Chapter 9

The precise volume of water Lee Jaeha consumed the following Monday was 1,230 mL. He systematically emptied two standard 500 mL bottles before drinking nearly half of a third.

He monitored the numbers with clinical detachment. Only on that agonizing day did he truly understand the old psychological adage that people consume enormous quantities of liquid when panic has paralyzed their nervous systems.

Although his stomach was waterlogged, the rattling tension vibrating through his skull rendered him completely incapable of forcing even a single bite of solid food between his teeth.

During the executive lunch briefing, his personal secretary, Yujin, cast several puzzled glances toward her superior as she watched him gulp water in silence.

Jaeha, however, possessed no operational capacity to explain the biological failure to her.

The moment his afternoon obligations concluded, he remained frozen behind his desk, his gaze fixed intensely upon the sweeping second hand of the wall clock. He had calculated his departure down to the minute. His plan was to leave the corporate headquarters just before the standard Seoul gridlock could paralyze the Namsan corridor.

The instant the minute hand reached its designated mark, Jaeha stood. He reached for the tailored suit jacket hanging with meticulous precision from a brass hook in the executive corner of his office.

“Executive Director… are you leaving for the day?”

Yujin stopped abruptly in the doorway, an active tablet PC clutched firmly in both hands. Jaeha offered her a brief glance, then examined his silhouette in the reflection of the window and lightly tapped his lapels to smooth an almost imperceptible crease.

“Is there an operational emergency?” His voice was clipped and efficient. “I need to leave immediately.”

“No, sir. Nothing like that.” Yujin hesitated before continuing. “The young Madam called the office again. She demanded to know exactly what time you would be returning to the main estate today.”

“…Tell her I’m going to Nonhyeon-dong.”

Jaeha’s jaw tightened, and his mood plunged into sudden, biting cold.

The “young Madam” was Kim Ranhee’s preferred aristocratic title. Three full days had passed since he had abandoned the family dinner in ruins, and the fact that she was already tracking his movements indicated that she was desperate to determine whether his declaration concerning Jang Taegeon had been a legitimate corporate strike or nothing more than a bluff.

He could visualize, with perfect and crystalline clarity, the dreams circulating inside his stepmother’s mind.

Kim Sumin’s dynasty commanded immense prestige. The Omega’s father was a three-term member of the National Assembly who possessed the full backing of the majority party in the approaching presidential election. For Lee Jaeha to secure his succession within Yooshin Group by acquiring a future president as his father-in-law had been treated as an evolutionary certainty, as inevitable as the sun rising in the east the following morning. That carefully cultivated alliance, however, had softened and dropped from the branch like an overripe apricot after a punishing monsoon.

To Kim Ranhee, this was an unprecedented victory.

She could crush the ruined fruit beneath her heel, declare Jaeha’s judgment irreparably defective, and exploit the scandal to install Jaeho as the conglomerate’s rightful successor. She undoubtedly wanted to cross-examine him, probing his psychological defenses to discover precisely when he had begun nurturing an illicit craving for a thug from Jongno. She would present his downfall as an established corporate fact, whispering poison into Lee Ik-hyeong’s ears while wearing the saintly, grieving expression of a devoted mother.

Jaeha felt the muscles in his face stiffen like cold wax.

“If she contacts this office again, tell her I am trapped in an unresolved merger meeting.” His voice hardened. “I have personal business to handle. Manager Lim, clear your desk and go home early today as well.”

“Yes, Executive Director.”

Yujin’s tone remained perfectly detached.

Even without an explicit admission, their years of corporate alignment made it devastatingly obvious that his staff quietly despised the mistress of Yooshin. Jaeha had never expressed his hostility toward his stepmother in front of a subordinate, but prolonged professional proximity left little room for secrecy.

After dismissing Yujin with a brief nod, Jaeha left the executive suite carrying nothing but his car keys, wallet, and phone.

He and Taegeon had agreed to meet at the hotel again. Jaeha had personally called to reserve a private room in the main dining hall, bypassing the corporate booking system altogether.

He had forced himself to state every coordinate clearly, including the date and exact time. Yet when the reservation clerk asked for the number of guests, the simple word “two” had felt impossibly heavy in his mouth.

As he drove along the winding roads of Namsan, Jaeha struggled to still the trembling in his fingers. With a wave of cognitive dissonance, he recognized that the hesitation coursing through him was not merely fear.

It was excitement.

A sharp, tingling sensation crept upward from his toes and flooded his veins.

How did my existence deteriorate into this?

He retraced the variables that had brought him to this precipice.

From the precise instant his gaze had tangled with that Alpha’s at the sordid party, his body had recognized its master. The sudden and violent onset of his rut had provided undeniable proof of that submission. Later, seeing the man within Sumin’s orbit had awakened a subterranean obsession that defied every rational corporate framework Jaeha possessed.

Lee Jaeha’s denial had been brief, or perhaps unbearably long, depending on how one measured psychological collapse. It had been far too short a period in which to calmly accept that a dominant Alpha, one positioned at the absolute summit of society, was being drawn helplessly into the gravitational pull of another Alpha.

Yet it had also been an agonizingly long time to spend avoiding the admission that this sickness resembled something dangerously close to love.

Silencing the alarms screaming through his mind, Jaeha arrived to face Jang Taegeon. He had spent three days constructing a meticulous and courteous confession.

I have developed a profound attachment to you. Provided the arrangement does not offend your pride, I would like permission to court you.

It was the standard, sanitized language an Alpha might offer an elegant Omega. Having spent his entire life confined within the rigid architecture of Alpha dominance, Jaeha possessed no alternative vocabulary.

He had even surrendered to the most conventional expression of romance and purchased a carefully arranged bouquet. Upon reaching the hotel valet, however, a wave of profound shame seized him, compelling him to leave the flowers behind and enter the hotel empty-handed.

Jaeha had fully believed that, on that fateful afternoon, he would be able to negotiate a functional agreement. He had prepared the precise legal language necessary to demand that Taegeon sever all ties with Sumin, and he intended to promise that Yooshin’s capital would protect him.

The moment he sat across from the man, however, Lee Jaeha could not force a single syllable of his true feelings past his lips.

Although their marriage was ultimately decided that very day, anyone who later questioned him about love would have received only one honest answer: a hesitant and fractured silence.

“There is only one condition I require from this transaction with Executive Director Lee.”

Taegeon’s voice moved through the room like a heavy, dark current, dismantling Jaeha’s corporate armor in a single stroke.

“…”

“Liquidate your entire stake in Yooshin Group. Leave everything behind and come to my house as my person.” Taegeon’s gaze remained cold and impenetrable. “If you can carry out that submission, then who knows? Perhaps the fact that you were born an Alpha will not offend my pride after all.”

The answer Jang Taegeon gave to Jaeha’s proposal was a flat and clinical ‘yes’.

It was a brutal acceptance, stripped of every trace of human emotion and delivered as a cold, inflexible corporate condition.

***