Chapter 23

Days bled into weeks after that blood-soaked evening.

Unable to return to the marital estate, Lee Jaeha wandered the capital’s cutthroat political streets like a well-dressed stray dog.

Paper-thin, translucent slices of premium fugu sashimi lay arranged across an exquisite ceramic plate. As his dinner companion greedily seized several potentially toxic pieces and chewed with grotesque enthusiasm, Jaeha kept his gaze lowered beneath the edge of the table, his eyes fixed on the platinum band encircling his left ring finger.

“Well, well. What an extraordinary surprise. Executive Director Lee has actually come to seek me out.”

The ring had been thoroughly sullied by thick, clotted blood, a grim physical reminder of the night Jaeha had thrown his full weight against Taegeon’s gaping stab wound.

He had initially instructed his veteran secretary, Manager Lim, to return the custom-fitted piece to the luxury boutique for professional restoration. However, an overeager junior staff member had overheard the request and enthusiastically volunteered to clean it himself, producing a high-frequency ultrasonic cleaner normally reserved for spectacles.

Manager Lim had stared at the young man in profound horror. Judging by her expression, placing a chaebol heir’s priceless wedding band inside a cheap, commonplace desk appliance constituted an offense worthy of immediate dismissal.

Jaeha had not cared about the indignity of the method. He had been far more frightened by the prospect of being separated from the ring for the several weeks the boutique would require to restore it.

With a slight nod, he had granted the junior secretary permission. Then he remained rooted beside the desk, watching in silence as the machine hummed to life. While the senior staff released muted gasps of alarm, the newly hired graduate merely beamed with innocent pride. He meticulously polished the platinum with a microfiber cloth until it shone with a mirrorlike gleam, then returned it to Jaeha barely five minutes later.

It was a ring Jaeha had not removed once since the day of their wedding.

He had not laid eyes on Jang Taegeon since the moment he climbed into Secretary Go’s black sedan. Although Jaeha was undeniably submerged in the depths of corporate warfare, his failure to make contact had nothing to do with work.

He was terrified.

Delaying action purely out of fear was a pathetic realization for a man who had always prided himself on cold, clinical logic. He had become lost in a terrifying labyrinth of emotions he possessed neither the experience nor the discipline to navigate.

Jang Taegeon undoubtedly knew about the reckless and aggressive political maneuvers Jaeha was orchestrating throughout the underworld. The Alpha’s final order to stay put had been more than a threat. It had been a desperate plea for Jaeha to remain safe. For a man whose heart belonged so completely to the Alpha who had made that request, openly defying him felt like a form of psychological torture.

Had Taegeon not staggered through the door drenched in his own blood, Jaeha would have completed his handover at Yooshin Group and quietly stepped down into a domestic existence. At that very hour, he might have been lounging in the estate’s living room with a book or researching indoor gardening while waiting for his husband to return from work.

The moment blood stained the floorboards, however, that idyllic future burned to ash. From then on, all Jaeha could do was remain in exile and pray for an impossible forgiveness.

His thumb moved constantly across the cold platinum band, treating the metal as a surrogate for the emotions churning violently inside him. He longed desperately to see Taegeon’s face, ached to return to his side, and could still remember the phantom scent of sea salt and crushed flowers pooling across their bed.

“I still use tools. My position doesn’t exactly allow for delicate work, so I apologize, Executive Director, but facts are facts.”

Jaeha’s thumb stilled over the diamond setting as the memory of their wedding fitting rose to the surface.

Taegeon had carelessly forced sample rings onto all ten of his massive fingers, turning his hands beneath the light so the gemstones flashed like the plumage of an aggressively displaying peacock. His fingers were long but extraordinarily thick, and he had squeezed the delicate bands past knuckles they could barely clear before lazily asking Jaeha which one looked prettier.

Jaeha had not even been looking at his hands. He had been utterly captivated by the sharp, striking angles of the Alpha’s face.

Mistaking Jaeha’s bewildered silence for unfamiliarity with underworld terminology, Taegeon had arched one dark eyebrow.

“If a ring is too thick or the setting is too complicated, it catches on my tools and gets scratched to hell.”

Ah.

The realization had struck Jaeha like a physical blow.

