Chapter 38

“Executive Director, you’re heading out!”

Perhaps because they were standing in front of the company gates, Jeong-gil had abandoned that peculiar habit of calling him brother-in-law. Amused by the relief it brought him, Jaeha returned the greeting with a faint, knowing smile.

“Yes, Jeong-gil. Good evening.”

“I heard you’re going to the gym with your younger brother today.”

Jaeha nodded slowly. Lee Jaeho had seemed eager to spar, and Jaeha had simply given in. Going along with him was far less exhausting than enduring the relentless nagging of a man who would trail him like a shadow for four straight days whenever a promise went unfulfilled.

Beaming, Jeong-gil opened the rear door for him. The executive parking garage was still crowded, and given the early hour, Jaeha appeared to be the only person leaving work.

Just as he was about to slide into the car, Jeong-gil’s smile disappeared.

He went still, his gaze snapping toward something with sudden, piercing intensity. His expression hardened at once, and his eyes sharpened like honed blades as he stared into a distant corner of the garage.

The headquarters parking facility was vast, with a considerable stretch of space between Jaeha’s vehicle and the perimeter wall. Even so, it felt as though Jeong-gil’s gaze were drilling straight through the concrete, fixed on something concealed beyond it.

“Is something there?”

“…No. It’s nothing. I just thought I saw something.”

Jeong-gil offered nothing further. Jaeha chose not to press him and climbed into the car.

The door closed with a soft click. Before Jeong-gil could circle around the bonnet and take the driver’s seat, Jaeha glanced toward the place that had caught his attention.

There was nothing there. One corner was darker than the rest, but the parking garage, befitting a corporate headquarters, was brilliantly illuminated. There was hardly anywhere for a shadow to hide.

What did he see?

A brief thread of doubt crossed Jaeha’s mind, only to vanish when Jeong-gil climbed behind the wheel and announced brightly, “We’re heading out now!”

The car glided smoothly from the garage.

***

Jang Taegeon’s life had never been worth much.

The countless fine scars crossing the backs of his hands stood as proof of that. A man raised in comfort and safety would never have accumulated marks like those.

The dried blood caught in the old scars offered further testimony to the kind of life he had lived. Taegeon did not care that the blood on his fingers stained his cigarette holder. He bit down on the filter and inhaled so deeply that his cheeks hollowed.

Each time the glowing ember flared red, his brow tightened into its habitual grimace. Beneath the merciless glare of the halogen lights, the room had been drenched in another man’s blood.

Taegeon dragged a folding steel chair across the floor and dropped into it. He flicked the cigarette butt into the spreading pool at his feet, where it went out with a sharp, furious hiss.

Only one man remained alive among the heap of corpses. His eyes were so swollen that he could no longer force them open, and blood-tinged saliva already leaked from his mouth. Taegeon wondered, with detached curiosity, how much longer the man could endure what was coming.

There was no sympathy in the thought, much less pity. It was closer to the practical concern one might feel upon noticing a paper bag beginning to split at the seams while the destination was still far away.

Taegeon pulled a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and wiped at the gore coating his hands. The blood had already dried into a thick, sticky residue that clung stubbornly to his skin, ruining the cloth almost immediately. With an indifferent glance, he tossed the handkerchief onto the smoldering cigarette butt.

He had seen Lee Jaeha carrying handkerchiefs and had bought several for himself, but he always ended up treating them as disposable, throwing each one away after a single use.

Next time, I’ll just steal one from my husband.

If it belonged to Jaeha, he would never dare discard it so carelessly.

“Myeongsun-ah, bring it here.”

Myeongsun, who had been standing rigidly behind him, removed a file from inside his coat. Taegeon accepted it, crossed one leg over the other, and began reciting names with the cold, measured cadence of a Grim Reaper calling the dead for the third and final time.

“The day of the Horse, the day of the Soldier, and the others. Three visits to the Myeongwon casino in total. Choi Cheol-ho.”

