Chapter 3: Betrayed and Abandoned

After a grueling 16-hour flight with a layover in Vienna, Austria, I finally landed at Chișinău International Airport in Moldova, only to face an unexpected situation.

“Chief of Staff, you’ve worked hard. You must be tired, right?”

Two men suddenly appeared.

They were from the secretariat.

Muscles strained against their crisp white shirts, their eyes sharp and cold.

Why were these guys waiting for me in Moldova?

Suddenly my legs weakened, and I stumbled.

The Vice-chairman’s words were all true except for one detail.

The Vice-chairman said the prosecution’s investigation would conclude with the disappearance of the funds.

It needed a slight change.

Yoon Hyun-woo, Chief of Staff of Soonyang Group’s Future Strategy Planning Headquarters, withdrew the overseas funds and then vanished. The funds were not embezzled by the owner’s family, but were intended for investment in Moldova’s infrastructure development… blah blah blah…

This would be the prosecution’s announcement.

And once the public’s interest waned a small article would appear at the bottom of a news page.

Former Soonyang Group Chief of Staff Yoon Hyun-woo, dead from a drug overdose.

An unidentified body found on the southern coast of France has been identified as Mr. Yoon Hyun-woo. Blah blah blah…

The two men who came to meet me would eventually stab me in the heart or blow my head off with a gun bought in Moldova.

How could this happen!

It had been 13 years.

I worked like a dog for 13 years, showing nothing but loyalty, and now I was being thrown away!

And to be thrown away to my death!

When the eldest son with the title of Vice-chairman ascended to Chairman, I thought I would at least get a title above headquarters director. I even had sweet dreams of maybe becoming a subsidiary’s vice president if I were lucky.

But the dream of a servant becoming a butler ended as just a dream.

For a servant to become a butler, they needed family and pedigree.

A servant is forever a servant. It was said that the class system ended with the Joseon Dynasty, and we were now in an equal world, but that didn’t apply to wage earners.

Now it had only changed to a new class system of academic background and connections instead of bloodlines.

Damn it.

This dirty world where even servants need to be born from prestigious schools.

It’s so fucking unfair.

***

I unpacked my luggage at the hotel under the watchful eyes of the two men.

“Chief of staff, get some good rest until the bank opens tomorrow morning.”

I hadn’t slept a wink on the plane.

I was so excited about finally being promoted to butler status and imagining the bright future ahead that I couldn’t sleep.

Even now, lying in the hotel bed, I couldn’t sleep. The thought that my fiercely lived life would end tomorrow morning filled me with terror.

I lay in bed with my eyes closed for three or four hours but eventually got up.

It was the dead of night. The secretariat staff, no, the fixers staying with me, must be fast asleep.

If I wanted to live, running away was the best option.

I grabbed my wallet and passport and opened the hotel room door.

Silencing my footsteps, I crept toward the elevator when I heard familiar Korean.

“Chief of staff, where are you going?”

I felt dizzy again.

These guys would never leave me alone.

“Ah, I was going to grab a drink at the bar. I can’t sleep because of the jet lag.”

“I see, I should have a drink too. Let’s go together, I’ll be your drinking buddy.”

“It’s okay. Please rest. I’ll be back soon.”

I smiled casually at him as if it were no big deal, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

“Hey, old man, you must’ve caught on by now. Let’s drop the act, coming all the way here. You’re known for being smart, you know, tomorrow’s your memorial day, right?”

I didn’t expect him to be so blatant.

My death was a নিশ্চিত fact, but hearing it directly from his mouth made my heart stop.

“Don’t even think about running, just sleep in your room. I’ll call a masseuse for you so you can get a massage and fuck your brains out. What else is there in a man’s life? Getting to have a good time on your last day is a blessing. Go on back.”

Since he was being blatant, I was too.

“Hey, let’s talk, okay? This could be good for you too.”

“What? You want to split the money from the bank here?”

Damn it, he was reading my mind.

“No. You take it all. I’ll find it and give it all to you. It’s over a trillion won. It’ll change your life.”

“Haha, wow, you’re such a fortune teller.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“The Chairman said you would definitely say this.”

The Chairman? So it wasn’t the Vice-chairman who chose me as the scapegoat, but the Chairman?

I was the one who took the women he impregnated to the abortion clinic.

I was the one who got slapped by a mere hostess while cleaning up his mess.

Shouldn’t he spare my life just for cleaning up his shit?

The man looked at my dazed expression and said.