Despite being the third-generation heir to a sprawling construction empire, Jang Taegeon remained a street-level enforcer at his core. The greedy old chairman had been adamant about it. He refused to allow his grandson to abandon the brutal underworld tactics that had carved the family fortune from the filth of Jongno’s back alleys.

At the time, Jaeha had focused on only one terrifyingly romantic implication. His prospective spouse was explicitly telling him that he would not remove their wedding band, not even while wielding weapons in the midst of a gang war.

“Let’s choose the thinnest design.”

With an air of casual indifference, Taegeon had pried a sleek platinum band from his own finger and slid it perfectly onto Jaeha’s.

“I want you to live comfortably on my money, so I’ll have to rake in a massive pile of it first, right? Until then, I’ll need to hold on to my tools a little longer.”

His face had remained an absolute, unreadable void as his calloused thumb traced the small diamond.

Even without understanding the full and brutal extent of Taegeon’s criminal reality, that quiet promise had constricted Jaeha’s heart so painfully that he could scarcely breathe. Now, staring blankly at the fugu sashimi, he felt a crushing wave of regret engulf him.

I should have asked.

I should have demanded to know exactly what kind of blood-soaked violence he was involved in and how lethal the danger truly was.

With a persistent, melancholy ache lodged beneath his ribs, Jaeha rubbed the platinum band once more before lifting his head and arranging a razor-sharp, immaculate smile across his face.

“I merely hoped for an audience with the District Chief Prosecutor.” Jaeha smoothly poured sake into the older man’s cup. “You visited the main estate quite frequently when my grandfather was alive. I suppose I was feeling nostalgic, since I haven’t seen much of you lately.”

“Oh, you flatter me…”

The head of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office released a revoltingly good-natured chuckle.

“Truth be told, that is primarily because my relationship with your father, Lee Ik-hyeong, is not exactly cordial at present.”

The man seated across from him was a masterpiece of hypocrisy.

At his highly publicized inauguration, he had delivered a roaring, impassioned speech championing absolute judicial integrity. Yet he had conveniently forgotten the decades of illegal, under-the-table sponsorship he had eagerly accepted from Jaeha’s late grandfather. It was remarkable how easily he had also overlooked the enormous congratulatory wreaths bearing the Yooshin Group logo that had been delivered directly to his office on the very day of the ceremony.

Despite being Chairman Lee Ik-hyeong’s university alumnus, the opportunistic bastard had launched a predatory investigation into Yooshin’s illegal inheritance transfers the instant Jaeha’s grandfather had been sealed inside his paulownia coffin.

Although the chairman had ultimately been acquitted of every charge, the crushing strain of the trial had reduced Lee Ik-hyeong to a drunken wreck. One evening, he had stood over the young Jaeho with a 9-iron golf club clenched in his hands.

Lee Jaeha still remembered tearing the club from his father’s grip while barely awake. The scene remained seared into his mind alongside the sight of his stepmother, Kim Ranhee, begging through tears for him to intervene before the old man beat his half brother to death.

Compared with controlling that volatile domestic madness, the corrupt official seated across the table was a refreshingly uncomplicated creature. He was the very embodiment of a brazen parasite, perfectly willing to swallow every illegal bribe offered to him without the slightest burden of conscience.

Manipulating greed that predictable came more easily to Jaeha than breathing.

“What the hell are you staring at? I told you to choose a ring, so why are you staring at my face? Focus before you end up selecting absolute garbage.”

Navigating this treacherous political chess match felt infinitely simpler than dealing with the enormous Alpha who had spoken those words with complete indifference while sliding a heart-shaped pink diamond ring designed for a woman onto his thick little finger, simply to mock the sizing.

Jaeha swiftly concealed his bitter nostalgia behind the rim of his ceramic sake cup. He refused to allow even the slightest flicker of derision to breach his immaculate corporate mask. Revealing his true contempt would only disturb the delicate transaction at hand.

The warmed sake, paired expertly with a dried sea bream tail cured by harsh coastal winds, was objectively excellent. The only problem was Jaeha’s profound and sickening lack of appetite.

His companion suffered from no such difficulty. After enthusiastically satisfying his bottomless greed with the premium fugu sashimi, the District Chief Prosecutor finally lowered his ivory chopsticks. He rinsed his mouth with a swallow of sake, settled heavily against his seat, and fixed Jaeha with a calculating stare.

