“Father! Have you set your mind on killing me?”

“What nonsense is this! Why would I kill you!”

“Then why did you do it!!”

“Do what!!”

Kang Deuksu’s family home.

His son Kang Hongcheol had come round with the drink in him and started screaming straight off.

“Haryun!”

“Haryun? And what of it!”

Kang Deuksu had a drink in him just the same.

Faces flushed red, father and son raised their voices at each other.

With the wife and mother gone out of it, the house had become a shambles.

“That woman who owns the flower shop is Haryun Group’s youngest daughter-in-law!”

“Whaaaat? And what bullshit is this now!!”

Startled by Kang Hongcheol’s shout, Kang Deuksu asked it.

It was utter nonsense.

A woman who had not known where to put herself and had bowed her head in any month the rent came in late.

A woman with no roots to her, the youngest daughter-in-law of Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Haryun Group?

Plainly nonsense.

“I’ve checked the whole family register. The youngest son of Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Haryun is called Ha Donghwi, and that man’s wife is called Han Jiyun! The woman you’ve been coveting!!”

Kang Hongcheol’s eyes had turned over.

He had thrown himself about knowing nothing, to serve his father’s appetite, and now his life looked like going into the ground.

What kind of company is Haryun Group!

And how cruel the family that holds it!

A house with a settled reputation for casting out its own blood without mercy when the blood turns no profit.

And the son they cast out had been living in Sokcho.

They are people who can cut one small official’s living off without a mouse or a bird knowing.

For Haryun, digging up the corruption Officer Kang Hongcheol has been committing all this time would be child’s play.

It is not a problem that can be smoothed over with money.

Every benefit a public official enjoys could be cut off, and he could go to prison as a criminal.

“Is that why you’ve been carrying on like this? Scared?”

“Sorry?”

“A grown man with a pair hanging on him and not an ounce of fight in him! I heard that rumour too. That the chairman of Haryun Group cast his son out.”

Kang Deuksu had heard the Haryun Group talk well enough himself, by rumour.

“You’re — you’re not afraid?”

“Me? Why?”

“Father…… it’s Haryun! Haryun Group!”

“A son who went outside the old man’s good books and got driven off. You think that filthy-tempered gentleman is going to look after him now?”

“What??”

“That’s why you’re still in the state you’re in. Your intake going from strength to strength and you not promoted yet! And the lobbying your father has done for you! An Officer to this day!!”

Kang Deuksu looked at his dumbfounded son as at something pitiful.

A son who is still not grade five, though strings had been pulled inside the city hall through everybody they know.

“Father!!”

Kang Hongcheol shouted at the truth his father had landed on him without warning.

Kang Hongcheol too had rubbed his palms together and flattered and scattered money about.

But promotion luck, particularly, had never run with him.

Kang Hongcheol, weaker than his intake and with no head for the work.

Mayors changed and nothing changed with them.

As public feeling shifted, putting one particular man up into the senior grades brought trouble with it.

“No guts in the little shit…… tch.”

Kang Deuksu’s eye on his eldest son, Kang Hongcheol, was cold.

The daughter-in-law of a chaebol house, is it? Heh heh heh.

The appetite that had caught light burned up harder, as though he were sitting inside a hot fire.

“You stay out of it!”

“Sorry?”

“Not you — I’ll put your brother on it!”

“Fa…… ther…….”

“Useless fucking idiot. Get home, boy!”

Kang Deuksu turned his eldest son out of the house.

And he thought of his second son, who had rotted his insides thoroughly all through his school years.

The second son, who has come to his senses now and lives well as a respectable man in finance.

Among the Donghae rough element he had run with for years, the second son, Kang Hongdong, went by the mad magpie puffer.

Not without some exaggeration in it, but Kang Hongdong is of a temper that will stake his life and see a thing to the end if he is touched wrong.

For this business…….

He was the perfect man for it, and there was no second.

Gulp.

Isabella is an attorney with an English boutique firm.

Her glittering blue eyes are full of curiosity.

