The honorary chairman's office at the Hyundo Group.

Gu Monggyu sat on the sofa, slowly turning the pages of a thick report.

On the Hyundo Construction affair, more material reached him than reached his son, Gu Hoseon.

The secretariat's official reports were only the start. On top of them came whatever filtered in through the lines he'd spent decades building into business, finance and the press.

Stepping back from the front line hadn't meant closing his ears.

If anything, he'd seen more since giving up the chairman's seat.

Who was trimming his reports, which executive was trying to dodge responsibility, even what the banks were calculating behind their smiles.

Now that he could look at it all more slowly than in his working days, it came into sharper focus.

Hyundo was still his company.

The group he'd built with his late father through blood and sweat.

Over the years, some affiliates had been split off into his brothers' hands, but the core still stood firm.

A massive axis running from cars and heavy industry through construction and finance.

It wasn't a company that would collapse easily. The problem was what came after.

Gu Monggyu looked up from the report and took off his reading glasses.

Lately the fourth generation kept weighing on his mind.

Not one of them had ever built anything on his own.

They'd been born with plenty, and people bowed their heads to them simply because they were of Hyundo blood.

That was what ruined a person.

His own grandson, Gu Changjin, displeased him most: the more he saw of him, the less he liked him.

He knew the boy's father, Gu Hoseon, had tried in his own way to raise him tough.

But the mother didn't know how to behave.

Min Seoyeong was the type who couldn't bear to see her son hurt or lose out.

She covered up his mistakes, big and small, and whenever he caused trouble, she had the people around him clean it up first.

The result was the Gu Changjin of today.

He could drink. He could see women.

A scrape…