Chapter 13

Jaeha had not caught so much as a glimpse of Taegeon’s shadow since the day he moved his luggage into the Pyeongchang-dong mansion. Ever since his disastrous meeting with Chairman Jang Changsik, Taegeon had severed even the thinnest threads of obligatory communication between him and the chairman. Clearly, the Alpha believed the entire arrangement had metastasized into an irredeemable catastrophe.

Utterly unequipped to repair such a fractured dynamic, Jaeha resorted to the only coping mechanism he knew: tactical withdrawal.

He interpreted Taegeon’s suffocating absence as a deliberate expression of disgust. Convinced that his very existence repulsed the man, Jaeha meticulously erased his own presence from the house. He avoided all digital contact and kept to the shadows of the first floor, ensuring their paths would never cross by accident.

An entire month had bled away before the newlyweds, who had not even bothered with the pretense of a honeymoon, finally collided.

Jaeha scrambled awkwardly to his feet, abandoning the book he had been reading on the living room sofa.

At the far end of the marble foyer, half-swallowed by the heavy shadows surrounding the front doors, Jang Taegeon stood motionless, quietly watching him.

“…You’re back,” Jaeha murmured, the greeting snagging in his constricted throat.

Since the wedding, Jaeha’s professional life had been systematically dismantled. He had been ordered to relinquish his crucial portfolios at Yooshin, one by one, and transfer them to his half-brother, Lee Jaeho. Because Jaeho possessed only aggressively mediocre corporate instincts, the transition required exhausting, painstaking hand-holding at every stage. Even so, compared with Jaeha’s previously punishing executive workload, his new schedule felt unbearably hollow.

He arrived at the corporate tower later, left earlier, and spent the surplus of agonizing free time buried in books or exhausting his nervous energy in the estate’s private gym.

Whenever Myeongsun delivered fresh groceries, Jaeha methodically unpacked the organic produce and searched for recipes on his tablet, using the task to kill the dragging hours.

Back in his bachelor apartment, he had survived almost entirely on premium hotel takeout or meticulously prepared meals dispatched by the executive secretarial pool. Now, however, having deliberately severed his ties with Yooshin Group’s support staff to keep them from falling into Jaeho’s greedy clutches, Jaeha was entirely responsible for feeding himself.

Surprisingly, Myeongsun was a culinary savant.

Still, watching the enormous syndicate enforcer wield an eight-inch chef’s knife, which looked as pitifully small as a plastic toothpick in his scarred hand, awakened an undeniable sense of primal unease.

“Please, Director. Handling blades is literally my profession. Wait, no. That came out completely wrong…”

Myeongsun had immediately backpedaled, his eyes widening in horror at his own gangland Freudian slip.

Despite the giant’s frantic and stumbling apologies, Jaeha had politely but firmly banished him from the kitchen and insisted on preparing his own dinners. In that quiet and isolated domestic routine, Jaeha had almost forgotten the terrifying reality of his marriage. It wasn’t that his suffocating and desperate feelings for Taegeon had faded, nor had he truly forgotten the legal chains binding them together. Instead, the crushing loneliness had bred a dangerous and careless complacency.

That was precisely why his mind violently short-circuited at the sight of Jang Taegeon looming at the end of the dark corridor.

Jaeha sprang from the cushions so quickly that the heavy hardcover book slid from his lap and struck the hardwood floor with a resounding thud.

Taegeon’s dark, unblinking gaze remained fixed on him.

A sudden wave of paralyzing anxiety crashed over Jaeha, forcing him to bite hard into his lower lip. Did I look too comfortable? Having spent his entire life at the absolute pinnacle of the social and corporate hierarchy, Jaeha possessed an unconscious, aristocratic arrogance. No matter whose territory he occupied, he naturally projected the commanding presence of an owner.

In any other life, he would not have spared it a second thought.

Under Taegeon’s severe scrutiny, however, a horrifying realization seized him. Lounging in casual clothes and reading in the living room, he must have looked unbearably shameless to the husband who openly despised him.

Yet Taegeon offered him nothing. The man merely continued his silent, suffocating observation.

In the end, the crushing discomfort forced Jaeha to break the stalemate.

“…Have you eaten dinner?” he asked softly.

Taegeon gave only the faintest, most dismissive nod before striding forward and walking straight past him without a word.

