Click. Click.

A mansion in Mayfair, in the high quarter of London’s Westminster.

A platinum-blond, well-kept middle-aged man with a solid, dignified look is eating alone at the head of a large table laid for twenty.

The main course is a thick salmon steak.

A brown checked suit with a classic tie, worn with style.

The platinum-blond hair is combed back, with enough pomade laid on it to say that not one strand will be permitted to stray.

Every single movement of the knife and the fork is measured.

Rather than a pleasant meal it looked like an ascetic’s hour of discipline.

The man’s blue-tinted eyes are fixed without interest on salmon cooked to the right degree.

Even the speed at which he chews what he has put in his mouth, and the number of times, are regular.

A knock.

The mealtime, in which only the small sound of tableware meeting had been heard, was over.

Trickle.

A server in a white shirt and bow tie, who had been standing a few paces back, came forward and filled the cup with black tea.

Swallow.

The man, lifting the cup, taking a light mouthful and rinsing his mouth with it.

A meal that had not been short was finished.

“Sebastian.”

“Head of the house. Give your command.”

Into the place the server had left, a man in his early fifties came forward.

It is Sebastian the butler.

A blue suit suited him extremely well.

“Isabella?”

“She is still at the Korean client’s residence.”

“Still? What time is it now?”

“By the time there…… it is about ten at night.”

“Hm.”

A short grunt leaked from the platinum-blond man’s mouth as his face creased slightly.

He is Earl Rupert Hales, the head of the house.

He lives in London, and he is not an English noble of the true line.

He comes out of a core noble house of Scotland, which resisted England in the past.

Carrying a history like that, he — no, the house itself — was cold and hard.

To survive among the nobles of the English mainland they had held out through long and difficult years.

The title is Earl, and the true-line English nobles slight him still.

His forebears went early into the shadows.

They hold themselves out as a boutique firm, but in substance the house of Hales are professional launderers who handle money out of the dark.

Not England’s alone — they hold the funds of the rich of the whole world safely in the tax havens.

For stability they boast hundreds of years of it, on a level to be set beside Switzerland.

Because of that history nobody slights the house of Hales lightly.

Without borrowing their strength it is hard to launder money of any size perfectly.

“I have looked into the client Ha Tae-ung. He is a descendant of Korea’s Haryun Group.”

“Haryun……?”

“One of Korea’s ten great chaebol companies.”

“Is that so?”

Earl Rupert knows what sort of standing a chaebol has inside Korea.

They are the body that makes up Korea’s upper class, and they are said to wield a power not short of the nobility’s.

On that count he was reassured.

Isabella, his youngest daughter, who at some point had been swept up in the Korean wave and could not get herself out of it.

He knew she was steeped in it and did not stop her.

She was a daughter far too precious in his life for the house’s strict authority to be the only thing brought to bear.

The daughter who called the stubborn Rupert Daddy, and clung to him and kissed him and worked her charm on him.

She was different from the blunt boys.

Isabella was extremely clever from when she was small.

She came out of Oxford at the top as well.

She took her qualification as a lawyer at once and came into the firm.

She picked the work up faster than anybody too, and in the end she flew to Korea herself.

“What does he do?”

“The building of his fortune stands out.”

“Is it the family’s slush fund?”

“It is not.”

“Then…….”

“It appears to be profit from coin investment.”

“Coin?”

Coin, which the Hales firm too is using as an important means of accumulating slush funds.

“He is quite young.”

“……??”

Holding the cup with the black tea in it, Earl Rupert looked at the butler.

“He has only just come of age.”

“And he is using my firm?”

“I am looking into it, and it is suspicious.”

“……A succession fight?”

The group succession problems of Korea’s chaebol are famous in this trade too.

The scale of the funds Korea’s chaebol moved out of the country in the past was enormous.

It cannot be disclosed, but the Hales firm has had contracts with several Korean groups as well.

Every one of them shows a strong tendency to build a slush fund for the sake of a group succession.

“He is a person excluded from the members of the house. And yet…… what is strange is that he has contracted for the VIP package.”

The VIP package!

This is the course that carries out money laundering perfectly in the tax havens.

Not even the ablest tax officials of the world’s governments can ever find that route.

To this day the route stands sound.

“Watch…… and tell me.”

“I understand. Head of the house.”

“You may go.”

Sebastian bowed his head lightly, turned and went out.

