Henry gritted his teeth and spat, “Just shut up and stay put, you idiot.”

Isaac hadn’t said anything that warranted such a harsh response, but he had certainly spoken without reading the atmosphere. Josh decided not to comfort Isaac. Seth, too, pretended not to hear them and turned away.

Mark sighed and continued, “We should first decide on who’s going to bodyguard while C does their thing, and the rest will be surveying the building for a route…”

“I’ll survey the area,” Josh grabbed for the opportunity quicker than anyone else. Mark nodded and selected Josh, Isaac, and himself as the surveying team, and chose Seth and Henry as Chase’s bodyguarding team.

“Are you just trying to f*ck me over, Mark?” Henry protested right away, but it fell flat. Somebody had to do it, and it didn’t matter to everyone else as long as it wasn’t them doing the job. In the end, Henry was left with no choice but to accept his mission with transparent anger on his face.

On the morning of the schedule, everyone seemed incredibly nervous. They needed to be on a many times stronger guard than their usual gigs. After all, the client had been receiving threats of kidnap and even death—no matter how unreal it felt.

Having witnessed him shooting a Desert Eagle with one hand and thoroughly punishing those who crossed his way, Josh didn’t think Chase needed any bodyguarding. Perhaps the only reason why he had hired them at such a high cost was because he didn’t want to deal with the lowly mortals or because he just wanted someone to beat up for fun. At the very least, that was what Josh, full of sarcasm, thought.

Everyone was equipped with a gun in case of an emergency. Josh frowned as he carried out some maintenance on his Glock. Chase Miller looked like he could stab a person to death using a butter knife; why did he even bother carrying around that hefty gun?

Swallowing his curses that were swimming up his throat yet again, Josh stood up. It was time to do some maintenance on the car as well.

*

*

“You put in a request for extra security?” asked Josh, slamming close the hood of the car that they were to be riding in.

Mark let out a short sigh and nodded. “Yes, though it was shot down with no mercy.”

“I assume it wasn’t because of the cost.”

“Of course not,” Mark confirmed readily. “Since it’s so hard to find people who are up for the job, I was thinking about getting some guard dogs. I thought I was going to get hit. Who knew he’d be so angry? He glared at me and I had to admit, he could literally kill with his eyes. Got cold feet immediately.”

It was common to work with some trained aggressive dogs, but it was impossible in the case of Chase Miller. There were many things he didn’t like, and dogs in particular threw him into a fit of anger.

Mark’s courage in even suggesting to use dogs was worthy of praise, even though it had resulted in clean failure. Mark grumbled, “I don’t get why he hates dogs that much. Isn’t a dog supposed to be a man’s best friend?”

It was a mystery to Josh as well, but he had no way of knowing the answer. He just assumed that dogs were one of the many things that this fussy man hated. Instead of pressing on, Josh changed the subject and asked, “Was that all that happened?”

“Yeah,” Mark nodded before quietly muttering, “Who knows what goes on inside that b*stard’s head? He’d be asking some weird things, but he doesn’t even care about the important stuff.”

“Asking weird things?” Josh asked in confusion.

Mark nodded. “When we first went to say hello, he wanted to check our team member profiles. I didn’t think he would care about something like that.” 

‘Checking for criminal records or something, maybe?’ Josh thought to himself, but Mark’s answer was completely unanticipated.

“He wasn’t saying anything, and then he suddenly asked if everyone on the team were alphas and betas.” As Josh stared intently, Mark continued nonchalantly, “So I told him that you and I are betas and everyone else are alphas. After that, he didn’t seem to care about anything else.”

“…Is that so?” Josh chimed in, pretending to be calm.

Mark let out an airy laugh. “A face like yours should be an alpha. Even C didn’t seem to believe it. He asked if the one that he beat to a pulp was really a beta, twice.”

It was something Josh had been told all his life, and Josh was grateful for this misunderstanding—especially at times like this. “I like being a beta.”

“Well, yeah. With your face, what does it matter?” Mark smirked offhandedly as he lodged a cigarette in his mouth. Josh didn’t say anything and continued to complete the final maintenance.

Whenever Chase Miller went somewhere, there were at least 10 people who accompanied him. Aside from bodyguards, he had a personal secretary who managed his schedules and ran some errands here and there, a manager, some stylists, and sometimes even the secretary of the secretary. This time was no different; there were three vehicles in total, including a van, and this was after reducing the number of people involved as much as possible.

It was also a part of Josh’s job to examine all the vehicles one by one and check if there was anything out of place.

“One of the wheels looked like it was leaking air, so I changed it out. Other than that, everything looks good,” Josh reported indifferently.

Mark blinked his eyes in amazement. “Even a car that costs 100k-plus gets leaky wheels, huh.”

“Even a certain actor who’s worth a couple hundred million has a crappy personality,” Josh blurted out without thinking.

Suddenly, chills ran down his spine. When he hurriedly turned around, he met eyes with Chase, who was walking out of the mansion.

It was the first time they had come face-to-face ever since that day, as—unsurprisingly—Josh went out of his way to ardently avoid Chase. After all, he did not want his life to be under threat again.

Chase was dressed fairly loosely today with no tie. Two or so of his shirt buttons were undone, and a light jacket hung over his shoulders. As usual, an order-made watch glistened brightly on his wrist.