Vol 6 Ch 18

He remained silent as we walked down the long corridor, through the casino, and out of the ship’s interior toward the bow. The Max plowed through the sea, carrying damp, cool wind across the deck. A few people lingered around the outdoor pool, scattered thinly in the late afternoon. Only when we reached the ship’s farthest edge did we stop. To the right, a passage led to an elevator that went straight to the helipad. Before heading that way, he looked down at me from the end of the deck.

“You told me to return within two days.”

My head jerked carelessly in the wind.

“I did.”

“What if I hadn’t found it?”

“Did you?”

“…Yes.”

I pointed at my pocket. A USB I had brought just in case, though I hadn’t shown it until now.

“I trusted you.”

“…”

His words sent an unexpected ripple through my chest.

“Let’s go.”

He grasped my arm.

We took the elevator up to the top of the ship, where not only STA Füssen’s helicopter but several others bearing corporate insignias awaited. Some visitors who had attended the departure were already preparing to return to Macau, and the helipad was crowded. The Max was still moving at low speed, not yet out of Macau’s waters.

Taeha and I donned headsets and boarded. Wagner came in last. The ship slowed further, and with the wind easing, the helicopter lifted off again, rocking more than it had when we first left STA Füssen.

In about thirty minutes, we would be back in Macau. I could already see the scattered lights of the resorts in the distance.

The city of pleasure was full of people living lives akin to hell.

Not long ago, I had been one of them.

I looked at Taeha sitting beside me. Whatever else, he had been the one to save me. Strangely, I didn’t feel afraid of the helicopter crashing like before. His presence steadied me.

The rain still fell, and the wind was fierce. Taeha checked my seatbelt again, making sure it was secure. I eased the wine in my empty stomach with bottled water. After crossing the long stretch of sea, the helicopter stopped briefly at a Macau helipad, then set off again toward Füssen once the weather improved.

We arrived later than expected. Back at Füssen, I let out a long sigh of relief. It wasn’t my home, but it was a place that gave me a measure of peace.

After passing through the guards and returning to my room, I stripped off my suit. I removed the heavy Patek Philippe from my wrist and collapsed onto the sofa. Taeha didn’t even bother removing his jacket; he sat beside me and immediately opened his laptop. I reached into my suit and pulled out the USB, setting it next to his computer. Taeha didn’t plug it in—just kept typing on the keyboard.

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Not particularly.”

“Are you testing me?”

“Where did you find it?”

“You never once said you were kidnapped in Korea.”

He paused and asked,

“Is that important?”

“Do you know where you were held?”

“Well. As I recall, it wasn’t just one place. They drugged me and moved me around.”

“It was my mother’s psychiatric ward.”

A psychiatric ward… Taeha let out a laugh of disbelief.

“What about you?”

“…Pardon?”

“Your mind—is it intact?”

I hesitated, then understood what he meant.

“It’s not hereditary. From what I know, she was hospitalized due to worsening depression.”

“One mad person is enough.”

“CEO… honestly.”

“Honestly, what?”

“Are you still taking your medication?”

He suddenly swiveled his laptop toward me, the article still on the screen. I thought he was just trying to change the subject, and I opened my mouth to retort—only to be caught by the title of the article first.

[Joseon Marine Corporation affiliate ‘Eurotia’ accused of breach of trust—Baek Jaetak and 12 others indicted for low-priced convertible bond allocation.]

After checking the title, I looked back at him.

“What is this?”

“The downfall of immoral men.”

“Then earlier, that was……”

Kwon Taeha picked up the remote and shut all the curtains. The automatic curtains darkened the room, dimming the once-bright lights. I hadn’t even realized the remote had that function, so I’d always been closing them by hand. A massive screen descended into the center of the living room.

He logged into the STA hub, entering both a password and his fingerprint, and the laptop’s display expanded onto the screen. The CEO’s room had turned into something like a briefing office.

“Joo Hawon.”

While staring at the screen, he called my name. His profile wavered faintly in the light.

“Will you really be on my side?”

This time he turned his head toward me.

“I gave you my word, so I’ll keep it.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, will you really take my hand?”

The weight of his words was crushing.

“Either way… if you weren’t here, I’d be devoured by everyone the moment I fell out of their good graces. I have to… take your hand. Especially after you even gave me proxy rights.”

“Even now, I could send you somewhere safe, somewhere no one could ever find you. If that’s what you want.”

“……”

He was testing me. Forcing me to choose between an untraceable safe place and Kwon Taeha.

“Why are you like this?”

“What?”

“Why do you keep trying to test me?”

“I’m not testing you. I just want to know your heart.”

My heart, huh……

“What about yours?”

“I like you. So much that I don’t care if I’m played for a fool.”

For a moment, it was like I forgot how to breathe.

The confession hit me so hard, I couldn’t even muster a reaction. I could only stare at him, dazed. My heart had already dropped. Just like the day he’d found me. I reached for his hand. The hand that had always carried a steady warmth was now cold and damp. Was he tense, worried I might exploit his feelings? Was he the vulnerable one? I had never once seen the ever-arrogant lord of his world wear such a nervous expression until now. His sincerity made even my half-broken heart race again.

