Jaewan pinched the bridge of his nose.
“This is personal.”
“It always was,” the investigator said. “After what Seungho did to them back in March? That ‘mercy’ didn’t sit well. The elder Jangs might’ve nodded along, but you think they forgot how their son was dragged out of high society with a folder full of crimes and a threat to collapse their import licenses?”
“They didn’t forget,” Jaewan muttered. “They swallowed it. And they’re gagging on it now.”
“Exactly. And now that the proposal’s imminent, and the kid’s gonna be public on the 22nd? It’s a perfect window.”
Jaewan’s silence sharpened.
He remembered what Seungho said back then, almost absently, after the second package arrived over the summer—a charred keychain in an unmarked box.
“f they come again… we won’t wait. We build walls around him. Real ones.
“Anything else?”
“Someone on the Velvet Eclipse guest list has a fake identity. It cleared background but flagged one of our filters—same IP chain that was used to purchase burner phones traced back to a corporate shell we believe is tied to Jang Minseok’s cousin. I’d bet half my pension it’s a set-up.”
Jaewan crushed the cigarette against the wall.
The embers flared. Died.
“Triple security on Sky,” he said. “Effective immediately.”
“Understood.”
“I don’t want guns. No visible threats. I don’t want to spook him.”
“Understood.”
“But I want ghosts on him,” Jaewan said. “Two inside Velvet Eclipse, two trailing. Eyes on him from now till the twenty-second. I don’t care if he goes to the corner store for chocolate milk—no one gets near him without a shadow.”
He lowered the phone.
“And if they do?” the investigator asked, quietly.
Jaewan’s voice was flat:
“Then they don’t walk away.”
Click.
He stayed there a moment longer, listening to the silence like it could give him answers. A faint tremble in the stillness. A premonition.
Rain began to fall again outside.
And from deep below, in the arterial levels of the empire Seungho built, the storm began to wake.
??????
Yeol Holdings – CEO Office. November 20th. Dawnlight like knife-edge glass.
The city was still waking when Jaewan entered without knocking.
Seungho didn’t glance up from the wall of glass that made up his office window. Seoul unfurled outside in bleak, November angles—gray cranes, traffic arteries, cold steel towers elbowing each other for a better view of the sky.
The building still smelled faintly of rain and ozone. From the top floor, Seoul looked almost gentle—mist caught in the cranes, headlights moving like veins of light beneath the clouds.
