Chapter 270: Cheon Sang-pil, Left Alone
by xennovelLeft alone, Cheon Sang-pil slumped back into his chair.
He grabbed the nearly empty bottle of liquor and poured himself another glass, dropping in a few of the mostly melted ice cubes before swirling it.
“Damn it… Trillions… That little bastard is really insane.”
He gulped down the strong whiskey as if it were water.
But the astronomical figure of trillions wouldn’t leave his mind.
The nominee stocks under his management also kept gnawing at him.
Of course, the nominee stocks were also worth trillions. Like a child saving coins in a piggy bank, Lee Pil-ok had been steadily accumulating shares for almost twenty years.
When Cheon Sang-pil first saw Lee Pil-ok’s list of nominee stocks, he thought nothing of it. But after glimpsing the structure of the Soonyang Group’s controlling shares, he stopped calculating the market value of her stocks.
In the early days, the shares Chairman Jin gifted to diversify ownership were unlisted, but twenty years later, they had transformed into the group’s controlling stake.
Stocks with immense value despite no trading activity, along with consistently purchased shares in major subsidiaries. These were all blue-chip stocks that had steadily risen.
Cheon Sang-pil had managed these assets, making additional purchases whenever Lee Pil-ok provided funds, and he had been in charge of distributing them for over a decade.
Naturally, he was well-compensated.
When he played golf with his successful lawyer friends and they bragged about their wealth, he just chuckled inwardly.
While his friends pulled their golf bags from Lexuses or Benzes, he opened the trunk of his Grandeur, feeling not a shred of envy.
He knew owning a dozen or so apartments in Gangnam was wiser than a Benz or Lexus, and his offshore account filled with dollars, worth many times more than those apartments, gave him greater security.
But now, the dozen or so Gangnam apartments and dollar accounts he’d been so proud of felt utterly insignificant.
Instead of Gangnam apartments, he imagined grand mansions in Beverly Hills and villas in Miami; instead of Benzes or Lexuses, he could almost feel the controls of a private Boeing jet in his hands.
The values he had held onto until now crumbled because of that single word: ‘trillion’.
兆 (Jo) also means omen or sign.
How fitting is that meaning?
It’s a unit used for things too large to know exactly, only estimable through conjecture.
Cheon Sang-pil couldn’t fathom the exact size of one trillion won, but he could vividly imagine what he could obtain and accomplish with that kind of money.
He couldn’t bring himself to leave the hotel room while he finished the bottle of whiskey.
Before accepting that crazy proposal from the young brat, there was something he needed to confirm.
* * *
Lee Pil-ok’s eldest and youngest sons were in a state of utter dismay, doing nothing but sighing. If it had been their wives instead of their mother, they might have felt like tearing out every strand of their hair.
“Alright,” Vice-chairman Jin Young-gi said, suppressing his seething anger and adopting the most polite tone he could muster. “But where did all that money go? Whether it was shopping or anything else, wasn’t it all processed through company funds? What did you need the cash for that made you commit such an act?”
Normally, he would have snapped at even this manner of speaking, but now, burdened by her transgression, she was compliant.
“I did it for you boys, not for myself.”
“Yes, but what exactly did you do it for?”
“Stocks.”
Jin Young-gi sighed again.
“Don’t you realize that’s practically useless? No matter how much you scrape together in insignificant subsidiary shares, it won’t help defend against a takeover. How many times have I told you this?”
“Over 3% and under 5% of the controlling shares. That’s how much stock I have. Is that still useless?”
Hearing the numbers, both sons felt their breath catch. They’d thought of her as a doddering old woman just spending money… She’d created a huge problem, but it was something worthwhile.
Seeing her sons’ shock, Lee Pil-ok’s expression shifted back to that of Soonyang’s matriarch.
“If Dong-gi hadn’t formed a joint voting agreement with that Do-jun, I wouldn’t have taken such a drastic measure. My impatience got the better of me.”
Having escaped her eldest son’s criticism, the mother turned her accusatory gaze to her youngest.
Jin Dong-gi, who had been silent, finally spoke.
“Do-jun isn’t someone who compromises easily. Once he sets his mind to something, he sees it through to the end. I know that firsthand, having been on the receiving end of it. We need to come up with countermeasures quickly.”
“Look at this one, talking nonsense….”
“It’s not nonsense. He demanded a joint voting agreement from me, but what did he demand from you, Mother? Nothing, right? That means he’s going to make this a huge issue.”
Jin Young-gi shook his head.
“Don’t you know how cunning that brat is? He’ll demand something soon enough.”
“Stop talking such nonsense. Don’t you get it? This is revenge! You figured it out too, didn’t you, hyung? The car accident… the accident where Father and Do-jun almost died!”
Jin Dong-gi’s shout caused both Jin Young-gi and Lee Pil-ok to fall silent, their faces hardening.
“If we let this information leak to the opposition party like Do-jun said, even Soonyang’s power won’t be able to stop it. They’re in the middle of their own war right now; they won’t show us any leniency.”
Agreeing with his brother, Jin Young-gi didn’t voice any objections. Yeouido was currently in a desperate battle to secure a majority, a matter of life and death.
“S-so? Are you saying this mother should go to prison as a smuggler? You, you bastards, really…!”
Her two sons had no余裕 to consider their mother’s feelings as she trembled with disbelief.
“Has Do-jun contacted you at all since then?”
Lee Pil-ok felt a pang of hurt at her sons’ cold demeanor, but she also understood the urgency of the situation.
“I sent someone to see him today. They should be meeting right now.”
“Who did you send?”
“The person I trust most. Director Cheon Sang-pil.”
The two sons exchanged glances but didn’t recognize the name.
Their mother’s trust wasn’t what mattered; what was important was how loyal this man was.
