Chapter 24

—“The prosecution conducted a surprise raid today and formally summoned four senior executives from Myeongwon Construction. The Special Investigations Unit announced that it is aggressively pursuing allegations of extensive corporate bribery in exchange for favorable evaluations of the Millennial New City bid, which Myeongwon controversially secured late last year.”

The enormous flat-screen television in the living room carried breaking coverage of Myeongwon Construction’s sudden legal decapitation.

Fundamentally incapable of tolerating idleness, Jaeha had left the television murmuring in the background to fill the crushing silence of the Yooshin family estate.

The anchor recited the exact brief Jaeha had received the previous night from a former university classmate who now chaired a major newspaper conglomerate with its own broadcasting division. The devastating story had aired precisely on schedule, every headline unfolding exactly as Jaeha had orchestrated.

“Is the drafted article to your liking? I’ll authorize it to run as is. But out of curiosity, why the sudden, intense interest in a syndicate like Myeongwon? It seems a little beneath your usual corporate scope…”

Those who attended the same elite private elementary schools inevitably found one another again as powerful alumni once they entered prestigious universities. Although Jaeha had disappeared overseas to study for several years, he frequently encountered the same blue-blooded heirs after his return.

They were not particularly close, but they understood the ruthless architecture of one another’s ambitions without ever needing to discuss it.

His classmate’s question had been entirely reasonable. Among third-generation chaebol heirs, a director of Jaeha’s stature taking a sudden interest in a minor construction firm with gang affiliations was bound to arouse suspicion.

Jaeha could not have cared less about the gossip circulating among the elite.

When he sent back a vague, dismissive reply promising to explain the political circumstances later, his contact immediately demanded, You’d better. The man’s persistent whining about preserving their social connection instantly brought Jaeha’s half-brother, Jaeho, to mind.

Jaeha seemed condemned to orbit immature heirs who threw the same childish, entitled tantrums. Even so, he remained convinced that the suffocating dynamic was temporary. Once this bloody affair with Myeongwon was officially concluded, he genuinely intended to disappear into a quiet domestic life, trusting that the corporate parasites would eventually lose interest and stop pursuing him.

Regardless, the lethal report concerning Myeongwon detonated that morning, exactly one week after the horrifying night when Taegeon’s arterial blood had nearly flooded their marital bed.

Jaeha had treated the District Chief Prosecutor to dinner only two days earlier, and today the judicial guillotine had fallen. The process had not been unusually sluggish, nor had it unfolded with miraculous speed. It was simply a standard, calculated transaction. The District Chief Prosecutor was likely still sequestered in his office, desperately trying to determine Jaeha’s true political position and profoundly misreading his sudden, ruthless assumption of a Yooshin Group directorship immediately after his marriage.

Let him wonder, Jaeha thought coldly. It has nothing to do with me anymore.

“Hey, why the hell have you been crawling back to this house every single day lately?”

Jaeha was reclining in the private lounge on the second floor, near his childhood bedroom, when Jaeho swaggered into the room and dropped onto the leather sofa with the abrasive question. The younger Alpha’s tone so perfectly mirrored the newspaper chairman’s whining that Jaeha briefly wondered whether the two idiots had ever socialized without his knowledge.

Considering that the media heir was embroiled in a vicious succession war against his own father’s illegitimate child, however, it was highly unlikely that he would willingly associate with Jaeho, who was himself a bastard son. Despite the social impossibility, the subtle similarity in their entitled speech patterns struck Jaeha as deeply pathetic.

While Jaeha remained absorbed in his cool corporate assessments, Jaeho pressed him for an answer, his voice rising.

“I asked why you’re suddenly living here again. Did you get into some massive fight with that bastard? No, wait. I mean, your brother-in-law or husband or whatever the hell he is to you?”

“Have you finished your corporate homework?” Jaeha asked in a deadened voice, without turning his attention from the television.

He immediately sensed the younger Alpha flinch beside him.

“Oh, come on. Am I a fucking high school senior? Why the hell would I be doing ‘homework’ at my age?”

“So you failed to complete the briefings.”

“…I did them.”

At the sullen, defeated reply, Jaeha finally cast him a sharp sidelong glance. The young executive scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck, visibly embarrassed, before suddenly releasing an indignant squawk.

“Just answer the damn question! Why the hell do you keep coming straight back to the main estate after work instead of going home to your husband?”

“I don’t care what you do with the rest of those useless executives, but do not fire Manager Lim during the transition.” Jaeha brushed aside the outburst with smooth indifference. “Keep her close. She will be invaluable to your survival.”

