I sit in my car, staring at the alleyway from this morning and taking slow even breaths. Steadying my nerves and thinking through my purpose here. My plan. My head is swimming, yet I am wholly composed compared to earlier. Dressed in a killer black fitted pantsuit, spike heels, styled hair hanging perfectly around my shoulders, and I have my war face on. Everything tucked back in behind my mask and ready to rumble. Bringing out the real Vice President Park and what she’s famed for.
It’s like earlier didn’t happen at all, and all my cuts and scrapes are concealed by what I’m wearing, not even on a pain scale anymore; their effect on me is minimal.
My mind is a jumble of thoughts, but my mother-in-law’s words are ringing the loudest and clearest inside my head. I feel like I’m hanging on to them by a thread in a bid to hold it all together.
‘Fix this by any means.’
She knows it’s what I’m good at.
“I can save him, or I can destroy him. That goes for you too. I’m a major shareholder of OLO, and this is enough to not only dissolve the investment deal with Biochem but to see you struck off and held liable for the losses while never working in this industry again. You’ll be tied up in court for years, and I’ll take every penny I can from him that I know he won’t let you pay alone. Jyeon will still have some money, of course, but adultery and mixing business with smut is still a big no-no in this culture. The board of directors will silence him as a non-active shareholder, take away his control and leave it all to me. He can thank you for that. With his fame in the business world, he won’t be able to escape it.” It’s delivered smugly, as though this really is the best punishment for both of them.“You really are as awful as he said you were. How could you be this manipulative? This heartless and cruel.” her rolling
I drove for thirty minutes to get here, to this tranquil place after leaving that woman’s apartment, somewhere I don’t come all too often, yet today I felt like I needed to. I stare at the graves of my parents, laid side by side, and yet no tears come like I expected they would while driving here. I have a million conflicting emotions and thoughts that brought me here, and now I am; I’m too ashamed to stand before them. I'm aching for them after the day I’ve had, feeling lost and like everything is spiraling out of control, and I don’t have a grip on anything anymore.I lay the bouquets I stopped to buy on the way here in front of them and bend to dust off the dark grey marble stones. Stopping to touch the faces in the pictures indented into the shiny surfaces hurts as much as it always did. I’ve never faced the grief and allowed myself to mourn them fully, but I don’t know how to start.Contrary to how I behaved in front of Cl
“Just when I start to feel bad for you, you always pull something out of the bag that completely turns me around again and reminds me you’ll stop at nothing to win. What the fuck are these?” he swipes the top layers aggressively and sends them splaying off the bunker and across the floor around my feet, light falling leaves, as he scowls at me and locks his gaze on mine. Softness and regret are gone, and he picks up my printed document that informs her of my intention to sue for the loss of contract between our companies.I step over them and lay my handbag on the counter on top of a few strewn loners with delicacy and shrug. Leaning down to open the cabinet and retrieve our medicine storage, acting like I don’t see them.“I actually agonized over you finding out like that, hating myself for not telling you the truth….. only to find you fucking knew all along and were having me followed. Fucking followed. What even is that? What gav
I head out of the underground via our access road and turn left, out of the city to hit the cliff roads to let this baby roar. We live on the outskirts and are fortunate enough to be a short drive from one of the most scenic and windy roads that head into a beautiful part of our country and eventually stop at the sea. The river which runs past our home starts as a tiny trickle and somehow manages to size up and merge seamlessly to the vast world out there, and it has always fascinated me. That something so small can start that way and yet become a formidable force to take on the vastness of nature.The car feels heavy to steer, and I scrunch my face up at its lack of sensitive response, wondering what the hell he’s been doing to this. It’s sluggish and not exactly what you expect from a multimillion-dollar car that happens to be a limited edition. I can’t remember thinking it felt this awful to drive when I tried it out before, and I check the gauges for any
It seems worse the faster I go and as I reach the mountain's summit to the plateau, where it levels for a brief time before heading downhill. I decide maybe I should go easier on this thing. Something doesn’t feel right, and as I turn the corner to the parking spot where cars usually sit in daylight, going way too fast, I make the turn to bypass it, yet nothing happens.The car doesn’t turn, the steering locks, and try as I might to force it, it won’t budge. My stomach leaps into my throat, and I impulsively slam my foot to the brake to try and control the forward motion at too high a speed as I head into the clearing.My heart stops, my lungs freeze, and my mind goes blank as my foot slides without resistance all the way to the floor like I’m pressing air, and my eyes widen in horror as it hits me.There are no brakes.I’m not slowing down. The railings are coming at me at a speed of noughts as panic grips me, and I yank wit
I don’t know which way is up, and my lungs are burning, straining, with the effort of holding air that’s not enough to sustain me. I start to panic that I’m suffocating and the instinct to gasp in is something I have to fight with my entire willpower. Swishing my arms and legs around in a bid to swim to the surface, but every direction is a formidable black wall of nothing. I can’t even see the car anymore. I don’t know what’s down, up, left, or right.My gut pulls me one way, something like a sixth sense, that it’s to oxygen, and I kick with fury and extend my arms in a grasping motion as I fight as much a is can to find light and air. It’s a good guess, and as my face breaks the surface, I gasp with all my might to breathe it in before I’m plunged back under with the reactive force up my upward thrust. A moment of relief, followed by the reality that I’m far from safe.I resurface with less gusto, clawing at
The gentle swish, swish, of something outside of my consciousness brings me around, and warm fluttering heat that seems to be growing over my back, heels, skull, and legs, as my limbs tingle back to life, and I start to cough. Not warm enough to heat my lifeless corpse and the inner block of ice that is my organs.My body wracks with the sudden crack of a violent choking fit that fully wakens me because it hurts like hell as though there’s a fire in my lungs. My eyes flutter open, through the hazy fog of a headache that’s awful, to the point I’m nauseous with it, and my body feels like it doesn’t belong to me.My fingers flinch of their own accord, and the sudden sensation of smooth yet also rough and damp textured balls pull my eyes to where I can feel it. Blinking, fluttering my lashes until my hand comes into focus, and I realize it’s laid on gravel and sand, mixed. Wet, shiny, tiny stones and pebbles smothered in grittiness. My fingert
I run until I make it to the edge of the road, an actual tarmac and straight road, that I fall and kiss with utter gratitude. Tears are welling up to blurriness. A gritty, cold, rough surface that hurts my parched lips, but I’ve never been so happy to see something manufactured in all my life. I can’t describe the elation and aching chest pain it gives me.The truck is long gone, and I stare off in the direction it went, along a long road that curves off out of sight, and I gaze both ways, trying to figure out which would be the shortest route to a town. One might be close; one might not. Or maybe I’m being too hopeful, and it stretches for miles either way with nothing at all. If I have any chance of being rescued, I have to stick to the tarmac and not stray. Roads mean people, and people mean being saved. I am not going to give up. I get to my feet and follow the truck's route, hoping it’s the right choice.I watch the sun all day as I w