YN'S POV

I don't know when I fell asleep in the guest room, after breakfast.

I was hungry, alright. But I couldn't eat. It was hurting enough to speak and gulp down my own saliva.

And that was the thing about sore throat. I kept gulping down my own saliva without a reason and the white hot pain would shoot through me and smack right into the center of my brain.

Just like I couldn't tell when I fell asleep, I couldn't tell when I was moved to Jungkook 's room.

And now wide awake I kept thinking when did he carry me down here? I heard the toilet flush and seconds later the bathroom door opened and shut.

Closing my eyes, I tried to fake being asleep. And

More seconds later, I felt Jungkook shuffling the covers and getting behind me on the bed.

He wrapped an arm around my stomach, placing his face between the crook of my neck, he snuggled to comfort.

Just like that the cold blanket covering me since morning had been thawed replaced by a warm fuzzy duvet.

"Am I forgiven, la mia piccola bellezza?" He murmured against my skin. I shivered. (My little beauty)

"I know you can hear me." He said once again when I didn't reply.

"For what shall I forgive you?" I whisper.

"Baby." He breathed.

"I am sorry, Jungkook . I only wanted you to take a rest so you can be healthy again. I didn't know that you wouldn't like it. It was my mistake and I got paid for it. I am the one who should be asking to be forgiven." This time, in spite of the pain in my throat caused by my raspy voice, I keep talking, not holding back the tears anymore.

I was hurting okay? I was hurting so much, the fact that the only man, I believed and even trusted, maybe had begun to love, strangled me to a point where his finger prints were evident on my skin.

No matter how hard I tried to keep the tears in, they wouldn't stay because let's face it, my heart just got broken.

By abuse.

"It wasn't your fault, kitty." He reassures, his hand now rubbing softly against my stomach, and like the traitor my body is to me, the whore liked it, ignoring that fact, that this man, just choked us to death, just twenty four hours ago.

"I overreacted." He sighs. "I was under pressure, baby. I am so sorry."

"You reacted just fine." I mumble shuffling the sheets around, they are still the same red sheets I had placed two nights before. "Why did you bring me here?" I asked once from the bed and stood face to face with Jungkook .

He keeps looking at me with emotion filled eyes. His gaze tells me he doesn't know what to do and for the first time ever he feels helpless. And it's pouring out of his aura.

"I wanted to lay down with you." He says after a beat, choosing his words carefully, rolling them around his tongue, confused what my outburst would be.

"I don't want to sleep with you." I spat. "That's why I moved upstairs."

"Come to bed." He orders.

I cross my arms over my chest and sigh. "You don't even feel it, Jungkook ." I sigh. "As much as you're showing. You think you just hurt me, because you strangled me. But the fact that you don't see is, you almost killed me because I asked you to stay in because you were shot, Thrice. You were hurt and injured." I jab a finger at him, my tone pouring out acquisitions.

"You hurt me, Jungkook . You hurt my heart." I was crying, now. "The pain is worse here." I point at my heart.

"I'm so so so very sorry, baby." He sighs. "What can I do to make it up to you, my sweet? I wasn't in my senses then. And when it came to me, I ran back to you. You weren't at the hospital. I came home, Sarah said you were asleep when she called you for lunch and when I ran up here, I couldn't find you." He takes a deep breath.

"I was so angry." He grits his teeth. "So angry at myself, that I hurt you. So angry that I couldn't find you. My first thought was that you left. I lost my mind, kitty. I was ready to kill."

"So I heard."

"Come here." He holds out his un-injured hand for me to take, I place mine in his as he quietly pulls me to him.

I sit cross legged atop of the covers and wait for him to speak.

"Forgive me, this one time?" He asks.

"This one time?"

Can't say his confession hasn't moved me. It has.

But also I am a gooey bitch that carves his attention. And when I get it, I am just a fifth of a puddle of liquid.

I am such a weirdo.

"This one time." He assures, and with his other hand, the broken one he pulls out a big candy box, from the nightstand draw.

It's a golden coloured tin box, inside rests various shaped chocolates and about twenty of them. I smile unknowingly.

"Did you like it?" He asks. "I brought five others too."

"Five others?" I gasp.

"In case you didn't like them?" He shrugs.

"I don't." I lied.

