GHOST PROTOCOL

(JUNGKOOK'S POV)

The bass pulsed like a second heartbeat, thick in the air, vibrating through glass and skin and bone. My fingers gripped her throat just tight enough to make her moan. She arched beneath me, painted red lips parted, eyes glazed—forgetting her name as quickly as I had.

Leather stuck to her thighs. Champagne spilled on marble. Her nails scratched down my back as I buried myself in her again. No names. No promises. Just heat and power and the taste of control.

She moaned something—maybe in Russian, maybe in nonsense—and I let her. This was my domain: Inferno, the private club buried under my Moscow estate, where sins never left stains.

And then, the phone rang.

Sharp. Loud. Repeating.
The only number that had the nerve to disturb me here.

Jimin.

I groaned low, like a predator being yanked from a kill.

"Don’t stop," she whispered, pupils blown out.

"I already did," I muttered, pulling away. Her whine made me smirk. I grabbed my phone and slid into my slacks, shirtless, still burning with adrenaline. The moment I answered, I knew pleasure was over.

"Kook... we have a problem."

Jimin’s voice was clipped, cold.

"I'm listening," I said, already heading toward the dark corridor lined with biometric scanners and velvet walls.

"We lost the Seoul-Moscow shipment."

My blood iced.

"Define lost," I growled.

"Gone. Vanished. No truck. No cargo. No cameras. The warehouse shows no signs of breach. Everything is clean."

That didn’t make sense.

“$83 million worth of weapons and crypto, Jimin. Are you telling me it disappeared like a fucking ghost?”

“I’m telling you,” he said, “there’s nothing. It’s like it never existed. Denis and Henry are tearing into the feeds. Yoongi’s flipping. Even Taehyung’s on edge.”

I stopped in front of the mirror-lined wall and stared at myself. Chest rising. Pulse steady. But inside? A storm forming.

I had enemies—hundreds. But none bold enough to touch my Moscow line. None capable of covering their tracks so perfectly.

"Send V to the docks. Yoongi to the customs office. And get the twins to check satellite backups. Tell Seokjin to prep for worst-case."

"And me?"

"You?” My voice dropped. “Start making people bleed."

"Understood."

The line went dead.

I stood in silence, shirt still open, the woman’s perfume lingering on my collar. My reflection stared back: tousled black hair, inked skin, jaw clenched.

I had built this empire from blood, bone, and algorithms. We didn’t lose shipments. Not in my city. Not in my world.

I reached for the Cuban cigar in the drawer behind the bar and lit it slowly, letting the smoke cloud the glass as I stared down at the club below—unaware people still dancing, drinking, dying slowly under colored lights.

And somewhere beneath this city… someone was laughing at me.

No. Not laughing. Smirking.

Two Hours Later.

The war room was chaos.

Denis slammed a keyboard across the desk. Henry said nothing, only typing faster with narrowed eyes and jittery fingers.

"Entire digital trail is gone," Denis muttered. “Like the truck was never registered. No pings, no GPS, no signal crossovers, not even a dust particle out of place."

“Impossible,” Yoongi said, pacing. “There’s always a trace. Even dead systems leave shadows. This isn’t hacking. This is… deletion.”

“Fabricated deletion,” Henry added, voice soft. “Synthetic void.”

I looked at Jimin, who was watching me instead of the screens. His jaw was tight. He knew.

This wasn't just a theft. This was a message.

"Who's the best data ghost we know?" I asked.

"None of them could do this," Henry said before anyone else could respond. “Not even me. Not without leaving at least a fingerprint.”

“So someone better than you?”

Henry paused. Then nodded once. Slowly.

"A legend," Denis whispered. "Whispers about a woman. Name unknown. Face unseen. Code name’s NYX. But no one ever confirms."

Jimin frowned. "Urban myth. No files. No images. No location. She’s like... the internet's goddamn Grim Reaper."

I blew out a slow stream of smoke.

NYX.

I'd heard the name before—once, during a failed cyber-raid in Berlin. It was a whispered warning. A virus wearing a woman’s smile.

“Find her,” I said.

“And if she’s not real?” Yoongi asked.

“Then find whoever wants me to think she is.”

Meanwhile… Somewhere beneath Moscow.

A low hum echoed through the cold concrete chamber.

Screens flickered softly in the darkness, lighting pale skin and sharper eyes. Banks of data ran across holographic displays—logs of hacked warehouses, rerouted drones, deleted shipments.

Melantha sat cross-legged in a black leather chair, cigarette balanced between two fingers, face aglow with the chaos she had created.

Around her, her lair hummed like a living machine. Sasha leaned against the wall, cleaning a blade. Boris chuckled as another firewall fell.

“I assume they’re panicking?” Sasha asked dryly.

“They’re bleeding information,” Melantha said without looking up.

“No emotion?” Boris teased.

Melantha didn’t answer. She just took a drag, blew smoke into the cold air, and tilted her head at the screen showing Jungkook’s war room on mute.

The camera feed was silent—but his rage was visible.

She smirked.

Not out of joy. Not out of cruelty.

Just the satisfaction of perfection.

The empire had blinked—and never even saw who pulled the trigger.

To be continued...