Your Lackey? No, Mine. (1)
Seok Dong-hoon suddenly burst into a rough laugh, staring up at the ceiling of the division chief’s office as if he had never worn that look in his eyes before.
“Seung-woo hyung, what did you just say? Sorry?”
What kind of emotional roller coaster was this? He wasn’t some hot-blooded teenage boy or girl. Han Seung-woo, the chief of staff, answered calmly without the slightest hint of surprise, as though he was used to this side of Seok Dong-hoon.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“This hyung is funny. You’ve been looking down on me that much? What exactly are you sorry for? Did you think I wouldn’t have figured it out by the time I got here?”
“If you already suspected, that’s good.”
“The moment I told you that story, the target suddenly started watching me? Of course I came here knowing that conversation would come up. I’m not an idiot, lawyer.”
I tilted my head slightly in my mind. This guy… even if his screws were loose, they were seriously loose. At least ten of them?
“Yes, Mr. Seok Dong-hoon.”
“Is that what you want? Begging for my life? Fine. I’ll spare you. In exchange, you’ll take my case and get me acquitted, right? Well, I guess I have no choice but to pay up front. If I die, there won’t be any lawyer or anything left to do.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. No matter how capable you think you are, do you really believe I, the second-in-command of the QS Group, can’t even secure my own safety? On the contrary, I could threaten yours. How many dan in total are the people who are supposed to come running the moment I make one phone call?”
At my boastful question, Han Seung-woo seriously counted on his fingers for a moment before actually giving an answer.
“Fifty-six dan in total. If we exclude Deputy Kim Chul-joong’s second dan in baduk, that’s fifty-four.”
Pfft—. Seok Dong-hoon was the first to let out a chuckle at Han Seung-woo’s brand of joke.
“At this point, you should understand the gist of what I’m saying. When it comes to force, we have plenty of our own. There’s a dedicated team here at QS Tower that handles exactly that kind of work. And if we add the external contractors we can call in, your safety won’t necessarily be an issue only inside this building.”
“Ugh—.”
For a moment, Seok Dong-hoon’s laugh turned into a groan. It was painfully obvious that this man instinctively—or habitually—tried to establish hierarchy the moment he met anyone, positioning himself on top. That was how he made the people he worked with follow his orders. It was the reason he had become one of the three kings of the night world while maintaining his compartmentalized organization, and the way he had survived in that ruthless world until now.
I, too, apparently hadn’t been an exception at first. The moment he saw me, he had growled with that crooked attitude, and when I didn’t react the way he wanted, he pulled out the money card. Everyone Seok Dong-hoon met probably caved at that stage. It wasn’t hard to understand how an ordinary person’s mind would go blank just from hearing someone casually wave around a sum in the hundreds of millions.
But I wasn’t ordinary. When I brushed off his bluff again, the next card he pulled was a threat to my safety. I countered by saying I could threaten his instead. Now he had no cards left.
I suddenly wondered what kind of reaction a person who had no concept of horizontal relationships without a clear hierarchy would show once he lost every card that could put him on top.
“Hoo—.”
Seok Dong-hoon’s groan turned into a sigh as the killing intent faded from his eyes. Then, in a voice that sounded as gentle as he could manage, he slowly spoke.
“I’m sorry. You must have a reason for giving me your time, yet I kept interrupting. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”
Han Seung-woo’s eyes widened in surprise at this suddenly polite version of Seok Dong-hoon, glancing back and forth between us. I had expected something like this. Seok Dong-hoon really couldn’t even imagine entering a relationship without a clear hierarchy. Every human relationship had to have a ranking, and he wanted to be on top, but if that wasn’t possible, he would settle for being below just to establish one. It made sense, and it was fascinating, but since it was the way he had lived and had apparently worked out for him, I decided not to judge.
Anyway, his sudden change in attitude was definitely to my advantage. I had plenty of questions I wanted this loyal dog to answer faithfully.
“Before I tell you what I want, I have a few questions.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll listen when you speak and answer when you ask.”
“What exactly did Kwon Je-gyun order you to do to me? Kill me and get rid of me?”
“No. He said that would make things too complicated. He told me to keep you alive but force you into a closed psychiatric ward under a false name so you couldn’t function as a person anymore. That was as far as my job went. After that, I heard he was going to bribe a doctor to feed you drugs that would turn you into a vegetable.”
Haah. Kwon Je-gyun must have been deeply impressed by the movie Inside Men. Why? Did he want me to cut off a hand too?
“If you had refused, could Kwon Je-gyun have commissioned someone else?”
“He could try to find another contractor, but at least in Seoul or the Gyeonggi area, it wouldn’t be easy to avoid my information network. There aren’t many people who can handle that kind of job in Seoul, and they’re all connected to me in one way or another.”