“Di… Director Jang, please. Please hear me out. That was… that was all under the Chairman’s orders!”

The man stretched out both trembling hands, desperate to seize Taegeon’s trouser leg, but he was far too slow.

“Ugh!”

Myeongsun’s enormous palm crashed into the space between the man’s ear and cheek, knocking him face-first onto the floor slick with blood and filth. His consciousness shattered for several seconds, leaving him unable to rise. Only rough, rattling wheezes escaped his throat.

Jang Taegeon drew out another cigarette and settled it between his lips before glancing at his watch. He did not light it. Instead, he repeatedly flipped the lid of his Zippo open and shut, each movement producing a crisp metallic clink.

“Hmm.”

Taegeon glanced toward Myeongsun.

“Did he go to the gym?”

“Yes. They just went inside.”

“It really pisses me off how popular he is with those bastards. Even our Myeongsun starts grinning whenever he’s around. Don’t you?”

“Not at all. I was only happy because the two of you look so good together.”

“You certainly know how to talk.” Taegeon’s voice remained languid and bored. “What the fuck does it matter to you whether we’re happy? Did you give birth to me? Why are you standing there looking proud, like a father watching his son get married?”

Myeongsun merely laughed.

It was a bright, innocent sound, grotesquely out of place in the blood-soaked room.

The man on the floor continued to groan. That single strike from Myeongsun had dislocated his jaw, and silent tears now streamed down his face as his body shuddered with pain.

Taegeon removed the unlit cigarette from his lips and leaned forward. At once, Myeongsun stepped in, seized the man by the hair, and wrenched him upright.

“Ugh… hic… Director Jang…”

“Yeah. You look like you’ve got something to say, so spit it out.”

“Well, Director Jang…”

“And why the hell are you saying my name so affectionately?” Taegeon’s mouth twisted with distaste. “It gives a married man the creeps.”

He pushed the cigarette between the man’s lips and flipped open his Zippo.

The lighter was clearly old and heavily used. Its lacquered body was scratched and battered, and the gold plating around its edges had begun to fade.

The cap sprang open with a clean ping, followed by the rough scrape and hiss of the flint wheel. Unable to reject the cigarette or even close his ruined mouth properly, the man clamped down on it through his sobs and inhaled shakily to catch the flame.

Once it was lit, Taegeon stood and turned back to rummage through the file.

“You’ve already swallowed every last coin Myeongwon bled out through that casino. You might as well tell me what you ran your mouth about in return.”

“Director Jang, I really… I swear I didn’t…”

The man pressed his hands together as though in prayer. The cigarette slipped from his lips and landed on the bloodstained floor, where it went out with a faint hiss, echoing the butt Taegeon had discarded earlier.

When he realized clasping his hands would accomplish nothing, a broken sob tore from his throat. He reached out and clutched desperately at the hem of Taegeon’s trousers. Beneath the slurring caused by his shattered jaw, every mangled word was nothing more than a plea to remain alive.

“Myeongsun, start by cutting off Cheol-ho’s balls. He keeps claiming he’s a taken man, so why the fuck is he clinging to me? Is this bastard some kind of pervert?”

“Yes, hyung-nim.”

Myeongsun reached for the hacksaw.

Panic detonated through Choi Cheol-ho’s body. He began thrashing as if seized by convulsions, hammering his head against the floor.

“Director Jang! Director Jang! I really… sob… I wasn’t the only one! Please, you have to believe me, all right?”

Taegeon had been lounging against the back of his chair, but at those words, he straightened and rose.

He traced the curve of one eyebrow with the tip of his thumb, smiling faintly.

Once a man passed forty, he often mistook the years he had accumulated for wisdom. Even if he possessed nothing worth boasting about, he assumed he could simply bark loudly enough to make up for it.

Choi Cheol-ho was no exception.

Within the organization, he occupied a position roughly equivalent to that of Jang Changsik’s youngest brother. They were not connected by blood, of course, but by the bonds of the organization.

