Grandson? Beloved?
For a second my face almost twisted, then I clocked there was another guest and hurried to smooth my expression.
"Th-that brat!"
A middle-aged woman I’d run into at a Baek main-house gathering before.
She was my foster mother’s sister’s spouse—and the mother of the trash who’d cracked a filthy joke at me. Judging by the way she pointed a finger right in my face, she still looked down on me and my foster mother.
"N-no way! The prior engagement Father mentioned was that... thing?"
"Yes. I need some quality time with our Geonho. You can go."
Quality time.
Baek Ildo’s choice of words knocked me blank for a moment.
"What on earth are you thinking, Father! You don’t have time to hear us out, but you’ll waste it on that cheap trash?"
"Isn’t it cheap to show up without a word and demand money first?"
Baek Ildo snapped, rough and cold.
"Clean up the W Food mess yourselves."
"Father...!"
"Are you really trying to make me repeat myself?"
W Food... that would be the business that botched quality control, tanked the branding, and blew up the entire export plan.
And that wasn’t the only headache. Baekil Group lurched from one incident to the next. Open my phone and, any given day, I could find think-pieces dunking on an incompetent chaebol clan and community posts like "Boycotting Baekil—the pigs think the people are livestock." The gray in the group head’s hair had more to do with stress than age, that much was clear.
"You snatched the food company like you did that hotel and now you can’t handle it, so we’re left with this mess. Pigs with full bellies refusing feed have less greed than you lot."
"Father! How can you say that!"
"Leave. While I’m still being nice."
"...Tch. I’ll be in touch."
She bit her lip, then turned on her heel and stomped off.
As she barreled past me, wearing every ounce of her anger and humiliation in her gait, she shot me a venomous glare.
"Know your place. How dare you crawl in here!"
At that, I... had to clamp a palm over my nose.
God, the smell...
Like someone poured every cheap perfume into one pot and boiled it to a reek. I actually had to take a few steps back. That only made her madder; her Omega pheromones slipped the leash and bucked.
No sense provoking someone that riled up. I forced an easy smile, bowed politely like nothing was wrong... and for some reason that only made her look more insulted as she jabbed a finger at me, until an attendant escorted her out.
Did she think I was smirking at her...?
Silence finally settled over the room. I let out a long breath and headed straight for Baek Ildo.
On a high floor with a view of Seoul sprawled below, the Chairman of Baekil Group swirled crystal in his glass, handsome as a noir lead. But after ten years of seeing the same scene, the phrase "eyesore" floated up on its own.
"Day drinking will ruin your health."
"They make me drink. Those bastards."
"Stop using me to provoke them."
"Provoke? What are you on about?"
"‘Grandson.’ Please don’t goad the main house with words you don’t even mean."
He arched a brow at me.
The Chairman’s silent way of saying, go on.
"All these years, the way you met me regularly and showed off our ‘rapport’—you were sounding an alarm for your family. That’s how I’ve understood it."
"Hmm. Not entirely wrong."
After our very first meeting, he’d started summoning me at all hours.
Called because eating alone was dull. Called to stand by and react while he played golf. Asked me to spit out business concepts from the ‘MZ’ or Gen Z eye or whatever the kids were. Treated me like a fortune-telling octopus to predict the next presidential race...
With Haram’s father’s company and Seolheon both held hostage, not quite hostages, I had no choice but to play along.
A cold-blood like Baek Ildo, who’d never doted on anyone, suddenly brought in an outsider’s child and pretended to cherish him more than his own. It put the perennially lax Baek main house on edge. The stunt with grabbing W Food’s control by force had been less than a decade ago too—after I first stepped into the group.
"It’s been ten calendar years. The effect should be wearing off."
"And the smart brat who knows all that ran off to that sewer of a school behind my back?"
His phrasing was harsh, but I’m the one who made sure he’d think that way. I deliberately applied to a third-tier program.
Changseong Global University, Department of Arts. Back in after service; a senior now.
A decent school inside Seoul, but nothing like what a scion of a top chaebol would boast. And an oddball major, showing not a speck of ambition.
"So the management track dream is dead."
"Guess I wasn’t cut out for it."
"Don’t make me laugh. You were Korea-U level easy. You think I didn’t know?"
