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Episode 17
“Anyway, you’ve already been permanently dismissed. What can a rookie lawyer like you possibly accomplish?”
Seheon’s gaze swept up and down Heejae with open disdain, his lips curling into a sneer.
Heejae felt her brow knot and her jaw clench against the insult.
“Do you really not know why your father fired that famous defense team and hired you instead?”
Leaning forward suddenly from his chair, Seheon’s twisted expression held both pity and contempt.
“You can’t revive me, nor this company. You’re out of your league against the opposing lawyers. And besides—my father never intended to take you back after your permanent dismissal.”
It was a rigged game from the start.
Chairman Shin had ordered her to somehow rehabilitate Seheon’s image, but the scale of his crimes had gone far beyond repair.
“Then why do you think he threw you into this mess?”
Seheon let out a nasty chuckle.
To dismiss an elite legal team and replace them with Heejae could only mean one thing.
“He’s planning to use this as an excuse to cut you off completely. To sever your tail once and for all.”
The logic was not without weight.
Heejae had already betrayed Shin Group and Chairman Shin after more than a decade of sponsorship. Dragging her back might have been a way to recover some of that “investment,” but she could be discarded at any moment.
“You stupid woman. And you walked right into it, thinking it was a good thing?”
Seheon’s laughter turned manic, like a man enjoying the sight of someone else dragged into the same pit of hell.
“I never came here willingly. I was dragged out of my own job by the hair, no different than a prisoner.”
With a sigh, Heejae pulled out the case files from her envelope. She flipped through them quickly, glancing between the papers and Seheon’s face.
“How did it come to this, Vice Chairman?”
“What?”
Heejae clicked her tongue deliberately, pressing on his nerves.
“The Seheon I remember wasn’t like this.”
The atrocities described in the files didn’t match the man she once knew.
“You were always perfect and coldly rational. You hated giving anyone leverage over you. You even refused to take the easy way just to avoid the label of nepotism.”
He had been the model of an elite. Raised abroad, polished by experience in Korea, armed with enviable academic credentials and a meteoric rise through performance alone.
Why, then, had he stooped to embezzling company funds?
“Bring the wrong beast into your home, and this is what happens.”
Seheon’s lips stopped twisting with humor; his face hardened.
Heejae raised a brow, sensing a shift.
“Why should I suffer because of some bastard my father fathered with another woman?”
Bang!
His fist slammed the table. The impact rattled the room, knocking over the steaming teacup in front of Heejae.
“Ah! Hot—!”
She jerked back, but the scalding coffee splashed across her hand. Pain seared deep into her skin. Curling over, she clutched the burn with her other hand.
“Everything should have been mine!”
Seheon’s ragged voice shook with fury, blind to her injury.
“That bastard has no right to take a single thing from this family!”
Breathing hard, his voice dropped to a bitter growl.
Heejae’s eyes narrowed at him, but then she looked away. Seheon was on the brink of losing control, and she froze in place.
Her mind raced back over his words. He could only mean Shin Kyobin.
Once the sole heir to Shin Group, Seheon had lived without rivals—until the sudden appearance of a half-brother, born from his father’s affair. The existence of that illegitimate child must have poisoned him to the core.
If that child grew into a threat to his inheritance, who wouldn’t crack under the weight?
“You’d understand if you’d been born into a broken family like mine, Lawyer Choi.”
Smoothing his suit and running a rough hand through his hair, Seheon regained some composure.
Then he stepped forward abruptly, closing the distance until his shadow fell across her. Heejae recoiled, pressing herself against the sofa’s back.
“W-what are you doing?”
“That bastard’s always been like a rabid dog around you, drooling every time he saw you.”
One hand braced against the sofa, he loomed over her, voice sharp with warning.
When Heejae turned her head away, he seized her wrist, yanking her back toward him.
“He’s insane. Stay away from him.”
She twisted against his grip, her face tightening from the pain.
“Then again, what could I expect from my father?”
With a derisive snort, Seheon released her wrist, shoving his hands into his pockets as he looked down at her.
“What can you expect from a man who even brought someone like you into our home?”
The contempt in his eyes was the same as always—cold, cutting, dismissive. The look she’d grown used to since childhood.
He had despised her for as long as she could remember, his expression always curdling as if her very existence was offensive.
“Even you bear responsibility.”
Pressing back against the sofa, her guard up, Heejae glared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“For what I’ve become.”
“What did I ever do?”
She frowned, baffled. After all, they hadn’t interacted since she left the Chairman’s mansion as a teenager. Even then, she had made every effort to avoid him.
She had no fault in his downfall.
“Your very existence.”
His eyes bore down on her with searing disdain.
“You’ve always been a thorn in my side.”
It was the gaze of a man who wanted nothing more than to crush her out of existence.
“Get out.”
He pointed to the door.
“You can’t do anything in this case anyway, so leave.”
Snatching up her files, Heejae shot to her feet and left the reception room.
The door slammed shut behind her, yet she stood rooted outside, stunned.
The meeting had been worthless, offering no cooperation from her client. A dull shame tugged at her as she realized how little ground she had gained.
“So this is a fight with no chance of victory…?”
Throwing herself into a battle she already knew she couldn’t win—what a pathetic sight.
Raking her fingers through her hair, Heejae let out a long, bitter breath.
