Abandon Your Greed

Seol-woo bit off the rest of what he had been about to say, took the seat of honor on the sofa, and crooked a finger.

"I thought I might have lunch with President Cha, but I see you already have a guest."

"Ah—hello."

The moment those heavy-lidded eyes settled on Yeon, a deep line cut between Seol-woo's brows.

"If you have something to say, say it. We've got about ten minutes before the meal arrives."

"About that guest of yours..."

Baek Chang-seok, his gaze snared by Yeon's hair, clicked his tongue. The photograph Kwon Sang-cheol had pressed on him, he thought, had not held even half her brilliance, and the realization sent a hot surge of fury through him. That small head resting against the back of the sofa belonged between his legs.

If Cha Seol-woo had not snatched her away halfway, those faintly flushed lips would be wrapped around him even now, fussing and whimpering. The face she would make, drowned in pleasure and crying out, would be a sight in itself. A groan leaked through Baek Chang-seok's clenched teeth. The chance to strike that fair skin until his handprints bloomed on it, to drive into the girl as she crawled the floor of his private annex and savor every amusement he pleased, had vanished before his eyes. It was enough to drive a man out of his senses.

"Yeon-ah. Go to the room."

Seol-woo's voice dropped, low and hard. He had not missed the vile eyes swimming with lust. Yeon stole a glance at his face, gathered up a comic book, and slipped without protest through the door beside the bookcase. Platinum hair spilling to her waist loosened and drifted, staining Baek Chang-seok's vision, and the Adam's apple jutting from that aged hide twitched.

"State your business."

Seol-woo crossed his long legs and kneaded the stiff nape of his neck. The urge to gouge out the eyes that had crawled over Yeon, thick and unhidden with a lust foul enough to turn the stomach, slammed hard against his reason.

He had heard plenty, already, about Baek Chang-seok's annexes. The old man was notorious for seating young women in their twenties in Pyeongchang-dong in place of payment—actresses who needed a sponsor, women driven into the demimonde by debt, and the daughters of those who had borrowed his black money and failed to pay it back. Fucking them was only the beginning. With acquaintances who shared his taste for drink and women he indulged in every bizarre amusement imaginable, and there was no shortage of ugly rumors that some of the girls died strung out on drugs. Seol-woo was angry at himself, too, for opening the door so carelessly and forgetting exactly what sort of man would lose his mind at the sight of Yeon.

"Kwon Da-mi."

Chang-seok set the photograph he had been holding to his chest down on the table. It was Yeon, lying vacant on a worn hospital bed with her arms and legs bound. Seol-woo's narrow eyes twisted all at once.

"That child's father is one of my men. He promised to give the girl to me. I was first, so President Cha ought to yield."

What the hell is this damned old man spewing.

Seol-woo swallowed the nausea climbing his throat and crooked the corner of his mouth.

"I don't know what arrangements you made, but I have never once let go of something I hold in my hand."

"Heh heh. This has gotten rather troublesome."

Baek Chang-seok, a man of imposing bulk, bobbed his heavy, fleshy chin and smiled as if he had all the ease in the world.

"If you're taking her all the way to the company, President Cha must have fallen quite hard in the meantime. Then again, an East Asian with golden eyes is more than enough to bewitch a man."

Seol-woo offered no account of the past that bound them, and no answer he did not owe. His fingers toyed with the cigarette case in the inner pocket of his suit. He wanted to draw bitter smoke into his lungs and settle the roil in his gut, but with Yeon in the next room even that was not easy.

"Even so, President Cha, there is such a thing as the way business is done. You intercepted a girl who was already on her way to me. I hear she had never known a man. If you've had a proper taste, be so good as to send her back."

Nicely, nicely—Baek Chang-seok pressed for what he wanted in the gentlest tone he could manage. Their circle of acquaintance was old, and each man knew the other's filth down to the last stain; nothing was to be gained by making an enemy. Had Cha Seol-woo been nothing more than the third generation of CH Group, Chang-seok might have raised his voice without a second thought. But the bloodline ran all the way to Hyunjin Group, and there was a great deal that required care.

"Representative Baek."

"Yes. Speak."

Seol-woo had kept his mouth shut through a stretch of talk that was not worth answering, and when he finally spoke it was barely above a murmur. Under the calm that endured his irritation ran a rasp, like a dry throat being scraped. He stroked the back of his hand, where the veins stood taut, and yanked loose the tie choking his neck.

