Vroooom.

Screeeech.

It was nearly rush hour on the roads of Gangnam. A beat-up SUV rolled along through the traffic.

"Whew."

Lee Sangmin let out a breath he'd been too tense to take properly. He and Park Jeongho had been all but thrown out of the chairman's office.

"……" Right up to the last moment, something in the Newstar Building had had them by the scruff of the neck, and it still gave him chills.

Ha Tae-ung's steady, indifferent gaze, and questions that stabbed like an awl.

The secretary had been prickly from the start, and the Cheonmu guards had watched them with hard eyes, as if waiting for one word from Ha Tae-ung.

"Sir…… I was scared out of my mind!"

"……" At Lee Sangmin's terrified outburst, even Park Jeongho couldn't find anything to say.

Ha Tae-ung's face from a few minutes ago filled his head and ruled his every thought.

Eyes and an expression so calm they went past calm into cold. A gaze that never once wavered. And then, at a moment he hadn't seen coming, the words the kid had been tossing off so carelessly.

How well did they know him?

Park Jeongho's lips stayed clamped shut; he said nothing.

He'd gone in on the assumption that the power of the law put him on top anywhere.

A badge nobody could argue with. Circumstances that seemed to tie the kid to a murder and a disappearance.

Hit a young punk with the key points, and he was bound to get scared and shrink.

But he'd read it wrong. He hadn't been careful. Instead, it was Park Jeongho who'd been read.

When his thoughts got that far, a cold sweat ran down his spine.

That little bastard……

He wasn't just some punk with a lot of money. He wasn't some clueless grandson thrown out of a chaebol house, either.

He'd known why they were there before he ever opened his door to them.

From their questions, he'd worked out how far they'd dug, and then he'd sized up the situation.

It was like facing a judge who…