As the branch manager of a construction company, Choi Cheol-ho had been collared and dragged before Jang Taegeon for one very specific reason.

Cheol-ho had undoubtedly expected Jang Taegeon to be difficult to handle. He had probably strengthened his security detail in preparation, but those men had been little more than decorative muscle, common thugs who had never truly felt the weight of a blade in their hands.

In truth, Myeongsun could have handled the entire matter alone. Jeong-gil would inevitably throw a fit when he learned he had been excluded, but Myeongsun had judged that even his brother’s presence would have been unnecessary.

As expected, Choi Cheol-ho had been forced to his knees before Jang Taegeon well before sunset. Until then, he had been overflowing with arrogance and bluster.

That bravado vanished the moment he took a few blows and watched the “defensive wall” he had brought with him get carved into unrecognizable heaps of meat by sashimi knives. Terror had stripped away what remained of his sanity, and now he clung desperately to the trouser leg of the Alpha who had broken him.

“Well, what do we have here?” Taegeon sounded genuinely aggrieved. “I’ve been working myself to the bone this whole time, honestly believing our dear brother Cheol-ho was playing a solo game.”

His face remained blank and indifferent, entirely devoid of emotion, yet his tone and inflection were flawless.

Choi Cheol-ho knew that such an expression was far more dangerous than open anger.

Even the death of Jang Han-yong, Jang Changsik’s son and Taegeon’s own father, had come with a suddenness no one could properly explain.

Choi Cheol-ho also knew who had been responsible.

Jang Han-yong might not have understood the truth immediately, but by the time suspicion began to take root, the balance of power had already shifted too far in Taegeon’s favor. The organization’s executives, preoccupied with calculating which side would benefit them most, had quietly buried the matter.

That had been their fatal mistake.

They should have reported directly to Jang Changsik the instant it happened.

Cheol-ho had prepared himself because he understood from that moment onward that Taegeon was not someone to be underestimated. Still, calling this a single careless mistake would have been absurd. Jang Taegeon had found him and crushed his defenses with terrifying ease.

Taegeon had conducted the entire affair as though it were too tedious to deserve even a yawn. To Cheol-ho, the fact that Taegeon had sent his own father to the grave was merely proof that no one could overcome the bloodline of a shark.

He had never considered the morality of it too deeply. That was why he had swallowed Jang Changsik’s orders whole, without hesitation or question.

“I… I’ll give you everything. All of it! So please, if you could just speak to the Chairman and, um…”

“Cheol-ho hyung-nim.”

“Y… yes, Director Jang. I… I told the Chairman that…”

At that moment, survival became Cheol-ho’s only concern. He would surrender every secret he possessed, even if it cost him a wrist in the process. His wife and children had already been sent abroad, so all he needed to do was preserve his own skin.

It would be a vile betrayal of Jang Changsik, but escaping the tiger’s jaws in front of him mattered infinitely more.

Seeing sudden resolve flare in Choi Cheol-ho’s desperate eyes, Taegeon smirked.

“My grandfather and I share such a close, loving bond. Why would you ever try to come between us?” His voice dripped with mock concern. “So, what you’re telling me is that you weren’t the one colluding with Myeongwon. The Chairman himself was behind it. Is that right?”

Choi Cheol-ho nodded frantically.

Throughout Janghan Construction, everyone knew that Jang Changsik kept his grandson, Jang Taegeon, at arm’s length and buried him beneath an endless succession of menial, mindless tasks.

Taegeon was undeniably gifted. He had graduated from the prestigious civil engineering department of a top university in the capital, an education meant to refine his eye for blueprints and structural design. Instead of placing a pen in his hand, however, they had dragged him through the mud of construction sites since his student days, forcing him to grip grease-slicked pipes and heavy crowbars.

They had thrown him into a bottom-feeding world where sashimi knives flew with lethal regularity and forced him to fight for his life without ever placing a weapon of his own in his hand.

Yet Jang Taegeon had become a beast.