“What about bringing someone in from another region?”
“I wouldn’t know if he brought someone from overseas, but even if there’s no clear line on a map, we have an unspoken agreement about territories. People don’t usually operate outside their own areas.”
The probability wasn’t zero, but since I had recruited Seok Dong-hoon, the chance of Je-gyun making another reckless move had dropped significantly.
“You said you weren’t going to take that job, right?”
“Actually, I’d already been thinking about it on the way here. I just made up my mind for sure a little while ago. If you want, I can switch the target to Kwon Je-gyun and carry out the job exactly the same way.”
Locking Kwon Je-gyun up in a psychiatric ward… I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t tempt me for a second. Still, that wasn’t something you did in a civilized twenty-first-century society.
“No need to change the target. Just pretend to proceed with the job as originally commissioned. Accept the money he offered you, too. How much was it?”
“Huh? I asked for two billion, but after he begged, we settled on 1.7 billion. You want me to keep going like that? That would put you in danger, lawyer.”
“No. Just pretend to go through with it.”
There was no way to completely rule out the possibility that Kwon Je-gyun, cornered and furious, might lash out with everything he had left. Since he had already tried once, the psychological barrier to a second or third attempt would be much lower. And now that he had been pushed out of the succession race, the odds of him holding a grudge and causing petty trouble were far too high. To clean up that kind of nuisance in one go, I needed to make sure Kwon Je-gyun could no longer function as a person.
Of course, not through something barbaric like locking him in a mental hospital. I would use a civilized, elegant route that society itself would accept. Kwon Je-gyun was the one who had first tried the extremely barbaric method, and our civilized society was very eager to bury people like that.
I gave detailed instructions to Seok Dong-hoon, who was still tilting his head in confusion. The meeting that had started at two in the morning continued until dawn, and only then did Seok Dong-hoon finally nod instead of tilting his head.
After Seok Dong-hoon signed the retainer agreement and left, I spent the next several days frantically busy with overlapping tasks. Since Je-gyun’s fall was now a foregone conclusion, the Central Management Division had quickly begun the personnel reshuffling process. Filling the CEO positions of fourteen affiliates was no small workload.
As the final decision-maker of the Central Management Division, I reviewed the investigation reports and opinion documents submitted by the staff directly under the division chief’s office and finalized the agenda items for the presidents’ meeting. On top of that, I had to go through the self-recommendations and third-party recommendations sent straight to the division chief’s office by executives from each affiliate, feeling like I was drowning in a swamp of paper and text. If I hadn’t trained myself to read quickly and accurately while studying law, I might not have been able to handle the volume.
At the same time, the work of securing funds to acquire shares in QS Life Insurance was progressing steadily. As I had predicted, Daebong Bio had entered full-scale stock manipulation. The stock price hit the upper limit almost every day, and I kept pouring in additional funds accordingly. If I put in a million won in the morning, it became 1.3 million by lunch. Individual investors were starting to gather, which only fueled the upward momentum further.
If my memory was correct, institutional investors who had been watching with suspicion would also flood in within the next one or two weeks. Until the day Daebong Bio was suspended from trading and then delisted about two months from now, I would continue pouring in funds. And when I pulled out right before the scheduled trading suspension, I would have roughly 350 billion won in my hands.
Of course, I also had to prepare for Seok Dong-hoon’s trial after receiving the retainer. When he saw the written submission I had prepared, he looked genuinely moved. If we just submitted that to the court, an acquittal was practically guaranteed. I wondered if he would have teared up if he had seen my face. He wanted to submit it right away and crush Prosecutor Jin Yong-hwa’s nose, but I stopped him, telling him to wait a little longer. If we gave Jin Yong-hwa too much time and he got scared enough to cancel the indictment, the show I had planned for the trial date would fall apart. (Canceling an indictment means the prosecutor admits the case was wrongly brought to trial and will not proceed with further trial procedures.)
While I was letting the days fly by like that, Je-gyun sent me a message with an image attached.
— You remember Attorney Jeong Jung-an, the one we met when Father collapsed? He came to see me separately. He said Father left a will just for me. So I received it, and there’s something in it you should know too. Let’s meet somewhere without other people around.
And attached was a photo of a document stamped with Chairman Kwon Byung-do’s seal, as if to insist the will was real.
This… the more he tried to force it to look real, the more obviously fake it became. Of course, the reason Je-gyun wanted to meet me in secret was obvious. As I had instructed, Seok Dong-hoon was pretending to accept Je-gyun’s commission. Je-gyun was planning to use this fake will as an excuse to lure me out and properly deal with me.