Chapter 25
Chapter 25
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 25
Chapter Title: Triumphal General (2)
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Ammunition Group headquarters, the topmost floor.
Seo Myung-hee, the Director seated in her chair, turned toward the window.
A dark dawn, the window faintly fogged with mist.
She wiped away the white frost with her wrinkled palm, revealing the cityscape shrouded in darkness beyond.
The dim predawn glow of the urban sprawl, where lights still blazed without fully extinguishing.
“Time slips away in the blink of an eye. This is what I hate most about getting old.”
The night view seemed endlessly bright at a glance. But Seo Taehu knew better.
She knew that these mere electric lights were nothing but fireflies before the rising sun.
A chill crept back up the windowpane, the white frost reforming almost instantly to obscure the glass once more.
‘Has the time truly come… to make up my mind?’
Seo Myung-hee placed her palm against the icy glass.
The lights illuminating the forest of skyscrapers began winking out one by one, until a brilliant glow peeked over the ridge between Inwangsan and Ansan Mountains.
In that instant, the frost on the window melted away like snow in boiling water.
The sun rising over the mountaintop seemed to whisper silently to Seo Taehu.
It was time to pass the task of illuminating her world to someone else.
‘It’s time to step down as the Grand Royal Dowager.’
Seo Taehu turned her chair back around. The newly risen sunlight poured its radiant beams onto the desk before her.
Atop the desk, masterfully crafted from polished mahogany, lay the morning edition of today’s newspaper, bathed in the light.
-[Front Page Exclusive] Ammunition Group Achieves Record-Breaking 90 Trillion Won Defense Export! Paving the Way for Growth Through Military Ties with Saudi Arabia…
“…….”
Seo Taehu caressed the newspaper with her rough palm, as if stroking the paper itself.
Her gaze, mingled with pride and astonishment, drifted downward before climbing back up.
And at the end of that gaze, a single photograph.
One of her eldest son, now departed from this world, holding her youngest son still cradled in her arms.
The icy eyes of the Empress softened with a bitter melancholy.
“Even so, a mother’s heart favors her son over her grandchild, it seems. Sigh…”
She let out a deep sigh from the depths of her chest, then vigorously shook her head.
As the lady of the house of Ammunition Group, she knew the grave weight of her duties. Even the surging ache of maternal love had to be suppressed.
Seo Taehu placed her hand atop the frame.
Returning to the stern visage of the Empress, she vowed to herself.
“I cannot let personal sentiments ruin the business.”
The sun now fully risen, casting its light down through the window.
It seemed almost impatient to illuminate her world all the sooner.
Seo Myung-hee rubbed her forehead against the glare, a wistful chuckle escaping her lips as she pressed the call button for her secretary. Her murmur barely audible.
“Very well. It shall be as you wish, Seo-jun. Enough whining. But…”
Her secretary arrived promptly, knocking on the door.
Seo Taehu instructed her to prepare for the group’s morning meeting.
As the secretary bowed and exited, closing the door behind her, Seo Taehu’s expression softened ever so slightly—cold yet dignified.
The photograph at the end of the old mother’s gaze blurred faintly.
“The three months I promised before. I’ll apply it equally to your uncle as well. I trust you’ll understand that much.”
* * * *
Yoo Ji-won, the Audit Team Leader, stood rigidly before Han Hwa-gi, his face tense.
He bowed his head like a sinner at the scaffold.
“The intel… has been cut off. All lines to the Director’s attending secretary are completely dark.”
Yoo Ji-won tried to minimize his profile, tucking his head between his shoulders.
His master was already on edge from the recent quiet reports filtering in from Saudi Arabia.
Even if the fountain pen in his hand flew at him, it wouldn’t be surprising.
Bracing for the pain to come, Yoo Ji-won clenched his teeth and shut his eyes.
“Urk!”
“…When did it start?”
Contrary to his usual ferocious temper, Han Hwa-gi was unusually calm today.
As if he had anticipated this very turn of events.
“Yes? Well, that is…”
“Look, Yoo Ji-won. Pull yourself together and give me a specific date.”
“Y-Yes, sir! About two weeks ago—that is, three days before the Prince’s Rebellion erupted in Saudi Arabia. It began when one of the drivers was abruptly dismissed.”
“So you’re saying she’d been on guard even before that incident…”
Han Hwa-gi’s fountain pen scratched across the paper, crossing out the timeline.
Mapping it out, it still fell within acceptable bounds.
That driver had been on his payroll for quite some time, so it was fair to say the tail had simply grown too long.
Han Hwa-gi marked an X next to the driver’s name and turned to Yoo Ji-won.
“And? What about the others?”
“The rest of the secretaries… they’ve all been hastily replaced in the last day or two. I have no excuse, Headquarters Director!”
“…She’s cut off every possible bud before it could sprout? Ha, yes. A method straight out of a mother’s playbook after all these decades.”
With no need to hear more, Han Hwa-gi waved Yoo Ji-won away dismissively.
Rising from his seat, he strode to the wall hung with Ammunition Group’s organizational chart.
At the very top, the now-vacant Chairman’s position.
He pressed his finger firmly against that throne-like seat, then shifted his gaze downward.
“Heavy Industries, Construction, Shipbuilding & Marine…”
Photographs of the presidents of those three affiliates, attached beside their titles.