“I’ll handle my own damn staff. Fine, fuck it. Just stop looking at me like that…”

After only a few exchanged sentences, Jaeha concluded that extracting a mature, productive conversation from the boy was impossible. The grim reality that he had appointed this idiot as a principal director forced him to suppress a leaden sigh.

Then another thought occurred to him. Lee Jaeho and Jang Taegeon were exactly the same age.

Is that why he finds it so humiliating to call Taegeon his brother-in-law?

Lost in thought, Jaeha failed to notice Jaeho huffing and fuming beside him. With a languid motion, he changed the channel and landed on a gaudy promotional segment for a blockbuster film scheduled to premiere early the following month.

Jaeho was instantly distracted. His entire demeanor transformed, and his voice rose with the unrestrained, high-pitched excitement of a delighted child.

“That’s the exact project I ordered the division to invest heavily in, you know. I have a fucking brilliant feeling about this one. It’s going to destroy the box office. What a waste that I left the department. I should order them to send the quarterly reports directly to my new office.”

For the next ten minutes, Jaeho chattered without pause. He rambled about the film’s temperamental director, then gleefully relayed rumors that the lead screenwriter planned to marry the art director shortly after finalizing an ugly divorce.

By the time Jaeho’s manic monologue deteriorated into a vulgar assessment of the lead actor’s physical proportions, Jaeha was thoroughly exhausted. He let his head fall heavily against the back of the leather sofa and closed his eyes.

Jaeho, who had been talking without stopping for so much as a breath, abruptly fell silent. Sensing that something was seriously wrong, he stared intently at his older half-brother.

His expression transformed into pure, unfiltered shock, as though he had just watched the sky turn green.

“Wait a second… Did you actually roll around with an Omega today?”

Jaeha had maintained a strict lifelong policy of never dignifying absurd questions with a response.

When he opened his eyes, however, he found himself faintly dumbfounded. He suddenly remembered how often he had abandoned that exact policy around Jang Taegeon, reacting with startled, breathless confusion whenever the man delivered one of his filthy and preposterous remarks.

Even as Jaeha stared blankly at the recessed ceiling lights and offered no confirmation whatsoever, Jaeho refused to relent.

“Who the hell was it? Sumin hyung? No, Sumin hyung never smelled like this. Holy fuck, Lee Jaeha, are you actually cheating on your gangster husband? You’re a complete Alpha bastard. This is fucking insane!”

Jaeho looked genuinely horrified, almost as if the revelation had personally betrayed him.

Why does he look so profoundly betrayed? Jaeha wondered blankly. He isn’t the one married to me. And what the hell is a “complete Alpha bastard” supposed to mean in this context?

He should have reprimanded Jaeho immediately, dismantled the idiot’s vocabulary with merciless precision, and ordered him to concentrate on his own pathetic life. Yet Jaeha felt far too lethargic to defend himself.

The very notion that he might seek out some random Omega for pleasure was so fundamentally absurd that it bordered on comedy.

Then a cold ache pierced his chest.

Come to think of it, I never asked what kind of relationship Jang Taegeon had with the Omega we met at the hotel that afternoon.

He had desperately wanted to ask. He had wanted to demand exactly what intimate history Taegeon shared with the beautiful Omega who had addressed him so softly as “Director Jang” before obediently following him out of the room.

Even if the impossible opportunity presented itself again, however, Jaeha knew he would never voice the question. He had selfishly shattered Jang Taegeon’s freedom and forced him into this marriage.

Lee Jaeha understood the fundamental mechanics of a corporate transaction flawlessly. Since he had obtained the ultimate prize, Taegeon himself, he was strictly obligated to respect the other party’s autonomy and any external benefits that remained outside the agreement.

To question the Omega’s identity out of jealousy would constitute a gross violation of the unspoken terms of their marriage. Therefore, he could never allow himself to ask.

“Huh? The smell is completely gone.” Jaeho sniffed forcefully at the air around the sofa, his brow furrowed in bewilderment. “What the hell… Did my nose just malfunction?”

Still absorbed in his cold corporate calculations, Jaeha pressed the younger Alpha’s forehead away with the flat of his palm. He was far too weary to summon any genuine contempt for the obnoxious sniffing.

As he shifted his indifferent gaze back to the television, a sudden thought occurred to him.

“Stop dating D-list celebrities,” Jaeha ordered evenly. “Do not get swindled again like you did last year while fooling around. I am thoroughly exhausted from cleaning up your pathetic disasters.”

Jaeho bristled. “W-what the hell? When did I ever do that?”

“Would you prefer that I list your scandals alphabetically or chronologically?”

