“You want me to set up a private equity fund?”

“Yes. Attorney. I need a private equity fund capable of a hostile M&A.”

“Hmm…, CEO Jang, do you know what a private equity fund is before you say it?”

“I mean a Private Equity Fund. A fund where specific individuals and institutions with a common purpose gather money separately and invest it for a particular purpose. My understanding is that it recruits unofficial investors — under a hundred under the investment trust business law, under fifty under the securities investment business law — takes an equity stake in companies whose asset value is undervalued, raises the corporate value after a merger or acquisition, and then sells the company on.”

Attorney Jo’s eyes went wide.

Why are you so startled?

I was a securities man once.

“It requires at least one limited and one unlimited liability partner each, and it takes the form of a limited partnership under commercial law. It’s a paper company, where employing full-time staff is forbidden. And out of all of them, I want a hostile M&A private equity fund.”

“A hostile M&A private equity fund? Are you really thinking of swallowing a company?”

“Rather than swallowing, I’m thinking of bringing professional managers into thoroughly rotten companies and contributing my assets to giving back to society. Earn money and save a company — how good is that~.”

I’m in a state of having declared war on the Ana Group.

Oh Dong-seong will have let it go in one ear, but I haven’t.

The pieces on an enormous chessboard have started to move now.

“CEO Jang. What on earth are you? Are you really a high schooler? What in the world do you keep in that head of yours?”

Attorney Jo shook his head.

A mere high schooler, and not even a commercial law specialist, reciting the relevant material from memory — he won’t believe it.

Attorney Jo is a criminal law specialist, and these are individual, detailed provisions he would have to look up in the statute book and study.

I finished the vacation and came up to Seoul.

After driving off the wretched three mutt friends at Daecheon, my family grilled meat and spent a happy time together.

The men must have been embarrassed, because they disappeared at once.

Clara spent a full vacation and left.

She helped with my father’s orchard work, and went to the nearby stream with the twins and caught freshwater snails.

In the evening she ate watermelon and painted with Mom.

In just a few days she adapted perfectly.

She had laid the oil on so thick in the meantime that when Clara said she was leaving, my family couldn’t hide how sorry they were.

Clara took their hands too, saying: Father, I must see you again next time.

Mom, I love you.

Twins, you two are really my sisters — and she held them tight.

My family is weak in the face of affection.

When Clara left, all of them showed tears.

After sending Clara off like that, I went back to the office.

I called Attorney Jo in.

“CEO Jang, a private equity fund isn’t an easy matter.”

“Why?”

“If you want to operate with domestic capital rather than foreign capital, a lot of restrictions follow. The Lanstar Fund, famous for eating and running at the time of the IMF, was a private equity fund too. Where private equity funds are concerned, the people put on colored glasses and see thieves first. If public opinion turns bad, politics ends up using it.”

I know that too.

In America, Blackstone, Carlyle, Apollo Global Management and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts are listed on the stock market.

In 2007, where I’m living now, Blackstone drew in eighty-eight billion dollars through its public offering.

Their networks into American politics are no joke either.

Starting with President George Bush, any number of politicians are members of one private equity fund or another.

The average dividend return on the investment is over ten percent.

They’re in competition with investment banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

But domestic private equity funds are only now being born.

That is why Attorney Jo is telling me to be careful.

The financial environment is small, and politics can even bring a tax investigation down on you.

So the domestic private equity fund is a taster.

I’ll put a professional fund manager out front.

I mean to set it up cleverly and manage it from the dark.

If I stepped out in front, it was obvious the politicians would put their small minds to work on using me.

They would threaten me with the press and public opinion at their backs; that much is certain.

But at home it was needed for form’s sake.

My real private equity fund will be formed overseas.

This one is a loss leader.

It’s the wrapping for the big present I’m going to give the Ana Group.

“I’m thinking of investing modestly.”

“How much are you thinking of for the initial investment funds?”

“A hundred billion won. Hmm, is that a little low? Shall I put in about two hundred billion?”

“…, modestly, a hundred billion? Do you not know how enormous a sum that money is? I couldn’t sleep for days after I saw the balance in the corporate account. An individual being able to earn money like that is something possible only in the imagination.”

Attorney Jo didn’t know that money was small change.

Even now a single night’s profit was coming in anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions.

As expected, the Canadian and American dollar rate is a fantasy.

“Come on, why are you like this. I told you you’d be flying around in your own private plane. It won’t happen, but as long as you don’t betray me…, I’ll give you that much as a retirement bonus.”