A beauty with a charm of her own.

An English lawyer who would suit modelling better.

And the light given off by this woman, whose Korean runs at a native speaker’s level, is…….

A dark gold!

The moment investment came up it turned from blue to gold in an instant!

It is strong.

In a word, it means the way she makes her money is not clean.

That does not make her an evildoer, though.

The blue-tinted eyes are clear and transparent.

Her behaviour has nothing put on in it.

She has guts enough to walk into a strange foreign man’s home without fear.

The ivory two-piece she has put together is a luxury label as well.

Isabella, whose measure is still not clear.

I have to make her mine.

Jo and Jang is not suited as a partner for overseas investment.

Ah Yura, who at present is running as my personal partner.

Set her aside and Jo and Jang is, in itself, a devil’s organisation.

The present stage is one of using their strength.

But at some point in the future the odds are high that the relationship turns hostile.

Before it crosses into that stage I need a body that will hold me up firmly.

What I turned up by searching the internet was the boutique firm.

The English boutique firm Hales lets nothing else come near it.

Through the tax havens in the British overseas territories it does the work of guarding the fortunes of the ultra-high-net-worth.

Exactly what I need right now.

I had not expected a woman lawyer to be assigned.

And her proposal of an investment partnership startled me a second time.

Frankly, I do not take other people’s investment.

Everything I push forward has to go on in secret.

My target is Haryun Group!

It may even become an opponent above that.

With Jo and Jang, information about me is bound to leak at some point.

Grandad, holding Haryun, which cannot even be set beside me, a mere individual.

Isabella, the agent of a group I have newly opened a bond with.

An English firm’s lawyer will not budge even if Haryun leans on her from outside.

Hales Boutique is a body that deals with great fortunes Haryun cannot be compared to.

I put a considerable sum in to bring this off.

I do not regret it.

The present time is for scattering bait and waiting on the fish.

“Isabella.”

I called her warmly.

Her eyes hold a thick liking for me in them.

A woman who says she is deep in Korean culture is not likely to be racist the way people back in her own country are.

And a good-looking face is a weapon a man carries too, and it works the world over.

The beauty trap works with a man inside it as well, and there are times it has to be used.

A slow grin.

She smiles.

The smile a blonde beauty makes is fatal to the health of the heart.

The skin of her face has a shine on it, and it is smooth.

“I’d like to employ you as an agent rather than as a broker.”

“……!!”

She opens her eyes wide, thrown.

For a proposal from an Eastern man met for the first time today it is a break from the form, and that is the truth.

A boutique firm will do anything at all so long as a large enough sum is paid.

But an agent proposal is a thing of a different grain.

My conditions are simple.

To handle my business as if it were her own.

The terms are not something anybody short of a fair-sized holder of assets can deal on.

“Why me?”

Isabella’s question is as loaded as the smile at her mouth.

A slow grin.

I smiled lightly too.

“Because you’re beautiful.”

“Sorry? Ho ho ho ho ho hoh.”

A hearty laugh burst out of her, as though the answer satisfied her.

In an instant it broke the still air of the house, and a laugh in good humour spread into every corner of it.

The magic lip service a woman can hear until she is sick of it and still not dislike.

“Would it be a discourtesy?”

Today’s deal alone is enough to satisfy for now.

I intend to begin investing in earnest through the corporate accounts that have been opened.

Coin above all, and futures and options in the ordinary asset markets, are the main line.

“Is it my ability you rate so highly?”

Isabella does not know her own use to me.

Of course I do not know her value yet either.

There has been no touch, so her real hidden ability has not been made out.

But the colour of the force she gives off is deep.

“How much will do it?”

It sounds like a stale film line, but I asked it in a way that was anything but light.

I gave her the chance to price herself.

I am curious too.

At what value Isabella will deal herself to me.

“Isabella Hales.”

“……??”

“That’s my full name.”

“……!!”

Hales?

What is this — then the Hales firm takes the family’s surname……?

Then Isabella is…….

(End of Chapter 102)