“Fuck. Do you seriously remember all of them?”

Ignoring the boy’s furious huffing, Jaeha looked toward the staircase as a household servant ascended to formally announce Chairman Lee Ik-hyeong’s return to the estate.

Jaeho sprang to his feet in instinctive panic, then visibly attempted to conceal his fear by urging Jaeha to rise as well.

“What are you doing? Come on. Let’s go downstairs and greet him.”

“I have formally married into another family,” Jaeha replied without moving from the sofa. “Go and greet him yourself.”

“What? Hey… We should still go down together.”

The sight of his half-brother still cowering before their father at his age was utterly wretched. Jaeha turned his back on him and withdrew into the sanctuary of his childhood bedroom.

Jaeho shouted after him from the hallway, his voice cracking with desperation, but Jaeha gave no reply. He shut the heavy mahogany door behind him and sealed himself away.

In the silence that followed, a strange, suffocating heaviness settled into Jaeha’s limbs, pressing down on him with invisible force. The instant his back touched the mattress, an endless gravitational pull seized him, and he felt as though he were slowly sinking into the crushing, lightless depths of a midnight ocean.

Jang Taegeon appeared in the dream that followed.

“Didn’t you see my bouquet?”

Perhaps the elite wedding planner had been too embarrassed by the prospect of handing a delicate floral arrangement to either Lee Jaeha or a man as terrifyingly massive as Jang Taegeon, because no bouquet had been prepared for the ceremony. Yet within the hazy, distorted logic of the dream, Taegeon stood on the pristine white aisle of the wedding hall, actively searching for the missing flowers.

After hesitating for a heartbeat, Jaeha quietly admitted that none had been prepared for them.

Had the Alpha only been joking? Or had he genuinely harbored a quiet, secret wish to carry a wedding bouquet?

It had been an imperfect and wholly transactional wedding, yet the sleeping Jaeha desperately longed to obtain whatever trivial thing his husband desired. As the frantic thought crossed his mind, the dream version of Taegeon leaned close and pressed his lips to Jaeha’s ear.

“Isn’t that what you throw to make sure you have plenty of children?”

That superstition belongs to the traditional pyebaek ceremony, Jaeha thought wildly. Do Western bouquets carry some kind of fertility symbolism too?

His sleeping expression shifted into faint bewilderment, his brow drawing tight with confusion.

At the sight of his pale, baffled face, Taegeon released a low and astonishingly gentle chuckle.

Once again, Jaeha lost himself completely in the intoxicating beauty of that sound. It was the first time he had ever witnessed Jang Taegeon smile from such intimate, breath-stealing proximity.

The sharp ends of Taegeon’s dark eyebrows dipped in perfect harmony with the crinkling corners of his eyes, leaving his usually piercing and intimidating gaze half concealed, like twin pools of polished obsidian. Jaeha stared at the breathtaking sight without comprehension, unable to believe that such a magnificent predator stood at his right hand.

Yet had their dreamlike wedding fallen into ruin precisely because Taegeon had never received a bouquet to throw?

Months later, in the waking world, Jaeha had researched the traditional symbolism of wedding bouquets and discovered that they represented luck and protection. Perhaps their violent marriage had been deprived of both because no bouquet had graced the altar, leaving the union unguarded as it spiraled toward its present, blood-soaked state.

Throughout the torturous dream, Jaeha searched tirelessly for the missing flowers. Jang Taegeon had wanted them, and Lee Jaeha yearned with every fiber of his being to give them to him. He needed to prove that even their ruined marriage retained some fragile, fleeting trace of luck and protection.

Yet after racing through the labyrinthine corridors of the wedding hall, he returned empty-handed. Crushed by despondency, Jaeha approached the altar and confessed his failure, his face darkened with shame.

Taegeon stared at him with terrifying indifference, his expression revealing nothing.

“When the fuck did I ever say I wanted that?”

Ah. Was that the brutal truth?

Perhaps such delicate, romantic gestures held no value for a man who worked as an enforcer in the underworld.

A profound sense of futility engulfed Jaeha’s subconscious. Every anchor he had clung to seemed to shrink into insignificance. He possessed boundless corporate wealth and a mountain of power that he longed to offer, yet Jang Taegeon appeared to need none of it. The devastating realization pinned Jaeha beneath a suffocating weight of sorrow.

When he finally jolted awake the following morning, his eyes felt dry and unbearably gritty. He rubbed at his face absentmindedly, wondering whether he had cried in his sleep, but his cheeks bore no trace of tears.

The complete absence of physical grief made his pursuit of happiness feel just as fleeting, intangible, and unreal.

***