Attorney Jo’s eyes nearly popped out.

It’s the moment a hundred billion won is set down as a retirement bonus.

“What is it? Too little? When you’re at about number two in a major corporation, the chairman looks after all of them for about that much, doesn’t he. If you need more, say so. I can add a little on.”

“…Nngh.”

Attorney Jo let out a groan like a man with constipation.

“You don’t dislike it either, do you, Attorney Jo? Bill generously through the law firm. It’s easier for me if you rise inside the law firm, Attorney Jo.”

Rather than having a large law firm as an enemy, I had to make one a friend.

A law firm also takes the role of a legal lobbyist.

At the same time it’s a business whose purpose is profit.

They exercise their influence not only across the legal world but across politics, culture, education and society as a whole.

“All right, thank you. You’re the only one who thinks about me.”

“So I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“I’m thinking of appointing your law firm as investment advisers. L.O.R. Investment Corporation will pay a hundred million won a month in advisory fees.”

“CEO Jang, if it’s on my account you don’t have to. Advisory fee sounds fine, but that’s money got for nothing.”

It isn’t money for nothing, it’s money that does a job.

A hundred million is a lump sum to an ordinary person, but at a big table it’s the basic stake.

For a hundred million, the law firm will become my shield.

“At the same time, Attorney Jo, please have yourself designated as the corporation’s exclusive attorney. I’ll pay a hundred million a month for that too.”

“Aren’t you spending too freely? I’m not that useful a lawyer. I rolled around in the provinces my whole life. In Seoul they don’t even count me as a former official.”

That side of Attorney Jo was what I liked.

There was no falsehood in it.

He needs money, but he didn’t beg for it to that extent.

“Having you there makes me feel secure, Attorney Jo.”

“Think it over carefully. What are you going to use me for, a mere criminal specialist? The M&A field needs a commercial law specialist or a civil lawyer. If it isn’t connected to fists I’m no use. In a civil court I’m a beginner too.”

Prosecutors also handle corporate crime and economic investigations.

But Attorney Jo is a pure criminal-side prosecutor.

“Don’t worry. I need your eye for people. All I need is the judgment to tell a capable employee, the way you did with Team Leader Yu~.”

“Really? That much I can do. Counting generously, the people I met doing the prosecutor’s job must come to ten thousand. Out of that lot I catch swindlers uncannily well.”

Years behind him are exactly what I don’t have.

I’ve worked with Attorney Jo a few times, and his cleanup afterward is neat.

The charisma hasn’t died yet either.

And I had plenty of work that needs fists too.

“How did the thing I asked about last time turn out?”

“It’s all done. It wasn’t difficult. But…, do you really not know about your mother’s family?”

“Yes. I know nothing at all.”

“CEO Jang, you’re the bloodline of a family that’s doing fairly well.”

“A family that’s doing well?”

“Do you know the Dongnyong Group? You’ve heard of it plenty, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I know it. They have solid subsidiaries like Dongnyong Cement, Dongnyong Securities and Dongnyong Magic, don’t they.”

It isn’t that enormous a corporation, but it counts as a solid mid-sized group.

“That’s right. That is exactly CEO Jang’s mother’s family.”

“What? The Dongnyong Group is my mother’s family?”

“Your grandfather, Chairman Ju Yeong-seok, passed away twenty years ago, and your uncle holds the chairmanship.”

“Ah…”

The picture drew itself clearly.

It’s around the time my parents married.

A groan ran out of my mouth.

At the words the Dongnyong Group is your mother’s family, I took the shock of a blow to the head.

Hold on, if that’s so, then Dongnyong Securities is a subsidiary of my mother’s family too?

The workplace I went to after graduating from university was Dongnyong Securities.

My friends all envied me then.

It was a place that almost never took students from the provincial university I attended.

Even after I joined, the atmosphere was strange.

One day, in the lounge beside the pantry, I saw them tearing me apart in gossip.

The slander was that I was a parachute hire with deep roots.

At the time I put it down to nonsense, but now something is taking shape.

My mother, who came to me after I graduated and kept failing the bar exam.

She once cried and pleaded that she wanted me to at least get a job.

And a little while later a senior from school came looking for me.

Yes, now that I look at it, it’s suspicious. It isn’t as if I was outstanding at coding or computer programs…

Among university students I was useful enough, but next to an engineering student it was nothing.

And I joined in the form of a special IT recruitment.

“Your mother…, went through a great deal. The material is in here.”

