“Correct.”
Jaewan inhaled through his teeth. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
Seungho met his eyes. Calm. Icy.
“They started this.”
“They always start it,” Jaewan snapped. “That’s not the point. The point is you’re escalating. This isn’t business, it’s blood. You’re not protecting a deal, Seungho. You’re declaring war.”
Seungho stood, slow and deliberate. His shadow stretched long in the mid-morning light, slicing across the conference table like a blade.
“They sent him a threat,” he said. Voice low. Final. “To his workplace. To my doorstep.”
“And he didn’t tell you,” Jaewan said flatly. “Which means he’s terrified. Which means you aren’t making him feel safe.”
That struck deeper than either of them acknowledged.
Seungho’s jaw tensed. “What do you want me to do, Jaewan? Sit on my hands? Watch him flinch every time a gift box shows up? Pretend it’s fine because the Jangs are too powerful to touch?”
“I want you to think,” Jaewan snapped. “To remember you’re not just a man in love. You’re a chairman. A name. A keystone in half this city’s economy. You move—we all move. And right now, you’re dragging a twenty-year-old into the fallout zone like it’s your personal vendetta.”
Silence.
Jaewan’s voice softened. “Seungho… this is not like you.”
“No,” Seungho said quietly. “It’s not.”
He stepped back, exhaled.
Then turned toward the window—floor-to-ceiling glass framing the Seoul skyline, washed in pale gray light.
Outside, the wind shifted. A breath of autumn threading through heat that hadn’t fully left.
“I’ve lived most of my life making surgical decisions. Always weighing risk. Always cutting away what costs too much.”
He rested one hand on the glass.
“I’m not cutting this one.”
Jaewan’s expression cracked—just slightly.
“So that’s it?” he said. “You’ll take them all on for him?”
Seungho’s answer came without pause.
“Every one of them.”
??????
Velvet Eclipse, Late Morning
The club was shuttered but not asleep. Sunlight slanted through the blackout curtains in fractured lines, catching on sequins strewn like fallen stars across the dressing room floor
Haneul sat at the bar, elbows on the counter, a chipped mug of black coffee steaming between his palms.
His eyes were distant. Unblinking. The smell of nicotine still fresh in his fingers.
He hadn’t skated this morning.
