"There's no stock?"

"...The float has dried up completely."

The head of the secretariat made his report, reading the room as he went.

"Shit!"

"Rumors of a foreign M&A are everywhere. The stock was falling, and now it's hit the upper limit price across the board."

"Argh!"

Ana Group chairman Oh Seung-hyeok swallowed back the bitter bile rising from his stomach.

Rage had kept him up all night.

The stress had hit its peak, and his blood pressure was climbing with it.

His eyes were shot through with red.

Everything was crumbling in an instant.

The Daeung Shipbuilding takeover he'd pushed so ambitiously had been smashed to pieces.

Between his drugged-up son and his own history, public opinion was turning its back on him too.

First his funding had suddenly been choked off, and now foreign private equity funds hungry for control of the company were swarming him like a pack of dogs.

I'm not dying! You hear me? I am not going down!

Oh Seung-hyeok gritted his teeth and held on.

"...How much do we have ready?"

"Two billion won."

"Make it three."

"...Understood."

Tonight he was meeting the new president's elder brother, the man people called All Roads Lead to the Brother.

It had taken real effort to set up, through the younger brother who sat in the National Assembly for the ruling party.

The government-relations men from every group were lined up for him.

Every businessman knew the new president had taken office not for the people but for business.

Every day, government-relations staff brought him hundreds of millions, even billions, of won as tribute.

The Five Rivers project, one of the campaign pledges, was a gold mine for anyone who landed a piece of it.

And that wasn't all. Hand over money, and concessions came easy.

Rumor had it the top conglomerates had each sent ten billion won toward the president-elect's legal bills in the United States.

He had to show as much goodwill as he possibly could.

If it took ten billion to survive, he'd put in ten billion.

He only had to hold out…