If asked whether they were truly trustworthy, the answer was a resounding no.
They might be reliable in terms of credit, but not trust.
Men who moved strictly by their own gains and losses—Han Hwa-gi mentally retraced their interests once more.
“Iraq Seawater Desalination Plant. We need to secure additional construction funds quickly.”
Still unaware of the shoddy work, embezzlement, and cooked books at the Iraq site, Han Hwa-gi powered on his computer and pulled up the group-wide ledger.
The cash flow was strung so tight there was no immediate wiggle room. There lay the bare, rotten truth of Ammunition Group’s systemic insolvency.
In the end, no spare funds could be scraped together from anywhere in the books.
Slumping back into his chair, Han Hwa-gi sighed.
“1,000 billion won. With seed money like that, we could leverage bank PF loans.”
His gaze drifted back to the wall.
To the top box on the org chart, now silent as the grave where his brother—his own flesh and blood—resided.
“Of all amounts, it had to match the predecessor’s slush fund exactly…”
The predecessor’s slush fund.
His brother had ascended to Chairman at a young age and was ruthlessly meticulous.
Han Hwa-gi himself hadn’t dared covet the seat back then.
Such a man would surely have prepared for contingencies, planting multiple guardians for the secret funds.
“If we track down that money, we can turn the Iraq desalination plant expansion into a feather in our cap. And at the same time, that brat Han Seo-jun…”
His eyes fell lower on the chart.
To the now-notorious Strategy Office box.
Beside the Strategy Director title—his nephew’s seat that he must seize—stood the image of a balding middle-aged deputy director.
A bald man grinning with a look of easy contentment.
Kim Won-cheol, the predecessor Chairman’s closest aide and now servant to his son—surely he knew the slush fund’s whereabouts.
“Kim Won-cheol… A tough nut. I need to cut off his air in one stroke.”
Finishing his thoughts, Han Hwa-gi snatched up the phone.
Early as it was, someone at director level would be in for the morning meeting prep.
Moments later, one of the Finance Headquarters executives answered in a fluster.
“Oh dear, Headquarters Director! I’ve got you now. This is Executive Director Jeong Cheol-sik.”
“Gather the past 15 years’ accounting records from now and send them as data files. Attach overseas account transfers separately.”
A sudden avalanche of work dumped on Finance Headquarters.
Executive Director Jeong Cheol-sik, unable to hide his bewilderment, ventured a question.
“Ah… uh, is this for external audit prep? Should I format it like we provide to the accounting firm?”
“It’s for internal audit. Format’s flexible, but submit it ASAP.”
“U-Understood. I’ll get right on it.”
An internal template, unlinked to outsiders.
Han Hwa-gi’s eyes blazed like an unmanned machine.
The dull blade he’d wielded so far had brought him humiliation and defeat; now he forged a razor-sharp sword anew.
Since the predecessor’s slush fund was illegally amassed, the blade aimed at his nephew would be laced with a lethal poison.
A venom so vicious he’d never rise again.
“One and a half months until the Chairman’s selection. I’ll end it within that time.”
* * * *
“Oh! Oh, Strategy Director! You’ve arrived! We’ve been waiting!”
Today’s morning meeting buzzed with the polar opposite atmosphere.
Unlike the prior session thick with scrutiny, contempt, doubt, and hesitation, the executives now openly lined up behind me.
Even before it started, the endless flattery and praise had me nearly blacking out.
“Our deepest congratulations on the greatest defense sales since Dangun! As expected of the predecessor Chairman’s bloodline! Now we see the timber to lead the group!”
The first to stick to me: the Group HQ HR Executive Director.
True to HR’s ear for internal gossip, he’d sniffed out which way the power tilted first.
“I believed in you, Director! That bold charge to Saudi Arabia—it’s still vivid in my mind!”
“Of course! Risking your life in that hellhole to pull off something huge. This old man can die without regrets now.”
For all their words, these affiliate executives brimmed with ambition to climb higher even in old age.
They all showered praise on my Saudi exploits without reserve.
Especially the presidents of Heavy Industries, Construction, and Shipbuilding & Marine—knowing our relations were icy, they competed in loyalty over those seats.
‘Once I merge them all and smash the rotten bits with the Nuclear Bat…’
Outwardly raising the banner of fierce reform in my mind, I responded with a genial smile.
Just as the pointless adulation grew tiresome, the facilitator spoke into the mic.
“Finance Headquarters Director entering!”
Through the open door strode my uncle, his face set in stone, step by deliberate step.
He took the seat across from me, looking down as if in judgment.
Trailing him like retainers: the presidents of Heavy Industries, Construction, and Shipbuilding & Marine.
“Ahem…”
They managed only dry coughs, unable to meet my eyes squarely.
They’d surely caught wind of the Defense Ministry Vice Minister siding with me. Having tried to drown me before, they must have guilty stirrings somewhere.
“…….”
No one ordered it, but the executives naturally parted to the sides.
The conference room plunged into silence in an instant. Like thin ice over a frozen pond.
“What are you all standing around for? Let’s get started.”
The one tossing a pebble onto that fragile ice: Seo Taehu, seated at center, observing it all.
“Strategy Director. You called this meeting, so speak first.”