"...I take your meaning. A good relationship that has held since Chairman Cha Seong-tae's day can hardly be broken over a single girl."

Chang-seok crumpled the wrinkled corners of his eyes and was the first to yield a move. The words, plastered thick with desire, were not sincere. Seol-woo knew his baseness well.

A brief stillness broke on a beep.

A knock followed. Seol-woo rose first and jerked his chin toward the door, an order to leave.

"A wise choice."

"Then I'll see you at the next gathering."

He had come looking for Seol-woo ahead of anyone else because he could not bear to lose the girl, and still he had been refused outright, his pride crumpled. Chang-seok got to his feet and took the photograph back.

"Do that."

While the secretary brought the food in and Chang-seok left the office, Seol-woo clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, covered his eyes with one hand, and bowed his head.

"Fuck..."

He was going to sell Yeon off to Pyeongchang-dong?

Chewing on the curse, Seol-woo seized the handle of the door to the room where she waited. Whatever rose in him—rage, or something he could not name—set his bony fingers trembling. In the quiet, the click of the handle going down rang loud. Through the slowly widening gap, a white face showed.

Yeon, halfway through turning a page, caught sight of him and shot her hand up.

"Oppa!"

If she had failed to run, in the end. If he had not been at the shop that day, at that hour.

He set the rising unease behind him, crossed the room in long strides, and pulled her into his arms. He was holding her safe against his chest, and still a chill ran the length of his spine.

The restaurant street in front of Paradise Headquarters. At lunch hour, on a street packed shoulder to shoulder with Paradise employees, a game of twenty questions with no answer had begun.

"So she's a foreigner?"

"No! She's Korean, but her eyes were incredibly unusual. And her hair didn't look dyed."

"Mixed doesn't quite fit either. Aside from the color, she didn't feel foreign at all."

"You said she looks young?"

"Yeah. Early twenties. Mid-twenties at the outside."

"Contacts and dye, then."

The secretariat staff who had seen Yeon sat clustered together, spinning guesses about who she was. They were so deep in it they never noticed the glistening pork cutlet going cold.

"Secretary Kim, you don't know anything?"

"No. Only that the president looks after her a great deal."

"Why? Looks after her how?"

"He calls for a snack every hour, and at lunch he ordered jajangmyeon to the office. Black-bean noodles."

"Whoa. No way."

"A hidden lover?"

As if it were some tremendous secret. Heads drawn close, they dropped their voices to a whisper.

"Bringing a hidden lover into the company? Come on. That can't be it."

"The rumor that she's already his lover is everywhere, though."

"Still. Cha Seol-woo and jajangmyeon. It's a horrifying mismatch."

The Seol-woo the Paradise employees knew was aristocracy itself. Between the blood he was born to and the noble air that flowed even from the way he walked, the picture of him eating jajangmyeon was beyond imagining.

At that same hour, the man so many of them were wondering about was one breath short of scolding Yeon, who had shoveled an enormous helping of jajangmyeon into her mouth. The fork lifting a third of the well-mixed noodles looked, for an instant, like an excavator scooping earth. She packed all of it into her small mouth, and her white cheeks swelled as if they might burst. Chewing diligently, she thought better of it and stole a look at Seol-woo.

Sure enough. That handsome face was full of displeasure. She listened, every time, when he told her to go slowly, a little at a time, to chew properly—and she showed no intention of mending her ways.

"I'm sorry. It's a habit."

"I didn't say anything."

"You're swearing at me with your eyes, Oppa."

"Eat like that and it'll sit on your stomach. It's bad for you."

Seol-woo took a piece of sweet-and-sour pork and wiped the corner of her mouth himself, where the black-bean sauce had smeared thick.

"It tastes better this way. You try it too, Oppa."

She wound onto the fork a portion every bit as large as the one that had gone into her own mouth and held the bowl out to him, careful not to spill.

"All of this?"

"I ate it."

"You're a glutton."

"So you're not going to eat it? Ah—my arm hurts."

"You were lying about being locked up for seven years. Look at you. Thoroughly stained by the world."

"I learned it after I got out. From Ethan."

"If it doesn't taste good, I won't let it go."

Unable to win against eyes shining with expectation, Seol-woo gave a single nod and opened his mouth wide.