“Regardless, Executive Director Lee, I believe I have a fairly accurate suspicion as to why you requested this private audience.”

“I assumed the District Chief Prosecutor would already have some idea.”

Jaeha offered a faint, perfectly rendered smile. The older man’s transparent probing was utterly pathetic, but he absorbed the remark without so much as a twitch.

The official took immense pride in calling himself a dragon risen from a ditch, portraying himself as a self-made man who had conquered the system through sheer merit. In reality, his entire judicial career had been deeply entwined with the support of powerful chaebol conglomerates. To create the precise political impact he needed that night, Jaeha understood that he would have to cater shamelessly to the man’s consuming inferiority complex.

The District Chief Prosecutor harbored a deep resentment toward Jaeha’s father, his former university peer, and despised the stigma of being called a chaebol lapdog, a label that had followed him since his years at the judicial training institute.

Had he genuinely loathed the corrupt system, he could have joined his radical peers in the streets, hurling tear gas canisters outside the campus library and bleeding for democracy. Instead, he had eagerly pocketed every corporate handout offered to finance his examinations. Even now, in his advanced age, he seized every petty opportunity to vent his insecurities like an absolute fool.

Hypocrites and cowards, however, invariably made the most useful pawns.

Such was the nature of the chessboard Lee Jaeha had so meticulously arranged.

“The old saying claims that a man only truly becomes an adult once he marries, but there was certainly no reason for you to rush into such a… colorful arrangement.” Condescension dripped from the District Chief Prosecutor’s voice. “I imagine society is already chattering rather viciously about your choice of spouse, isn’t it?”

The insult beneath the words was unmistakable. In his view, Jaeha should have remained single rather than legally binding himself to an underworld gangster.

One of Jaeha’s immaculate eyebrows twitched for the briefest fraction of a second before settling perfectly back into place. Unwilling to endure another pointless and meandering barb, he cut directly to the heart of the matter.

“That is precisely why I would deeply appreciate your assistance within your jurisdiction.”

“Considering how generously your late grandfather supported my career, it is only proper that I return the favor.”

The official chuckled and lifted three translucent slices of poisonous pufferfish into his mouth at once.

“Thank you. My grandfather always instructed me to seek out the District Chief Prosecutor whenever I encountered an insurmountable wall.”

“He was a wise man. If I do not help our brilliant Executive Director Lee, who else in this world would I possibly help?”

Right.

Jaeha merely curved one corner of his mouth and took another measured sip. The ceramic cup held the essence of a sunken ocean, a scent with which he was intimately and chillingly familiar.

It mirrored the pheromones that once pooled across his husband’s bed.

“Thank you once again, District Chief Prosecutor.”

He forced the gratitude past his lips, although the words tasted like ash.

Pride was not what made the concession so difficult. Rather, it was the stifling ennui inspired by the filthy tasks he was compelled to perform. Lee Jaeha wanted nothing more than to leave the suffocating room.

But where could he possibly go?

He desperately wanted to see the ocean, yet he could no longer tell whether it was truly the sea he longed for or someone else entirely.

The District Chief Prosecutor accepted his forced gratitude with a pleased nod and a smug curl of his mouth. “Fugu sashimi is ordinarily eaten during the day, you know. One would hardly want to become violently ill from lingering neurotoxins while asleep.”

Jaeha said nothing.

Completely hidden beneath the table, his thumb continued tracing the cold platinum of his wedding band as he feigned attention.

“I greatly prefer indulging in it during the evening,” the older man continued boastfully. “Once night falls, eating poison makes me feel as though I have recovered the reckless bravado of my youth.”

Bravado? What fucking bravado?

Jaeha’s internal voice was hollow with disgust.

The coward had financed his prestigious education with his elderly mother’s blood money, only to become a willing dog for the chaebol establishment. He had no right whatsoever to speak of youthful bravado.

Now he carried himself like some hardened mob boss swaggering through Jongno. The performance was completely absurd.

Jaeha revealed none of his contempt. He merely caressed the ring on his finger and released a silent, phantom sigh.

The small diamond caught against the ridges of his thumbprint, a heavy jewel that promised a terrifying eternity.

“Is it not true that the more wealth and status a person possesses, the more hopelessly addicted he becomes to risk?” the District Chief Prosecutor mused. “I can hardly begin snorting drugs or committing violent crimes at my age, can I?”

