Korean Mafia Boss Finds Enemy's Gun Under a Black Waitress Apron—She Whispers, 'I Took It for You'!

The champagne glass in my hand was shaking. Not enough for anyone to notice—I'd learned years ago how to hide fear beneath professional composure—but enough that the Moët & Chandon caught the light from the Baccarat chandelier and sent prismatic warnings across my knuckles. I had maybe three minutes before the man at table seven put a bullet through Kang Jae-sung's skull, and I was the only person in this entire restaurant who knew it was coming.
The Azure Lotus wasn't just upscale—it was the kind of establishment where Chicago's elite came to see and be seen, where a single dinner reservation required connections most people would never have, where the sommelier spoke seven languages and could identify the terroir of a Burgundy from scent alone. The walls were hung with silk panels hand-painted in Seoul, the floors were Italian marble so white it looked like walking on clouds, and the ambient temperature was maintained at exactly seventy-two degrees to preserve the $4,000 flower arrangements that adorned every corner.
I'd worked here for eleven months. Long enough to recognize the patterns, the hierarchies, the unspoken rules that governed who sat where and why. Long enough to know that when Kang Jae-sung occupied the corner booth with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chicago River, it wasn't just dinner—it was theater. A public display of power that said: I own this city, and I'm not hiding.
At twenty-eight, Kang Jae-sung looked like he'd been carved from obsidian and winter. His suit was bespoke, probably Ermenegildo Zegna, charcoal with subtle pinstripes that caught the light when he moved. His hair was styled with the kind of casual perfection that took either money or genetics—sharp black, swept back from a face that was all angles and controlled fury. High cheekbones that could cut glass, a jaw that looked like it had been drawn with a ruler, eyes so dark they absorbed light without reflecting it back.
But it was his stillness that marked him as dangerous. While everyone else in the restaurant moved—shifting in seats, gesturing while they talked, fidgeting with phones and wine glasses—Jae-sung sat perfectly motionless. The kind of stillness that predators had, that made every small movement feel deliberate, intentional, lethal.
I'd served him exactly seven times in the past eleven months. Each time, he'd ordered the same thing: the omakase tasting menu, Hibiki 21-year whiskey, neat, and silence. He never made small talk, never smiled at my attempts at service pleasantries, never looked at me like I was anything more than a function—a person-shaped delivery system for food and drink.
Which was fine. I preferred being invisible. Invisible meant safe. Invisible meant tips without complications. Invisible meant I could work my shifts, visit my grandmother at the nursing home on the South Side, pay down her medical debt one paycheck at a time, and exist in the narrow space between survival and ambition.
Except tonight, invisible had just become impossible.
Twenty minutes ago, I'd been in the service corridor between the kitchen and the main dining room—that narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway where servers moved with practiced efficiency, where chefs barked orders in Cantonese and Spanish, where the polished elegance of the front-of-house gave way to the controlled chaos of actually running a restaurant.