"Even if that’s true, with the family breathing down my neck, this is the only way."
I smiled wryly and thought back.
She wasn’t the only one who came for me head-on.
Are you the adoptee?
I think it was when I was in high school.
More than a dozen people found me on the sly, slipping around Baek Ildo and my foster mother’s eyes.
"Korea U, Stanford—look at you yapping, betting it all on that tiny brain."
"You really think Baekil will take you in?"
Like they’d coordinated it, they handed me passbooks and thick envelopes. Some brought along big-shouldered ‘escorts.’
"Putting on a brazen face with that pretty mug—this is what you’re after, right?"
"This is enough to keep you fed for life. Take it and cut ties with the Baeks!"
"Try to suck up to the Chairman one more time and you’ll get hurt!"
Naturally, I smiled and reported directly to the Chairman’s private line. The technical term is ‘I snitched.’
What, am I crazy? Why would I toss a comfortable home and a family I love?
Besides, the only reason I can live a normal daily life with this body is my foster mother, head of Baekil Pharma. Walk out for a bit of cash and I’d literally die, crushed by pheromones.
When he heard, Baek Ildo barked, "If they’ve got time to hound a kid, they can mind the jobs they’re paid for!" He tightened the group’s ranks, and the branch that had even hired gangsters got booted from management entirely.
They were distant collateral relatives, sure, but... did he really need to go that far over me?
I’d suspected he was dangling me as bait, waiting to swing the blade the second he had cause—and wouldn’t you know it, at a group meeting he said this:
"Geonho is, without question, my daughter Yeonhee’s son. Spread nonsense about bloodlines or pull any bright ideas, and you’re declaring open war on Baek Ildo. I’ll lavish favor accordingly."
If I didn’t know him, I might have felt moved by that antique, tough-guy romantic line.
It wasn’t protection. It was a challenge.
The shady approaches around me plummeted afterward, but the sharpened eyes didn’t fade; they only stabbed harder. In the end, I waved a white flag called a third-rate college application to prove, with my whole body, that I had zero interest in the war for the reins.
For the record, I don’t mind. I plan to live sweetly off investments and property anyway.
"As for college, and the army—running off without a word... fine, I’ll let that go. It’s not too late. Transfer, or at least make grad school respectable."
Everything about school and the military is because of you, and you’ll "let it go," huh.
I ground my teeth inside and kept a smile outside.
"Thanks for saying so, but I’m fine. I don’t intend to continue."
"You don’t have to tiptoe around those dumb punks. With me behind you, who’d dare mouth off?"
Even if they don’t mouth off, their eyes alone are enough to give me indigestion. Does the Prime Alpha grandpa get that? I don’t have a titan’s guts.
At last, after holding it in forever, I asked the question I’d been sitting on.
"Why are you so intent on keeping me by your side?"
"...Hm?"
"As I’ve said more than once, I don’t want to feud with the Baek family, and I don’t want to be indebted."
I didn’t want to be entangled with the group at all. I wanted to live quietly, almost invisible—"Oh, was there a guy like that?"—and leave it at that.
"You said you’d already repaid your debt to my birth mother, Jiyoung Lee."
"..."
"If it’s to sound an alarm at a group that feels no crisis even in distress... then that alarm should be rung by someone who’ll truly be an heir, not a scarecrow like me."
What I’d never said because I’d been watching my step—
I told him straight, while he pressed his lips together.
"Keep my little brother, Seolheon, at your side instead of me."
"You’re back?"
The second the door opened, Seolheon greeted me with a blank face.
He’s so striking you could skip the entryway light; he brightens the space just by existing.
"Hyung. You look tired."
"Because I am..."
"Take your meds."
"Ah. Thanks."
He fetched the pills and a glass of water with practiced ease. Pheromone response suppressant—the one I’d been on ever since manifesting as an Alpha.
He has a sixth sense for when my dosage is about to wear off and always has it ready.
"The living room’s spotless. You cleaned?"
"I was bored."
"Third-years shouldn’t worry about things like this."
I ruffled his bangs lightly and looked around. The place was tidier than usual.
A new thirty-eight-py apartment near Seoul Station, nineteenth floor.
More modest than the luxury place where I used to live with my foster parents, but plenty of space for two men.