In essence, the arrogant official regarded Lee Jaeha’s marriage to Jang Taegeon as nothing more than thrill-seeking, the passing whim of a bored chaebol scion.

Jaeha suppressed a weary sigh and forced the breath back into his lungs. He wondered whether Jang Taegeon had ever been required to endure this same variety of transparent nonsense during his own meetings.

“This officiant is fucking boring,” Taegeon had whispered at the altar. “Is he this dry even when he’s getting laid?”

The memory surfaced without warning, vivid and razor-sharp.

Their wedding had been a lavish spectacle officiated by a former governor of the Bank of Korea.

The elite tailor had clearly been terrified by the prospect of draping a delicate Omega’s ceremonial robe over a man built as massively as Jang Taegeon. Unable to bring himself to attempt it, he had created a bespoke tuxedo from heavy cream-colored silk instead.

The garment had embraced the Alpha’s powerful frame flawlessly. Even his dark hair, ordinarily dangerous and unruly, had been swept neatly away from his face for the occasion.

His enormous hands had remained politely folded behind his back, yet the filthy and scandalous words he whispered directly into Jaeha’s ear had reverberated through his mind like rolling thunder.

When Jaeha’s eyes widened in unfiltered shock, the former governor had cleared his throat loudly. He had plainly noticed the newlyweds’ flagrant disregard for the solemnity of their vows.

Jaeha had immediately snapped his head forward and feigned reverent attention. Beside him, Taegeon had released a low, dark chuckle.

Jaeha had been forced to bite viciously into the inside of his cheek to keep the corners of his own mouth from lifting.

Remembering the sheer force of Taegeon’s presence in that moment, Jaeha knew that Jang Taegeon was not a man who quietly endured anything he despised.

Therefore, these tedious and meandering political performances properly belonged to Lee Jaeha.

Was that not one of the fundamental purposes of marriage?

Had Taegeon been an ordinary civilian, he might have summoned Jaeha into a room because he was afraid to swat some harmless insect. In that case, Jaeha would have walked over without complaint and crushed the tiny creature that had frightened his husband.

The pests threatening Jang Taegeon, however, were vast, heavily armed corporate syndicates. Consequently, what the rest of elite society thought about Jaeha’s methods was utterly irrelevant.

He fashioned a meticulous smile, one precisely engineered to appease the corrupt official.

“I am relieved that you understand the psychology behind it. As the District Chief Prosecutor knows perfectly well, I have lived a sterile life entirely removed from any form of deviation.”

He allowed the smile to deepen by a carefully measured degree.

“Regardless, I am a married man now. I merely wish to indulge my spouse’s desires. I have already made several rather grand declarations to him, you see.”

It was a complete lie.

Jaeha was orchestrating this enormous political strike solely to protect Taegeon, although it was neither something the Alpha had requested nor anything he would have wanted.

Nevertheless, Lee Jaeha regarded it as his absolute duty.

“Yes, I understand that sentiment perfectly.” The District Chief Prosecutor raised the ceramic cup to his lips, allowing a soft laugh to escape. “So… Myeongwon Construction, was it?”

Beneath wrinkled, narrowing eyelids, his calculating gaze locked onto Jaeha with a predatory gleam.

What a painfully tedious man.

The official was undoubtedly already performing the arithmetic in his head, calculating precisely how deeply this minor favor would place the future heir of Yooshin Group in his debt. That kind of naked and transparent maneuvering was exactly why the man, despite years of powerful sponsorship, had stagnated at the rank of District Chief Prosecutor well into his advanced age.

Jaeha simply returned the smile, his expression overflowing with manufactured warmth and profound compassion. Wearing an impeccable mask was what Lee Jaeha did best.

Carrying out this ruthless political assassination suited his innate corporate abilities far better than pacing helplessly through the estate, agonizing over Taegeon’s punctured abdomen while being completely unable to stop the blood.

Even so, a crushing wave of remorse passed through his heart. He felt profoundly guilty for breaking the quiet promise Taegeon had demanded from him before their wedding.

Still wearing his flawless smile, Jaeha reached for his empty glass. On the table between them, aside from the lethal fugu sashimi, there was nothing left worth consuming.

***