“…Hold it. My hand.”

“That’s all?”

“……”

“Is that really all?”

Pressed by him, I finally spoke.

“I just… don’t want to see you lose.”

“Good. We’ll stop here for today. I’ll stay the fool, and you keep being the sly fox.”

He stood and brushed a light kiss against my lips. Watching his back as he headed toward the dining room, I rubbed my lips, suddenly hot and tingling. When he returned, there was a can of beer in his hand.

He cracked it open and pressed the cold can against my cheek. Then he opened another for himself and handed me the USB. I stared at it in my palm, puzzled. He fetched a new laptop from under the table, synced it with his own, and pushed it toward me. When I just sat there in a daze, he took the USB and slotted it in for me.

“You’re not going to check it yourself?”

He glanced at the clock in the living room before answering.

“No time to go through everything one by one. The day after tomorrow I have to face questioning—to see whether I end up in prison.”

He said it lightly, but I knew it was anything but light.

“Just sit next to me and organize the data for the questions I’ll ask.”

I nodded slowly and gripped the mouse.

“And.”

“…?”

“No matter what happens, I’ll protect you. That, I can promise.”

He kept his eyes on the laptop as if speaking to himself. At this point, the only person I could trust was Kwon Taeha.

I clicked on the file folder, lifting the cover of the Holy Grail. Inside was something he absolutely needed to see.

“Do you have the files on Joseon Marine Corporation’s succession plans?”

“I did organize them, but they’re all beyond the statute of limitations.”

“That’s fine. Give me everything.”

I dragged the files into the shared folder.

“But why is Baek Jaetak facing special prosecution?”

“There’s an affiliate under Joseon Marine called Eurotia. Baek Jaetak, the largest shareholder, converted Eurotia’s stock into convertible bonds and dumped them dirt cheap. Then he passed them on to Baek Hyunseok. To put it simply… since Eurotia’s unlisted, they can arbitrarily set the price when issuing CBs. And CBs can be converted into stock. So Baek Hyunseok bought Eurotia’s underpriced CBs and later profited when they converted to stock. The Eurotia executives who concealed it are under special investigation too.”

He spoke while scrolling through files. It was natural, almost automatic, as if trimming every second wasted.

“The Eurotia case has about two weeks left on the statute of limitations.”

“So the prosecution sat on it all this time? Or they just found out now?”

“They knew. But under Korean law, gifting convertible bonds isn’t illegal. The Eurotia executives’ breach of trust could be a problem, but Baek Jaetak will still slip away in the end.”

He stopped scrolling, lifted his head, and looked straight at me. His sharp grin was that of a predator about to hunt.

“In Korea, the statute of limitations for breach of trust was seven years, right?”

As far as I knew, yes.

“If a suspect flees abroad, the clock stops ticking. Looks like… Joo Sangkyung had left a little bomb for Joseon Marine.”

He pulled up a man’s photo on the big screen. The man was the fugitive suspect who had manipulated the stock prices of ‘Joseon Shipbuilding’ and ‘Daejo Haeseong,’ handing Baek Hyunseok a massive profit before vanishing overseas. Taeha sent the picture somewhere, then picked up his phone and said only, “Find him.” He hung up immediately after.

“What difference does it make if you track him down?”

“We hand him over to the prosecution. He’ll spill everything. Unless Baek Jaetak has already killed him… And now, summarize this file for me.”

He pulled up another window. The document was long and hastily compiled, lacking structure. I skimmed it, then recited from memory.

“On March 21, 200x, Joseon Marine Corporation bought up land in Donam-dong, Tongyeong, to build a shipyard. There were conflicts with the local residents, and the residents’ representative who resisted the most disappeared. Baek Jaetak, Joseon Marine’s president, colluded with a local gang to have the man murdered. That was March 21, 200x.”

“Smart. You memorized all that.”

“My knowledge is lacking, so I have to at least memorize.”

“Humble, aren’t you. If it weren’t for you, no one would have uncovered this.”

He searched something and muttered, “Bingo.”

“Turns out the statute of limitations for contract killings under Korean law is longer than I thought.”

He once again dragged the files and arranged the evidence back and forth. The speed was so fast that even I, watching the screen, struggled to keep up.

“Why… are you trying to attack Baek Jaetak?”

Joseon Marine Industries was tightly connected to Tex, and Tex in turn was connected to STA, so the three companies were linked in their own way.

“The attack has already begun. It’s always been them who struck first.”

“Are you saying you were the one who reported this special prosecution case?”

“Do I even have that kind of power? I only gave a little help to the civic group that had already been preparing the report.”

Just as he said, the report against Baek Jaetak had been filed by 22 law professors and lawyers.

“We need to throw them into chaos too. While I’m being investigated.”

“So you’re saying the ones who reported you to the newspapers were Tex and Baek Jaetak?”

I had my suspicions as well. I just didn’t have the evidence.

“Something like that. But not only them.”

