The Mafia Devil's Possession novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Kneel
Si-on breaks a loan collector's knee on the Devil's carpet, is made to kneel, and signs three years of himself to clear his mother's debt; then the Devil tells him his mother signed him over herself.
The collector's knee gave a wet crack under Si-on's heel, and the man went down screaming on the Devil's carpet.
Three more men had Si-on's arms before the scream finished.
They bent him forward until his cheek almost touched his own knees, and his school tie swung in front of his face.
"Let go of me, you fucking cowards!"
The man behind the desk did not look up.
He was peeling an orange with a small silver knife, and the peel came away in one long unbroken strip.
The office above the fish restaurant was warm and quiet and smelled of citrus and cigar smoke.
Nobody spoke, and the man on the floor sobbed into the carpet.
"Get him up," the man behind the desk said.
His voice was low and even, with nothing in it at all.
Two of the men hauled Si-on upright.
He was eighteen, a lean flyweight who had boxed since he was ten.
It had taken four of them to bring him up the stairs.
He had broken the first one's nose on the landing.
He saw the man behind the desk properly then, and for a second he forgot to struggle.
Gwak Seo-jin was younger than Si-on had pictured, maybe thirty, with grey eyes and dark hair combed straight back.
A thin pale scar ran across his throat above the open collar of a white shirt.
He wore black leather gloves, and he was peeling the orange with them on.
The docks called him the Devil, and Si-on had grown up hearing the name whispered like a curse.
"Nam Si-on," Seo-jin said. "Eighteen. Senior at Dongsung High. Flyweight, city amateur circuit, lost the semifinal in June on a split decision."
"I won that fight."
"You lost it." Seo-jin set the knife down. "Your mother's debt to Gwak Capital is ninety-six million won."
The words didn't mean anything.
"My mother doesn't owe anyone," Si-on said. "She sews. She's got a shop."
"She borrowed fourteen months ago to keep it open. The interest has been eating her since."
Seo-jin turned his hand over, palm up, without any hurry.
"My collector came to your flat tonight. You kicked him in the knee."
"He grabbed her sewing machine. He was dragging it down the stairs," Seo-jin said.
"And now he will limp for a year."
Si-on's chest was heaving.
His lip had split on the landing, and he tasted blood.
"Where is she?" he said. "She wasn't home. Her phone's off. If your people touched her..."
"My people did not touch her."
Seo-jin stood.
He was taller than any of the four men holding Si-on, and he came around the desk slowly.
He stopped close enough that Si-on had to tilt his head back.
He smelled of oranges and cold air and something clean.
"Kneel," Seo-jin said.
"Fuck you."
One of the men kicked the back of Si-on's knee, and he dropped.
His kneecap hit the carpet hard and the men's hands stayed clamped on his shoulders.
He glared up, shaking with fury.
Seo-jin took off the right glove.
He did it one finger at a time, in no hurry, with Si-on's eyes on his hand.
The hand underneath was long and pale, with a ridge of old scar across the knuckles.
He caught Si-on's jaw in it.
The grip was not rough.
It was worse than rough, because it was certain.
His thumb found the split in Si-on's lip and pressed down, and the pain went straight through Si-on and landed low in his belly.
Si-on had never been touched like that.
He hated that his body noticed.
"You broke a man's knee for a sewing machine," Seo-jin said quietly. "Your hands are fast. Your temper is stupid. I want both."
"I'm not for sale."
"No."
The thumb dragged across his bottom lip and came away red.
Seo-jin looked at the blood on it with calm, flat interest.
"But your debt is for sale. Three years, Si-on. Your body and your bed and your board, in my house, and the ninety-six million is nothing."
"And my mother's shop?" Si-on said.
"Sign, and no one touches it again."
The men's hands tightened.
Si-on's heart was going so hard he could feel it in his teeth.
He thought of the shop with its bolts of cloth and the old Singer his mother had bought used when he was five.
He thought of the collector on the stairs with her machine in his arms.
"Two conditions," Si-on said. His voice was rough. "I finish school. Graduation is in February."
"Granted."
"And you find my mother."
Something moved behind the grey eyes, too quick to read.
"Granted," Seo-jin said.
A man set a document on the desk and a pen on top of it.
They let Si-on up.
He walked to the desk on legs that didn't feel like his own, and he wrote his two conditions into the margin in block capitals.
Then he signed his name under them, hard enough to tear the paper.
Seo-jin watched every stroke.
When Si-on put the pen down, the Devil picked the contract up, read the margin, and put the glove back on his hand.
"One more thing," Si-on said.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.
"You could have taken the shop for a tenth of that. Why me?"
Seo-jin looked at him for a long moment.
Then he put a piece of orange in his mouth and answered the way a man answers a question about the weather.
"I didn't ask for you."
Si-on stared at him.
"She came here alone last Tuesday, in the rain, with no coat," Seo-jin said. "She sat in that chair. She asked for nothing for herself."
"Then what..."
"She signed you over herself, Si-on. Last Tuesday. In that chair."
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