He had fought, clawed, and dragged himself upward from those depths.

Even now, he was summoned for the most trivial assignments, whether that meant cleaning up after his grandfather or overseeing the brutal eviction of a construction site. Those within the Jang family’s inner circle, however, knew the truth. Taegeon had been quietly weaving his own web of power in the shadows.

Choi Cheol-ho had known it too.

He had simply never expected to face that power so directly.

His caution had come far too late. Taegeon was not some nameless orphan they had picked up from the street. He was the family’s sole bloodline and a superior Alpha.

Even so, people used to gossip over drinks about the way he was treated, mocking every rumor of his competence. They insisted the stories had been exaggerated, that he was nothing but an ignorant boy who knew nothing about business and needed more time working in the field.

Cheol-ho had not been the only one to think so.

This was the kingdom Jang Changsik had painstakingly constructed. Everyone who lived on scraps from that empire looked down on Jang Taegeon.

By the time they finally glanced behind them, the beast had grown as large as a house. Still, they laughed in complacent certainty, convinced the chain around its neck remained secure.

That beast can’t enter the house.

They had repeated it until they believed it.

They had been trained to think that way, and complacency had taken root accordingly. They ignored the fact that the beast’s eyes had never once lost their predatory light, not even beneath years of discipline built upon calculated abuse.

The moment Jang Changsik’s name left Choi Cheol-ho’s lips, Taegeon smirked.

Why is he smiling?

Could Cheol-ho ever survive this?

Had Taegeon already known the truth, or had Cheol-ho just revealed something he had not yet uncovered?

Because Cheol-ho had always dismissed him as a joke and never bothered to look closely, he knew nothing about the beast’s thoughts or the hunting methods it preferred. Now, he was frantic, clawing for the smallest chance to remain alive.

The beast merely tilted its head.

When Taegeon spoke, he sounded sincerely curious.

“So tell me, when does their little boxing bout reach its final round?”

Myeongsun stepped forward from behind him.

“It should be over soon. Jeong-gil asked whether he should take a few pictures of him boxing and send those over. What would you like us to do?”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘What should we do?’” Taegeon snapped. “Myeongsun-ah, do you honestly think I’m going to jerk off to those? Tell Jeong-gil that if he takes even one picture, I’ll gouge his fucking eyes out.”

Jang Taegeon stared at him in open disbelief before releasing a long, lazy yawn. He rubbed the corner of one eye with his thumb, perhaps wiping away a stray tear, then glanced down at Choi Cheol-ho as though only now remembering that they still had unfinished business.

A smirk curled across his mouth.

“I’m a newlywed, so I’ve been making an effort to get home early these days. Myeongsun has to come with me, so you and the rest can finish your conversation without us, hyung-nim.”

He rose slowly, fastened the bottom button of his vest, and gestured toward one of the gang members loitering in the rear.

The men bowed together and stepped forward, seizing Choi Cheol-ho to haul him away.

Panic surged through Cheol-ho as he whipped his head from side to side. Nearby, someone was pouring cement and water into a steel drum, mixing the thickening slurry with a square length of timber.

“D-director Jang…”

“Myeongsun, why are you still standing there?” Taegeon asked impatiently. “Go start the car.”

“Yes, hyung-nim.”

Myung-soon stepped out quickly, leaving the abandoned warehouse and heading toward the sedan parked outside. Scattered voices called out from the shadows, “Safe travels, hyung-nim.”

The halogen lights inside the warehouse were focused directly on Choi Cheol-ho, leaving him blinded and unable to make out the figures in the corners, though the voices suggested there were four or five others present.

Choi Cheol-ho’s complexion drained to a deathly white. Even in his terror, the image of Jang Taegon’s departing back remained seared into his retinas.

“D-Director Jang!”

The man didn’t respond, simply exiting the space before the heavy door slammed shut.

Inside the sealed warehouse, a series of desperate screams erupted, only to be abruptly silenced.

***