AFTER THE DIVORCE, I BECAME A BILLIONAIRE

CHAPTER 10: EVERYTHING ON ONE TABLE

We didn't sleep.

By dawn, every document my father had left behind was spread across my office table. Financial statements. Private correspondence. Board records. Land transfers. Chemical reports. Surveillance photographs. Seo-rin's shadow ledger. The Council's shell network.

Everything.

For the first time, our separate investigations bled into one single truth.

She stood at the opposite end of the wide mahogany table. "This is the infrastructure chain," she said, pointing to six parent companies highlighted in yellow. "They all lead straight back to the same construction consortium."

"Seong-ho," I stated flatly.

"Yes."

I slid another file across the surface. "And this?"

"Political donations," she replied.

"Legal?"

"Some."

"And the others?"

"Hidden beneath charities in Macao."

I turned, staring up at the glass wall where we had mapped the Cheonghwa Council’s structure. Six names were filled in. One remained entirely blank.

Seo-rin caught me staring.

"Who holds the seventh seat?" I asked.

She didn't answer right away, her gaze dropping to the papers between us.

"Seo-rin."

"My mother," she whispered.

I looked at her, my brow furrowing. "Your mother is dead."

"I know."

"Then the seat has been vacant."

"No." She stepped closer. "My mother wasn't removed by the board."

"What do you mean?"

"That's the lie the Council fed to the public," she said, pulling a document from her coat. "My mother resigned."

I stared at the charter. "That's not what court records say."

"Exactly."

"Then why hide her resignation?"

"I don't know," she murmured, looking away. "That's what I've spent three years trying to find out."

I studied the document. Yoon Ah-young had signed her resignation three days before the fatal crash. But the signature was wrong—a precise, photographic copy transferred from an older filing.

I raised my eyes. "You knew about this."

"I suspected."

"You didn't tell me."

"Neither did you," she countered. "You didn't tell me about the mole operating inside Kangseong Holdings."

She was right. I had kept the forged authorization key a secret.

We stood in heavy silence—two people accusing each other of keeping secrets while standing in the center of a grand conspiracy built of lies.

Then I remembered the fifty-million-dollar wire transfer.

I pulled up the transaction log on my monitor. Seo-rin walked around the desk, leaning over my shoulder.

"There's something missing," she noted instantly.

"What?"

"The authorization code."

I zoomed in on the metadata. The transaction had been processed manually. No digital key. No employee ID log. No verification trail.

"Someone physically authorized this transfer," I said, my pulse accelerating. "Who had access three years ago?"

I pulled up my father's old executive records. Seven names appeared. Six were dead or accounted for. The seventh belonged to a man who had managed Kangseong Holdings' private security for twenty-six years.

I stared at the screen, my throat going dry. "That's impossible."

Seo-rin pressed closer. "Who is it?"

Before I could answer, every light in the office went out.

The floor-to-ceiling monitors died. The entire suite plunged into pitch-black shadow.

Seo-rin froze beside me.

Through the heavy silence, I heard the faint ding of the private elevator. Heavy doors slid open. Slow, deliberate footsteps echoed across the marble foyer.

One.

Two.

Three.

Coming directly toward us.

I reached for my phone. No service.

"We're not alone," Seo-rin whispered.

Suddenly, the red emergency backup lights flickered to life.

A man stood at the end of the corridor framing my doorway. He wasn't wearing a mask. He didn't need one.

I knew his face. So did Seo-rin.

It was Ahn Seong-ho—head of the Cheonghwa Council, father to Tae-hyun, and the shadow figure my father had spent a decade trying to destroy.

He smiled at us. Not with anger, but with a chilling, patriarchic kindness.

"You finally found the seventh door," Seong-ho said smoothly.

My blood ran completely cold. Seo-rin took a step backward, her breath ragged.

Seong-ho’s cold eyes turned to her. "Your mother was always far too clever for her own good, Seo-rin."

Then he looked directly at me. "And your father was always far too late."

I stood up, my fists clenching. "You killed him."

Seong-ho's smile vanished. "No." He took one heavy step into the office. "I ordered his execution. There is a distinction."

Seo-rin’s breath caught in her throat.

Seong-ho glanced down at the documents covering the table. "You've done impressive work, Tae-jun."

His gaze settled on the fifty-million-dollar transaction log on my dark monitor. "Ah. You found the payment."

I said nothing, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He smiled faintly again. "Good."

Reaching into his tailored coat, Seong-ho pulled out an old photograph and tossed it onto the table.

I walked around the desk, my eyes locked on the glossy square. My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.

It was a photograph of me as a toddler, sitting on a playground swing—taken years before I had ever heard the name Kang Min-jae.

I raised my eyes. "When was this taken?"

"Thirty years ago," he answered softly.

The air left my lungs. "I didn't know my father thirty years ago."

"You weren't supposed to exist at all," Seong-ho said quietly.

The room went dead silent.

Seong-ho turned his head toward Seo-rin. "Neither was she."

He looked back at me. "And that, Young Master, is the part your father was too terrified to ever tell you."

He turned on his heel, walking back toward the dark corridor.

"Wait!" I shouted.

He stopped at the threshold without looking back.

"Ask Choi Dong-wook why your father hid you," Seong-ho said calmly. "If he lives long enough to answer."

Then, the emergency lights cut out completely.

Three seconds later, the main power surged back on with a loud chime. Overhead lights hummed to life.

Seong-ho was gone. The heavy glass entry doors were still locked from the inside.

Seo-rin stood beside me, trembling as she stared at the photograph.

With shaking fingers, I picked it up and flipped it over.

Scrawled across the back in dark ink was a date from thirty years ago. And beneath it, written in my father's distinct handwriting, were six terrified words:

If they find him, run from Dong-wook.