"Okay." He pulls out a medium sized paper bag and hands it to me.

I refrain from squealing out of joy.

Maybe you can forgive him? My inner girl states more like a question.

Inside I nod at her.

"I forgive you." I say. "But if you hurt me again, I am moving upstairs. And rejoining as a maid."

"Whatever you say." He whispers before his lips touch mine in a slow dance.

It takes me a second to realise that I was having my first ever kiss!

Though all the nasty we did in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the hospital, we never kissed.

He almost pulls out from the kiss but I pull him back.

This time I initiate the kiss, softly kissing his upper and lower lip before taking one at a time in my mouth and sucking them.

I hear Jungkook growl, from the lack of control over our kiss. I pull back, grinning.

"I like you." I grin and peck his lips.

He smiles. "You want me to make you soup, it'll help your throat heal."

I nod enthusiastically, opening the bag of chocolates.

●●●●●●●●●●●

The next week since the choking incident, I was treated like a princess.

I still wore a turtle neck, until Ariana got specious and asked me about it. I said I had a sore throat and was feeling kinda cold.

She said, surely it wasn't that cold yet, and told you it was the second week of November and it was pretty cold, if you ask me.

But Ariana put on a serious face and demanded the truth. I flipped them off somehow, until she came to the bedroom randomly without knocking. And thus she saw the pale, almost faded bruise around my throat.

And then Jungkook got punched in the jaw, which basically did him no harm and all kinds of British profanities that Ariana could remember.

Jungkook apologized and said it would never happen.

"It better not!" She fumed. "If I found something like that again, you will have your baby maker inside Aless's bloodhound, I swear, Jungkook ." She had jabbed her finger to his chest in the process of her speech.

"Okay. Okay." Jungkook had retrieved his side of the story and gave her time to cool off.

And then I got an earful because I didn't tell her and I was supposed to and all that.

After the day, Jungkook got me so many candies that I got fat in one day, he asked Aless what he wanted for his birthday and that he'll buy Aless an early birthday gift.

Aless said he wants a dog. Not a puppy but a big trained dog.

Now that being said, Ariana threw a fit saying, there was gonna be another animal death if Aless got another dog, and she didn't want 'the curse' upon her child.

Whatever that means.

So Jungkook got Aless a fully trained bloodhound.

A big black ugly looking dog that Aless named Mr.Kin.

What kind of pet's name is Mr. Kin?

And tomorrow being the big day when the little monster turns six, Ariana said she didn't want anything fancy. Just a cake and some friends.

To which everyone agreed.

Now sitting in the sun room, late noon all I could think was useless stuff that didn't really make sense.

"You look so much like your father." I hear the voice of the former Don.

"Papa." I stand up to greet him.

"Though your beauty came from your mother, you look like your father." He said taking a seat in front of me.

"You knew him?" I asked.

I never really had given a thought about my father since mama died.

"We were once friends." Papa smiled, recalling memories. "Both of us came from Italy in an oil ship, as laborers."

"Labours?" I asked.

He nodded. "All this..." He gestured to the room in a circular motion. "All this wasn't only my hard work. It was his too." He said.

"He was so much like you, attentive, quiet, and a great follower of rules. Respectful." He nods.

I flush. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know." Papa shrugs. "All I received from him was a note. He said he went for a vacation to Italy. But he never came back. I sent my men there but he had just...vanished."

"You haven't heard from him since?" I asked.

"I haven't." He pours all his sadness in a sigh. "Once he told me about this life, all these organized crimes weren't something he fancied of doing."

"So he just leaves?" I ask.

"I don't know what happened to him. I never knew but I tried to find out. For Emerald's sake. I did. But he never appeared."

"Did he ever know...about me?"

"Yes." He shrugs. "He did. He knew he was going to have a child."

"Why did he leave, then?"

"I was his friend. But Mariano was a private man, your father." He sighs. "He mostly kept to himself."

I nodded.

All this time I thought maybe my papa tried to look for me but in reality he just left.

Just like that.

"He loved your mama, Yn." Papa mumbles. "In a world like ours, it was tough to find love but he did and he left."

"I'm sorry." I mumbled, quite not knowing why.

"Every time I look at you, I remember Mariano. All those summer days in our motherland. Cleaning people's gardens and plucking out grapes to make wine." He sighs.