“Old man, a trillion won? What are you going to do with that?”

“With a trillion won, you can fly on private jets. You can line up sports cars worth hundreds of millions of won in your garage and ride a different one every day.”

Even when I described a life of luxury, his answer remained the same.

“This is why smart guys trip up at the last minute. Listen up, old man. My annual salary is 200 million. The company also gave me a Benz. Of course, they gave me a 40-pyeong apartment too. I’m only thirty-three now. This is a life other men envy. What more could I want?”

“You… you idiot…”

“We might be a bit dumb, but we’re not dumb enough to covet a pie we can’t swallow.”

“You sons of bitches, did I ever covet the Chairman’s money? What did I do wrong? This is just killing a mere errand boy.”

I shouted loud enough to make the hotel hallway ring, but it was just a hollow echo.

“Don’t shout! We know that too. So what? We’re just servants too. We have to earn our keep. Stop it.”

“Let me talk to the Chairman just once.”

“Wake up. A mere Chief of staff can’t dare.”

“Then you talk to him. Tell him I’ll go into hiding after I finish the job. I’ll hole up somewhere in South America or some corner of Eastern Europe and never show up until I die. Please, just help me out this once.”

“Geez, a grown man being so pathetic. Let’s stop this.”

The man, annoyed by the late-night commotion, drove the final nail in the coffin.

“Don’t think about anything else and just sleep. Think about your parents.”

A single word pierced my heart like a dagger.

I sank to the floor in front of the elevator.

Those guys were holding hostages.

And very effective ones at that.

These guys knew my life inside and out.

My wife and I weren’t exactly on good terms.

I married a woman who was impressed by my promising name card, working in a core department of Soonyang Group.

But soon after, when my wife found out the true nature of my work, she began to send me blatant looks of contempt.

The fact that we had no children was also related to this.

Although we smiled and attended official events together under the name of husband and wife, that was it. At home, we were like strangers.

We just fulfilled our respective duties.

I gave her a salary and my wife was no different from a housekeeper who cooked, did laundry, and cleaned the house.

Although we never said it out loud, we were both toying with the word divorce in our hearts.

My parents were a much more effective hostage than such a wife.

If I didn’t take the fall and die in Moldova, my parents would die.

A car accident, a fire, or maybe they’d just go missing.

There was no other choice.

The man smirked at my defeated appearance.

“See, wouldn’t it have been better if you’d just gotten a massage and had some fun? Now you’re so worried about your folks that you can’t even get it up, right? I won’t say any more. Go and sleep.”

***

The next day, the two men frowned at my corpse-like appearance.

“Hey, cheer up. What’s with the face of a rich man with a trillion won?”

I didn’t even have the energy to retort anymore.

I followed their lead and entered the bank. I turned my face here and there so that it would be clearly captured on CCTV, then I came out holding a thin master card, the symbol of an electronic account.

“Good work. Your contribution… no, they said they’d compensate generously for your life. Don’t worry about your family. They’ll give your parents a generous severance, and they’ll take care of your wife so she can live without any problems in the US.”

Nonsense until the very end.

Such privileges for the family of an employee who committed misconduct?

They wouldn’t give me my severance pay, and they’d probably file a property seizure lawsuit to leave me penniless.

Never being generous to others was a characteristic of chaebols.

I’d seen it countless times, them making a fuss over giving even a single million won to workers injured in industrial accidents.

The two guys surrounding me led me to a secluded beach.

Was this my grave?

Or would the dazzling blue sea be my grave?

After staring at the sea for a while, I turned around to see a pistol in one of the men’s hands.

I thought I would face death calmly and resolutely since I had given up everything.

But the moment I saw the gun, the last instinct for life twitched.

Without realizing it, I fell to my knees and clung to his feet.

“Please, I beg you. Save me. Please!”

“Have you seen the movie Wanted?”

“I won’t even go back to Korea anyway. I’ll just… I’ll hide in some remote part of South America or Africa for the rest of my life. You can just report that you killed me.”

I knelt and begged and begged, but the bastard kept talking nonsense.

“Angelina Jolie was so sexy in that… When the protagonist kills someone, he always says this. I am sorry.”

“It’s not like I committed some mortal sin. Just disappearing is enough! You fucker!”

“So I wanted to use it at least once.”

The bastard aimed the gun at my head.

Damn it.

I never imagined that the last words I would hear before dying would be some movie line.

“I Am Sorry.”

Bang-!