Chapter 2: Breakfast With the Vultures
The boardroom table was a glacier of black marble, cold beneath Lana’s fingertips. She sat rigidly beside Minho, the scent of his sandalwood cologne a ghost from the jet, from the kiss. The board members’ questions were scalpels, precise and probing. Minho’s answers were walls of ice.
Then the door sighed open.
“Am I late, darling? The traffic from the airport was dreadful.” The voice was honeyed, familiar. Soo-jin flowed into the room, a vision in tailored cream silk. Her smile was a surgical instrument as her gaze landed on Lana. “And you must be the new wife. How… economical.”
Before anyone could speak, Soo-jin drifted behind Minho’s chair. Her manicured hands settled on his shoulders, a possessive claim. Then, with a fluid, practiced motion, she perched on the arm of his chair, her hip brushing his arm, before sliding sideways into his lap.
A collective stillness seized the room. Minho didn’t move, but Lana saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. Soo-jin wrapped an arm around his neck, her crimson lips near his ear. “Did you miss me?” she murmured, loud enough for all to hear.
Lana’s protective fury, that same raw spark from the jet, ignited. This wasn’t just an insult to her; it was a public dismantling of the “cohesion” he’d demanded. She stood, her chair screeching. “Get off him.”
Soo-jin laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “This doesn’t concern you, sweetie. Minho and I have no secrets.”
Minho’s hand closed around Soo-jin’s wrist, his grip brutal. His voice, when it came, was lethally quiet. “You are mistaken.” He stood, dumping her unceremoniously onto her feet. He didn’t look at her. His dark eyes burned into Lana’s, capturing her mid-charge. He closed the distance between them in two strides, his hand cupping the back of her neck, pulling her into a searing, deliberate kiss. It was not the confused collision from the hallway. This was a statement. A branding. When he broke it, his thumb stroked her cut lip, his gaze promising a later reckoning. He turned to the stunned room, his arm a steel band around Lana’s waist. “The meeting,” he said, his voice cutting the silence, “is adjourned.”
He didn’t wait for a response, steering her firmly toward the door. The boardroom’s silence shattered into a chorus of shuffling papers and low, urgent whispers. Soo-jin’s laugh chased them, a sharp, brittle sound. “Running away so soon, agassi? We were just getting acquainted.”
Lana wrenched herself free from Minho’s grip in the pristine hallway, whirling on him. “What the hell was that?” Her voice was a furious whisper, her cheek still burning from the spectacle of his kiss. “Your strategic merger just became a daytime drama.”
“That,” Minho said, his gaze locked over her shoulder back toward the boardroom, “was a problem walking in on two legs.” His attention snapped to her, assessing. “Your intervention was unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary? She was in your lap!”
“And I removed her.” His tone was final, cold. But his eyes were alive, scanning her face, lingering on her mouth. A silent question hung between them, charged and unresolved.
Soo-jin emerged from the boardroom, her composure a fragile mask. She stopped inches from Lana, her perfume cloying. “He doesn’t love you,” she hissed, the sweetness gone. “You’re a transaction. A placeholder.”
Lana’s control, stretched taut from the jet, the contract, the public humiliation, snapped.
LANA ATTACKS.
Her hand flew, not an open-handed slap but a closed-fist punch driven from the shoulder. It connected with Soo-jin’s jaw with a sickening, solid crunch. Soo-jin staggered back into the doorframe with a choked gasp, her eyes wide with genuine shock. Lana stood shaking, her knuckles screaming, the raw satisfaction of the impact roaring in her ears.
Minho moved. In one fluid motion, he caught Lana’s stinging fist and pulled her behind him, placing his body between the two women. He looked at Soo-jin, who was cradling her face, a thin trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. His voice was utterly devoid of warmth. “The car is downstairs. Do not return.”
Soo-jin wiped the blood with the back of her hand, her eyes glittering with pure malice. “You always did prefer strays, Minho. But this one bites.”
The elevator doors closed behind them, sealing them in a tomb of silence. Minho punched the penthouse button, his knuckles white. The air between them crackled, thick with everything unsaid. Lana cradled her throbbing hand, the adrenaline fading into a sick, hollow shake. “Well,” she breathed, her voice unsteady. “That was professional.”
He didn’t look at her. “It was inevitable.” The elevator climbed. “She was always going to test you. To test this.”
“And what is this, exactly?” Lana turned to him, the fury returning as a sharp, clean blade. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like your messy history just spat all over our very expensive, very sterile business arrangement.”
Minho’s head snapped toward her, his control fracturing. “You think I wanted her here?” He let out a short, humorless laugh. “You have no idea what you’ve walked into.”
The doors opened directly into the penthouse’s sterile silence. He strode out, raking a hand through his hair. “She isn’t just an ex. She was there.”
Lana followed, her shoes silent on the stone floor. “There where?”
He stopped at the wall of glass, his reflection a ghost over the city. His voice dropped, flattening. “In Busan. Fifteen years ago.” He was quiet for a long moment. “My father didn’t lose his fortune. He gambled it away, then he sold his debts to a man named Park. I was the collateral.”
The words hung in the air, ugly and heavy. Lana’s breath caught.
“Park’s people took me to a warehouse by the docks. Soo-jin was Park’s daughter. She’d watch.” His words were clipped, clinical, stripping the horror bare. “They’d beat me, then leave me with nothing but a phone. One call. To beg anyone for the money. For eight months.”
He finally turned. The city’s light carved hollows beneath his eyes. “I stopped calling. I learned to take the beatings. I learned to hate the sound of her laughter.” He looked straight at Lana, his eyes utterly stripped. “That’s the man you married. Someone who was already broken, a long time ago. They just didn’t finish the job.”