"You must be really lonely." I whispered. "Have you ever considered...you know, getting another partner?"

I changed the subject. I think it was going a little deep for me.

It's not like everyday I get to know about my father and considering I tried to find him while mama was still alive, brought back some memories.

Papa laughs. "Grown real big haven't you, I remember just the day you were born, a little bundle of redness snuggled to your mother."

I flush.

"The little girl is giving me advice." He teases.

"I didn't mean it that way, papa..."

"No, sweet. I never considered having another woman."

"And lived all alone, on your own? Maybe you should consider dating again."

He laughed again, this time with pure amusement. "I've had my life. Look at me, almost sixty and old."

"And you'll have sixty years more to live." Ariana and Sarah walk in carrying a large tray of teapots and cups.

"I thought we'd gossip." Sarah says putting hot water and a pack of herbal tea in papa's cup.

"Sugar, dear?" Papa asks.

Ariana looks at him with sharp eyes that makes the former Don nod and say "Well...then."

"Sugar is bad for diabetes, papa." Ariana

reasons with a soft voice.

"Just one wouldn't hurt, would it?" I ask as I put a sugar cube in papa's cup.

Her grins genuinely at me.

Ariana glares at me as she pours tea for the rest of us.

"I tried to make these cookies." Sarah frowns. "But...they're not cookies."

" Is it edible?" Papa asks.

"I suppose." She sighs.

"Then thank God and eat it." He says.

"Maybe you should start seeing other ladies." Sarah says.

"Am I that much of a burden to you?" Papa reasons.

"No." Ariana pipes up. "It's just...you might need someone to talk to sometimes and someone to share your time with." She says.

"I have a happy family, Ariana." Papa sips his tea.

"What more could a man ask for?”

Ariana nods, giving up. She knows that it's impossible to get Don to agree to do something he clearly doesn't consider.

"And I suggest you girls start making the family bigger." He says. "I can't wait to have like...twenty little devils running around this big empty house."

Sarah blushes and I think I do too.

"Will do." Ariana salutes.

We laugh.

"What did Aless say he wants for his big day?" Papa asks.

"He wanted an ugly dog that he already had." I crinkle my nose.

"And a gun that shoots bubbles." Ariana rolls her eyes. "I have no reason why he wants things like he does."

"At the breakfast table, Diego said Aless wanted bombs, the ones you can set a timer on." Sarah shrugs, eating one of her cookies.

Surprisingly despite their bad shape, the cookies are quite tasty. Plus they are sugarless

and naturally sweetened so papa can eat them.

Ariana sighs. "Don't we have a discipline camp for troubled kids?"

"We do. But for teens, not for toddlers." Sarah fuses.

"He's not troubled, Ariana." Papa reasons. "Не has an imaginary power that most kids lack."

His phone rings which he picks up. Saying nothing he leaves the sunroom leaving the I and the girls alone.

The things I had heard about the former Don, from other people, were and were severely wrong.

The following night after dinner I was waiting in the room, dressed in my nightshirt and pajamas, for Jungkook to come home.

He apparently left the house around early morning and hasn't been around since.

I hear the door open. Glancing toward the doorway, I see Jungkook 's silhouette in the dim lights.

"You asleep, piccolo?" He asks.

"No." I replied.

"Okay. Okay, good." He whispers as I feel him getting into bed.

"What's wrong?" I whisper back.

"Nothing." He replies, I feel him shrugging off his shirt and un-do his pants. "I missed your sweet little..." He rasps as one of his hard calloused hands finds my center and slips his hand under my cotton PJs.

"There." He whispers. "My Kitty."

With his soft breaths on my neck, fingers working their magic on my Kitty, caressing, rubbing, pinching, I release a soft moan as one of his fingers make its way inside me.

"!" I whimper at the full feeling.

"Yeah baby. You're warm." I hear him mumble. "And small."

"Mmmhmmh." I whimper as his finger starts to pump itself in and out of me. "Oh, Jungkook ." I try to thrust my pelvis up to meet his strokes but nothing works.

He keeps going in and out of my wet, slick tunnel until I come, exploding all over his expert fingers.

"Oh, I missed you." Jungkook mumbles.

(TO BE CONTINUED)