More often than not, masters placed their trust in treacherous vassals.
By exchanging glances, the Jin Young-gi and Jin Dong-gi brothers confirmed that there was only one course of action.
“Is this Director Cheon Sang-pil someone we can trust to take responsibility for this situation in your stead, Mother?”
An answer didn’t come easily.
He was definitely trustworthy. He handled matters quickly and understood what was needed without detailed explanations. He could even read Lee Pil-ok’s true intentions, something she herself wasn’t fully aware of.
However, the trust her son was talking about was whether he was willing to serve time in prison for her.
Seeing their mother’s hesitation, both sons frowned.
The answer should come without a moment’s pause. Even then, they would need to confirm multiple times, promise compensation, and make earnest requests to get someone to serve a prison sentence in their place.
Cheon Sang-pil was not the right person for that role.
“Besides Cheon Sang-pil, how many others know about the art smuggling?”
“About three or four.”
“And are they better than Cheon Sang-pil?”
It was a pointless question.
Wasn’t the fact that they sent him to negotiate with Jin Do-jun proof that he was the most reliable?
The two sons sighed at their mother’s headshake. But there was also something very fortunate: they had handled this kind of thing many times before.
The two men made eye contact and gave slight nods before simultaneously pulling out their cell phones.
“There’s a guy named Cheon Sang-pil who used to work for the Soonyang Art Foundation. Get his personal information and dig up some dirt on him. Something fatal. Something powerful enough to make him kneel in an instant. Yeah. No time. Use all available personnel.”
After ending their calls, which were nearly identical, the two men turned to their mother.
“Did Cheon Sang-pil also manage the nominee stocks?”
“Yes.”
“Then pack your bags and leave the country. Don’t even think about coming back until this blows over. We’ll assign some tight-lipped people to stay with you. Stick with them.”
Lee Pil-ok’s lips trembled, but she couldn’t bring herself to voice any complaints. Seeing her sons’ expressions, she knew the situation was dire enough that even her cherished Cheon Sang-pil had to be sacrificed.
* * *
“Are you certain about this?”
The opposition party’s floor leader waved the documents I had given him.
“The truck that came out of the consulate on the date in those documents was driven by a consulate employee. Check the consulate’s operational logs through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They won’t have a proper explanation.”
“Chief Jin, if this isn’t solid, it’ll put me in a tough spot.”
“Floor leader, would I do something without being sure? Trust me.”
The floor leader still looked dubious.
“Chief Jin, be honest with me. What’s the ultimate target here?”
“Floor leader, if you start digging into this… I guarantee you, at the very least, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Blue House’s Special Envoy for Foreign Affairs will lose their jobs. Also, there will be an enormous outcry from the US. No matter what the final target is, it’ll shake a pillar of the Blue House.”
The destructive power was too significant to ignore, and the floor leader’s expression changed.
“If you’re uncomfortable, just have your meal and go back.”
“Just like that? Are you saying you’ll bury this?”
“No. I’ll just give it to a sniper from another faction. There are plenty of assemblymen who would grovel to get their hands on this.”
The phrase ‘grovel’ seemed to make the floor leader uneasy.
He hastily waved his hand, raising his voice.
“Oh no, what are you saying? You seem to have misunderstood. It’s not that I don’t trust it; it’s such a heavy blow that I’m asking to be sure. Haha.”
“I understand. Anyway, if you dig into that incident on that date, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be turned upside down. Oh, and I have the name of the employee who drove the truck, so if necessary, you can summon that employee and have them stand before the National Assembly.”
Hearing that he even had the name, the floor leader seemed satisfied. Just as he picked up his spoon again, his phone rang.
It was a call from Vice-chairman Jin Dong-gi.
Oh dear, my grandmother. She even called her reliable son.
“Yes, Uncle.”
– I don’t know what you’re doing, but let’s meet now.
“I apologize, but I’m having a meal with a guest right now and can’t move.”
– Then come after you eat. Let’s have a drink. You know Samcheong-dong? Come there.
I ended the call and quickly finished my meal.
He was my joint voting agreement partner. I couldn’t ignore him.
* * *
Lawyer Cheon Sang-pil began to feel uneasy.
Lee Pil-ok’s phone, which would usually answer immediately upon ringing, was off. The same went for her executive secretary, and there were no replies to his text messages.
Sensing a crisis, had she perhaps fled overseas?
Just as he was thinking that even so, cutting off contact was too much, he figured out who was stepping in for Lee Pil-ok.
The call from Vice-chairman Jin Young-gi’s secretarial office felt somewhat forceful.
“So, you left the cleanup to your sons and ran away, huh?”
Cheon Sang-pil steeled himself and headed to the Soonyang Group headquarters.
“Have we met before? Your face looks familiar.”
Vice-chairman Jin Young-gi’s casual greeting was unpleasant, but he knew from his time in the group’s legal team that no one in this family cared for formalities.
“I used to be part of the group’s legal team. We’ve met a few times back then.”
“Ah, that’s why you looked familiar. Haha.”
Jin Young-gi laughed heartily and grasped Cheon Sang-pil’s hand.
“I heard you’ve been working hard for my mother, but I haven’t had a chance to thank you.”
“It was my job.”
“You have a straightforward personality. Well, let’s skip the niceties and get straight to the point.”
“Where is Madam Lee…?”
“Ah, just in case, I put her on a plane. You don’t have to worry about my mother.”
“I see.”
“First, about the nominee stocks you manage, Attorney Cheon.”
“Yes.”
“Hand over the list. I believe you’ve distributed them to those folks in Myeong-dong? We need to collect them all and convert them to real names.”
Look at this?
He spoke as casually as if he were asking for borrowed dishes back from a neighbor.
Attorney Cheon Sang-pil frowned.