, they curl into a smile and… Yeah. Game over. The anger and tension leave her body all at once. She stares at his face and knows she's completely and utterly fucked. This beautiful, arrogant and ruthless liar, what is she supposed to do when he smiles at her like that?
"You lied to me. You told me you've never killed anyone before," she says. She sees the realization creep into his eyes slowly. As he opens his mouth to speak, she cuts him off. "But it's fine. I'm not that mad. Just… it would have been nice if I'd known about it before they dragged us there."
"Oh." He looks almost guilty. Interesting. Cha Young hasn't seen that look on his face before. She knows what he looks like when he's angry, when he's excited and even when he's happy. She likes that look the most.
"And anyway, when it comes to lying to each other, I think we are pretty even," she adds with a grin of her own. This gets her a raised eyebrow from him.
"Oh really? What have you lied to me about, then?"
Cha Young has a foolish urge to just say it. Let out the words that have been stuck in her throat for weeks now. She hears the echo of the lie in her skull, pounding against the bone like it's trying to escape the trap of her head. I was wrong. It was because you were in danger. Those dangerous words. The lie she told because she was scared and drunk and needed an excuse to hold the man just for a little while to make sure he was really there, that he was okay.
"I'll give you a hint. It was recently." She unbuckles their seatbelts and bolts out of the car, leaving her mafia consigliere looking after her in puzzlement.
She can't help but smile when she watches him scramble after her. "Take that you stupid mafia. Since you seem to take Hammurabi seriously, I'll give you a lie for each lie you tell me."