"It's good, right? It's good, right?"

As if. There was no way to taste, properly, a mouthful he could barely chew and swallow. Seol-woo denied it with a twitch of his brow, got the enormous lump of noodles down, and drained an entire glass of water.

Rattled by the call that had come out of nowhere from Ethan, a tense Sang-cheol climbed out of the passenger seat and swallowed dry. Ethan was already seated on the terrace of Se-hee's wine bar.

"You're early. Kwon Sang-cheol."

"Ethan. We've brushed past each other a few times at gatherings, I imagine."

"Yes. That would be right."

They exchanged cards. Ethan skimmed Sang-cheol's—no title worth the ink—and let out a short scoff. They said you never knew what life would bring. To think the day would come when he sat across from this man and traded words.

"You called because of Da-mi."

"That's right. Tell me what you want."

"What do you mean?"

"Our president says he'll keep her by his side."

"What kind of nonsense is that... She's my daughter. She only ran off because she hates the hospital. Send her back at once."

Ethan pressed down the urge to crack the jaw of the shameless man claiming Yeon as his daughter, and he took in Se-hee's face as well when she arrived with a silver tray. Separate from what Seol-woo had planned, he meant to land a blow on each of them later.

"Daughter, my ass. I know she isn't your real daughter. I know the two of you had her forcibly committed, and I know you tried to sell her to Representative Baek Chang-seok. When someone offers you a fair price, take it."

He ground his teeth. Just before he entered Jang Se-hee's building, word had come from Seol-woo that Baek Chang-seok had paid him a visit.

"O-our daughter is a person under adult guardianship! She was ruled mentally incompetent—her disability is so severe she can't manage daily life. Committing her was perfectly legal."

"I said I know you meant to sell her to Pyeongchang-dong. Da-mi wants to live with our president, so name what you want and let's be done."

"Y-you'll really grant whatever we ask?"

Jang Se-hee, who had been reading the air, cut in.

"There it is. Madam's quick with her sums."

"Honey, this isn't something we can decide so easily."

Sang-cheol, tangled up with Baek Chang-seok, could not give Da-mi up. Se-hee was different. Whoever the girl was sold to, taking every last won they could get through her and getting her out of sight was not a bad outcome.

"They're saying they won't send her back. We haven't exactly been clean ourselves—what, are you going to report it to the police?"

Se-hee pressed him as he hesitated.

"That's because you don't know how frightening that elder is."

"Da-mi isn't going to Pyeongchang-dong either way. Speak freely."

"Would it be all right if we discussed it and called you?"

Sang-cheol stopped Se-hee, whose lips were already moving as she weighed the price, and put the decision off.

"Mom, what are you doing?"

Mom?

At the odd form of address, Ethan turned at once. The woman who had just come through the entrance and was approaching the table looked about Yeon's age. On Kwon Sang-cheol's family relation certificate there had been only two names: Jang Se-hee and Kwon Da-mi.

"Why are you here so early?"

"My next class was canceled. Who is this?"

She looked Ethan over with a coy, prim little air as he rose, his business finished, and kept smoothing her tousled hair. Put her in front of a handsome man and her whole body twisted up, shy and fidgeting for no good reason.

"Uncle's guest. He's leaving now."

"Ethan."

"Hello. I'm Seo Yeon-ju."

Not Kwon Sang-cheol's daughter, then.

She took after Jang Se-hee and was pretty enough, but everything on her was expensive luxury, and she looked thoroughly kept, head to toe.

"I thought you had only one daughter."

"That's right. I'm an only daughter."

"Two, counting Da-mi."

Ethan smiled. The sort of woman who would babble like a fool if you were kind to her.

"That girl is my uncle's daughter. And she's in a psychiatric hospital. You know Da-mi?"

It was obvious enough. With the money left to Yeon, they had clothed and fed only the daughter Se-hee had borne herself.

"We'll be in touch, so that's enough. Go."

"Sure."

When Kwon Sang-cheol let his discomfort show, Ethan gave Yeon-ju no answer and headed for the stairs.

"Mom, let me have the card."

"What are you buying now?"

"My boyfriend says he'll introduce me to a good crowd, and I don't have anything to wear."

"How good a crowd is it that you're buying clothes again?"

"I told you, he's the son of K Construction. Their set plays golf and throws parties and trades all kinds of high-class information. I'll even ask about those stocks you like."