“Ha Tae-ung…….”

Earl Rupert’s gaze went to the front without interest.

The empty, quiet dining table his gaze crosses.

Around it, along the walls, the portraits of the forebears hang in order.

“Soon the paradigm of wealth changes. When the storm drives in…….”

The movements of the high-net-worth are not ordinary.

The flow of money beginning to gather into havens and alternative assets, as in the time of the world wars.

The signs of an economic war, begun in earnest some years ago, are the evidence.

There is no knowing where the shockwave will jump.

And in the middle of that, the name of a Korean chaebol’s descendant, heard through a tangling with Isabella.

Earl Rupert’s well-developed instinct was catching the particular signal that name was sending.

At the moment the front door was just about to close, a sharp voice outside it called Seo Dahui to a halt.

That fucking bitch!!

It was the manager Gu Miryeo.

She is at the point of madness with anger over Seo Dahui these days.

Seo Dahui, whose sense of her own worth had been crawling along the floor under a steady gaslighting.

Gu Miryeo, who had felt a thrill at the sight of her slowly coming apart.

It had gone past the level of a manager’s jealousy of a singer-songwriter who is pretty and sings well and is popular besides.

But recently Seo Dahui had turned right round.

Whatever it was she had eaten that disagreed with her, she showed the company and the manager Gu Miryeo an attitude with nothing held back, out of a confidence that had come from nowhere.

On top of that she had blocked the manager’s access to the Signiel entirely.

The manager was angry, and there was nothing she could do about it at once.

May, when there were more events than at any other time, with the university festivals.

The company put no schedule at all on Seo Dahui.

It was a trick to re-sign her cheap on the excuse that there was no work.

In her actual living the pressure was added to as well.

They made her take a residence at an expensive rent and lawfully deducted the cost from the settlement payments.

The company took it as an expense, and Seo Dahui melted her whole dividend away.

But recently that Seo Dahui, who had been no better than a mug, had changed.

She chewed up the re-signing offer in front of Director Yang Docheol’s face.

Director Yang Docheol, who had lost it entirely, ordered the flat emptied at once.

The monthly rent contract was changed into Gu Miryeo’s name.

The company side instructed her to drive Seo Dahui out and lead her into a new contract.

The condition was that if she did just that, Gu Miryeo could live there for the remaining term.

Gu Miryeo, who had come late at night to push Seo Dahui’s eviction through at once.

Seo Dahui, who if she is driven out of here has no choice but to go to her home town.

Picturing her thrown out onto the road, she was even humming to herself.

And then!

The scene witnessed in front of her eyes!

Seo Dahui was going into the flat right next door.

The forearm glimpsed was a man’s.

Gu Miryeo, her eyes turned over, called Seo Dahui to a halt in a voice with a blue edge on it.

Seo Dahui, who had just been stepping inside, stopped.

I’ve got you dead!

Gu Miryeo, who has got hold of a case properly.

It is the scene of a secret meeting between the Seo Dahui who has been putting on her demure act and the man next door.

For the gossip outlets it makes bait to whet the appetite.

Gu Miryeo took her smartphone out at once.

There was a need to leave evidence behind.

So it was that bastard she was leaning on when she threw her weight about? Heh heh.

Gu Miryeo, whose instinct had gone off at once, has properly caught the feel of it.

Seo Dahui, going into the man next door’s flat at an hour as deep as this.

She had wondered why there had been strength in her shoulders lately, and she has found the reason.

“Seo Dahui! What do you think you’re doing!!”

Gu Miryeo, blowing hard through her nose and stamping her steps as she came on.

She came right up close to Seo Dahui.

Gu Miryeo’s gaze went straight to the man standing holding the door.

“You, with Dahui…….”

Gu Miryeo, who had meant to kill the spirit out of them first with a loud voice.

“Hk!!”

The moment her eyes met the man’s, Gu Miryeo was badly startled.

The cold eyes like a dagger, fixed on her, stopped her mouth with the look alone.

A faint tremor.

Gu Miryeo, thrown, shook.

The bold force that had been rising like flame seemed to freeze.

The man’s cold gaze, as though it went clean through the heart, was like a judge’s.

“What is your business?”

The man asked in a voice cold enough to cut.

“That is…… Seo Dahui’s flat is…….”

“Unnie! Isn’t this too much!!”

(End of Chapter 106)