Attorney Jo held out a report from his briefcase.

“Thank you for your trouble.”

“There was no trouble in it. They say the rumor was all over the upper class.”

“Thank you, every time.”

“I’m doing it for money, so don’t worry about it. I’ll be going first, then. Handling what CEO Jang has instructed will keep me busy for a few days.”

“Yes. Go safely.”

“Don’t…, be too disappointed. It’s the ones who have it who are always the more vicious.”

Attorney Jo got up from his seat.

And he looked at me with pity.

He was worrying about me even as he went.

The contents were certainly shocking enough for that.

Whatever the blood connection, it was strange that anyone of a group’s bloodline should farm and live under a mountain of debt.

Setting the legal reserved share aside, leaving enough money to live on at a minimum is what family feeling is.

Even if that is a bloodline by a different mother.

“Pandora’s box.”

It’s a business I went to my death in the last life without ever knowing.

Looking at the documents left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I’d guessed there was some story behind it, but I hadn’t known my mother’s family was something that calls itself a group.

My mother handling an imported car that skillfully made sense now.

Before she married my father she would have lived as a conglomerate’s princess.

Rustle.

The report was simple, but it had been written clearly.

“Hmm…”

And I sat deep in the sofa and started to read through the contents.

Time passed slowly like that.

“Haah…”

Closing the last page, I let out a groan.

It’s exactly as I’d expected.

“So my mother was the daughter of a third wife. Whoa~ my grandfather was a greedy one~.”

Fortunately my grandmother wasn’t a concubine.

After being widowed twice, at a late age my grandfather took my grandmother, then a graduate student in fine art, as his wife.

My grandfather is a thief.

The late-born youngest daughter he got that way is my mother.

Well, the contents ran exactly the way a trainwreck drama would.

The children of the first wife and the second wife froze my mother and my grandmother out.

She wasn’t even a concubine, and she lived through being called a concubine to her face.

My mother grew up bright even in the middle of her half-siblings’ bullying.

Taking after my grandmother’s blood, she showed a talent for art.

And then she met my father.

By then my grandfather was in an illness serious enough that he couldn’t move, and my eldest uncle, vice-chairman at the time, opposed the marriage.

The report records that he had settled on my mother as the object of one of those political marriages you only hear about.

My mother rebelled, left the house and chose my father.

My grandfather died in a half-vegetative state.

There’s a passage saying he looked for his youngest daughter right up until he died.

But his son, Ju Hyeon-tae, blocked it thoroughly.

My mother met her own father only after he was dead.

When the mourning ended, my grandmother was thrown out of the family at once.

She had shown no particular greed, so she had no faction and no shareholding.

My mother was pregnant with me at the time, they say.

And in that situation my grandmother died in a traffic accident nobody could explain.

It happened after she had prepared a lawsuit over the legal reserved share.

Thrown out like a beggar, my grandmother had grown angry at last.

The rumor that the will had been forged was all over the place.

My mother…, lost both her parents that way.

After that she lived cut off from the Ju family.

It’s written that my mother, whose nobility is out of the ordinary, wanted nothing of that filthy family’s property.

“I suddenly want to see my mother~.”

I respected that mother of mine.

If she had pushed at it fiercely she could have had wealth enough to live comfortably for life.

And even so she gave all of it up and lived as a poor man’s wife.

It’s the family’s hidden history, which I’d never have known if I hadn’t been born again.

Beep-beep-beep.

I pressed the call button at once.

“Son?”

“Mom~!!!”

I called her with everything I had.

“Is something wrong? Isn’t the studying hard? Shall I come up?”

I’m handled as being at a cram school in Seoul.

My mother seems to have been startled by my calling in the daytime.

“Mom. You know I love and respect you most in the world, right?”

I put my whole heart into telling her how I feel.

But…

“What is it~ did you do something again? Surely you haven’t made another girlfriend besides Clara?”

Whoa!

Mother, I’m sorry.

It seems I still haven’t shown you proper faith in me.

“No, it’s nothing like that. And Clara and I aren’t a settled thing yet. So please tell Father not to drink the soup before the meal comes.”

“He’ll be disappointed~. Ho ho ho~.”

My mother laughed brightly.

“Mom.”

“Yes~ son~.”

“Your son is going to get all of it back for you.”

“Get what?”

“There’s a thing.”

I’ll bring out the reason my grandmother died! And the bitterness my mother suffered…, I’ll give it back exactly as it came!

(End of Chapter 60)