“Then… is it true that you really colluded with the U.S. Democratic Party?”

“Did you forget you’ve already been played by me? Your CEO is a scary person. Even if I really did, I wouldn’t leave any trace of evidence.”

“Then what?”

“That’s why it’s a conspiracy. A very intricately woven one at that. It’ll take quite a while to refute it.”

Agitation could be stirred with a single sentence, but refuting it required dozens of pages of documents and evidence. And by the time the refutation was ready, people had already been swayed. That thought came to me because it was exactly the situation Kwon Taeha was facing.

“How did you find this?”

“You’re not suspecting that I knew about it from the beginning, are you?”

“A little.”

Kwon Taeha said with a mischievous smile.

“I visited the graves of my grandparents and my mother. There was a hint there. CEO…”

I located the hidden folder, entered the password, and opened the file with two clicks before taking a half-drain of my beer.

“You said before… you already knew about this, right?”

He began carefully reading the text and photos projected onto the main screen.

The content was this: the one who orchestrated Kwon Taeha’s abduction was Kwon Yijae, and it was Joo Sangkyung  who kidnapped Kwon Taeha during his school break in Korea.

Suspicious of how easily Kwon Yijae seemed to give up on Kwon Taeha, Joo Sangkyung  had Kwon Jaehee, the eldest son, and Kwon Taeha’s DNA compared. But the results made it difficult to regard them as brothers with the same father. To make a more accurate judgment, on the day he visited Felix Kwon’s home, Joo Sangkyung  collected a strand of Felix Kwon’s hair and compared it against theirs. That was when he discovered a serious suspicion.

The DNA analysis showed that Felix Kwon and Kwon Taeha shared the same father. DNA base sequences were displayed on the screen.

Kwon Taeha had once said it himself. That his grandfather was his biological father.

That meant he had already known. But how did he know?

“Male infertility.”

Kwon Taeha spoke.

“Kwon Yijae is infertile. He didn’t know even when my mother was pregnant with my brother. He only found out when he did a genetic test right after my brother was born—that the child wasn’t his. It was probably the psychotropic drugs he’d been taking for years that made him infertile. Because of that, my mother’s position became precarious. Every attempt at artificial insemination failed, so for the last card, they used my grandfather’s sperm to conceive me. Either way, I’m still of the Kwon bloodline… It was all business. The fact that my mother bore me, and the fact that my father tried to kill me.”

I felt like scolding myself for my miserable imagination. I had assumed Eva Kwon and her father-in-law had been in an illicit relationship, which led to Kwon Taeha’s birth.

“Then… you also knew this?”

I opened another file.

His blue eyes gleamed fiercely as he read, and his lips slowly twisted.

“Verdammte.” (Damn)

A low curse burst from Kwon Taeha’s mouth. The veins on the back of his hand swelled bluish. There were times when I found him terrifying—whenever he didn’t bother to conceal his raw, primal instincts. Perhaps the Holy Grail was truly a poisoned chalice, and he was the one destined to drink from it.

“Who else has seen this?”

“……No one. Only me.”

“Wagner?”

“It was all written in Korean, far beyond Wagner’s ability to read. As for the files organized separately on CD, I was the only one who looked at them.”

If Wagner had seen this, it felt as if Kwon Taeha would have erased him as well. A sudden distance came over me. Would I too be easily discarded someday, once I was no longer useful to him…?

I shook my head. This was not the time for such thoughts.

“Now I see the reason.”

He sneered.

[“If any direct offspring of mine other than Yijae Kwon and Felix Kwon is confirmed, the inheritance will be redistributed. One-third of the allocated shares will be fully reclaimed and transferred to the third child. This will stands for thirty years after my death.”]

Kwon Taeha must have believed that Kwon Yijae tried to kill him because of his grandfather’s will. But the real reason he had wanted to eliminate him completely was right here.

Ten years after attempting artificial insemination on a woman, Kwon Yijae finally succeeded. The very year Kwon Taeha was abducted, his true biological child was born. The abduction occurred three months after the birth of that child.

In the end, it was a plot Kwon Yijae had laid out to pass everything to his own child. Perhaps that was why Kwon Taeha’s grandfather had rewritten his will—to prepare for the possibility and ensure the survival of his own bloodline, Kwon Taeha.

Yet the will could not easily be revealed. The social repercussions would be immense, and Eva Kwon would be condemned as well. Kwon Taeha knew the storm that would follow, which was why he didn’t use the will to reclaim his share of the inheritance.

“For now.”

He set down his beer.

“Focus on Joseon Marine Industries.”

I only nodded.

“If something happens to me…”

Of course, that must never happen. But he muttered as if to himself.

“Do as Jade Miller tells you.”

“Why?”

“She’ll take care of you.”

He was needlessly unsettling.

“You said you’d protect me. I don’t need anyone else.”

“Is it so hard to just say you want me to come back safely?”

“Focus.”

I clicked the mouse and opened the documents related to Tex. If a preemptive strike had been made, then all we could do was counterattack. And we didn’t have much time.