A crisp trace of cool air followed in the Alpha’s wake, carrying the clean scent of rain mingled with an expensive, distinctive body wash. The fragrance was painfully familiar, yet it felt violently foreign as it slipped into the sterile stillness of the enormous house.

Did he stop by a hotel?

Jaeha’s stomach plummeted.

A vivid and intrusive phantom image of Kim Sumin flashed through Jaeha’s mind. Despite his lingering curiosity, Jaeha still lacked the courage to ask if the two men had officially ended their relationship. Sumin’s fragile, aristocratic pride made Jaeha suspect that the Omega had fled after the humiliation, determined to erase them both from his life. However, in their world, pride often gave way to desire. Even if Taegeon had resumed a clandestine affair with Sumin, Jaeha had no authority to intervene.

Releasing a heavy, shuddering breath, Jaeha stared down the desolate hallway before forcing his attention back to the book in his hands.

If it isn’t Sumin, it will be some other Omega.

For an apex predator like Taegeon, being legally shackled to another Alpha must have felt like a visceral insult, perhaps even more degrading than settling for a Beta. Before their catastrophic union, Sumin had been the sole constant in Taegeon’s life. Any other encounters had been fleeting, nameless one-night stands.

Jaeha couldn’t shake the bitter, utterly useless assumption he had formed about his husband’s preferences: Omega women first, Omega men second, and Beta women only as a desperate last resort.

Taegeon existed on a completely different plane from Jaeha, a defective Alpha who had foolishly and irreparably surrendered his heart to a dominant male. Any soft, yielding Omega would have seemed infinitely more natural at Taegeon’s side.

And yet, Jaeha had been the one to covet him with such violent intensity. Jaeha alone had forced this suffocating marriage into existence.

Lost in the dark labyrinth of his own insecurities, Jaeha failed to notice the passing time until the click of the master bedroom door echoed down the hall.

Taegeon emerged in a thin, relaxed knit sweater and dark loungewear pants. Damp strands of hair clung loosely to his forehead, and the instant he stepped into view, his dark eyes found Jaeha.

“Ah…”

A soft, embarrassingly pathetic sound escaped Jaeha’s lips. He bit the inside of his cheek and lowered his gaze, his knuckles whitening around the spine of the book. Then he turned toward his own sterile bedroom, intending to retreat into solitude.

Taegeon’s voice stopped him cold.

“Park Myeongsun is losing his hair.”

Jaeha froze and looked over his shoulder. “…Excuse me?”

“It’s not as though bald men are your type, is it?” Taegeon replied, his expression flat.

Without waiting for an answer, the massive man brushed past him and stalked down the hall. A moment later, the lights in the study flickered on, followed by the heavy thud of the door shutting.

Jaeha blinked rapidly, his corporate-trained mind scrambling to process the absurd non sequitur. Park Myeongsun? Who the hell is Park Myeongsun? He remained rooted to the hardwood floor, frantically searching his mental catalogue of Yooshin Group’s business rivals and Janghan Construction’s primary adversaries. Was there a rival CEO by that name? Is he telling me to use this as political blackmail? Surely a receding hairline doesn’t qualify as strategic leverage.

Then the realization struck him with the force of a physical blow.

He had simply misregistered the name.

Myeongsun.

Taegeon’s most loyal subordinate, the terrifying syndicate enforcer who also functioned as their household manager.

“…Hair loss?” Jaeha murmured into the empty hallway.

What in the world did Myeongsun’s hair follicles have to do with anything?

Utterly bewildered, yet lacking the courage to knock on the study door and demand an explanation, Jaeha finally retreated to his bedroom. He placed the book on the nightstand and slid beneath the cold sheets.

After staring blankly at the ceiling for twenty minutes, a strange but plausible interpretation finally occurred to him.

Ah. He’s warning me to be considerate because his subordinate is sensitive about going bald.

The thought was oddly endearing.

A ruthless corporate gangster, concerned about his henchman’s insecurities.

What cures hair loss again?

Having inherited no such tendency from either side of his aristocratic lineage, Jaeha had never given the condition a moment’s thought. Idly wondering whether black beans were an effective remedy, he allowed his eyelids to drift shut.

The simple, undeniable fact that Jang Taegeon was breathing beneath the same roof settled into his bones like a heavy narcotic warmth.

Turning onto his side to face the locked door, Jaeha surrendered to the pathetic, intoxicating rush of happiness.

***