Click.

They were in the underground parking garage at the Signiel. Jonathan Hale, the bodyguard, opened the car's rear door.

"Young mistress, please get in."

Shff.

Without a word, Emilia Lorenz settled into the VIP seat in the back.

The courteous, elegant poise she'd shown Ha Tae-ung a few minutes ago had vanished without a trace.

Shf.

She took out a pair of big black sunglasses she kept in the car and put them on. Just like that, she was someone else entirely.

The calm smile that had lingered on her lips gave way to a look of flat indifference.

The way she sat said it all: the haughtiness of a woman who had never once needed to care what anyone thought of her.

Her title was special invitations officer at Atlas Express headquarters. It described exactly what she was doing today.

But that one title came nowhere close to explaining who Emilia Lorenz was.

She belonged to an old East Coast financial dynasty.

For over a century the Lorenz house had spread its reach through banks and insurers, private banking and the machinery of finance itself. Emilia was the youngest daughter of that house.

Hers was a family that sat down to dinner with presidents, a family Wall Street's biggest players stepped aside for.

Where she stood in the pecking order of Korean business hardly mattered to her.

"Young mistress, the next stop is the Ilseong Group."

Yun Seohyeon, head of the Korea branch, spoke up carefully from the front passenger seat.

Emilia didn't open her eyes behind the black sunglasses.

"Go Junyong?"

"Yes. We're scheduled to deliver the invitation to the chairman of the Ilseong Group in person."

"I'm tired."

"I'm sorry?"

"You go, Branch Head Yun."

At first Yun Seohyeon thought she had misheard. Then it sank in, and her eyes went very wide.

"M-me?"

"Problem?"

"Well…… it's just……"

Yun Seohyeon couldn't get the rest out, and her voice trailed off.

Emilia had just come from handing an invitation, in person, to a client named Ha Tae-ung who was only twenty.

And now she was handing off…