Chapter 10

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On a particular day, the formal wedding unfolded in absolute, suffocating silence.

Although the marriage bound together two of the most formidable empires in the capital, the ceremony had been stripped of all grandeur, crippled by the public perception that Janghan Construction was little more than a gang-affiliated enterprise.

Lee Ik-hyeong regarded his son’s decision as a fatal and unforgivable stain on the family lineage, and he flatly refused to acknowledge the union. Jaeha, however, paid no heed to his father’s discourteous hostility. The only emotion he felt was a faint, lingering embarrassment on Taegeon’s behalf.

Even now, pondering back to the exact day he went to propose left Jaeha feeling somewhat mortified. Jaeha had been so nervous that he had not managed to say even half of what he had prepared on that particular day.

.

.

.

“So… what I mean is, if Jang Taegeon enters into a formal alliance with me, the capital assets I can allocate to Director Jang are…”

“Are you seriously trying to list a dowry to my face, Executive Director?” Taegeon tilted his head, his features settling into a terrifying void of expressionlessness. “You do realize you’re the one getting the short end of the stick here, don’t you? Do I really have to spell out the power dynamic just to preserve your pride?”

In that fraction of a second, every thought in Jaeha’s mind flatlined.

Fortunately, his lineage had trained him from infancy never to allow so much as a shred of emotional information to bleed through his expression. Dying on the spot would have been infinitely preferable to letting Taegeon see the humiliation, shame, and pathetic vulnerability of a man who had tried to impress his idol and failed miserably.

Jaeha barely managed to force his throat open.

“That isn’t what I intended to say…”

“My pride is completely shot after that little performance, Executive Director, so I seriously doubt I’ll be able to get an erection for our contract.” Taegeon’s voice dropped into a dry, mocking purr. “Can that fastidious little mind of yours actually tolerate a husband who’s practically impotent?”

“…”

Jaeha’s gaze drifted reflexively toward the immense space between Taegeon’s thighs before he violently dragged it back to the tablecloth. He could almost feel the low, vibrating edge of the man’s dark amusement cutting through the air between them.

“Even if I choose to view this merger favorably, it still looks as though I’m being sold to your conglomerate, Executive Director.”

Taegeon leaned his massive frame across the table, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“My background doesn’t sit well with accepting a free meal from a chaebol heir. So why don’t we compromise? Can I just serve you orally tonight?”

Jang Taegeon watched Jaeha’s face with complete blankness. Slowly and deliberately, he raised a hand to his mouth and pressed his tongue hard against the inside of his cheek once, then twice, forcing a bulge into the flesh in a crude and unmistakable pantomime of his cock sliding into someone’s mouth.

The moment the obscene gesture registered, Jaeha’s mind collapsed into a devastating blank. Not a single one of the carefully engineered corporate arguments he had spent days preparing could find its way to his lips.

Looking down at the thoroughly stunned and utterly defenseless Lee Jaeha, Jang Taegeon let out a low, dry laugh, every note of it steeped in unrestrained dominance.

“I don’t fucking get it.”

“…”

“Do you like me?”

Jaeha should have simply answered ‘yes’.

Instead, he found himself completely cowed, pinned beneath the latent fury of the Alpha pheromones saturating the private dining room. He was not afraid of Jang Taegeon himself. He was terrified of how the man might perceive him.

For the first time in his life, Lee Jaeha feared another person’s judgment.

He had always been the assessor, the judge, the one who coldly calculated the worth of everyone around him. Standing on the receiving end of someone else’s verdict was an experience for which he had no defense.

In that terrifying silence, he grasped a cruel truth. Love could reduce even the proudest ruler to a beggar. Although he had been born at the absolute summit of the social pyramid, before the object of his affection he was nothing more than a pathetic, hollowed-out Alpha.

“No,” Jaeha lied, his voice thin and brittle. “I don’t.”

“…”

This time, the silence belonged to Jang Taegeon.

The invisible tide of pheromones coiling around Jaeha’s ankles grew perceptibly heavier, an unmistakable manifestation of the man’s mounting rage. Yet Jaeha could not begin to understand the architecture of Taegeon’s thoughts.

Why is he angry?

A desperate urge surged through him. He wanted to reach out and soothe the man, to coddle the predator and drown him in lavish affection he had never asked for. He already felt the reckless impulse to place the entire world on a silver platter and offer it to Jang Taegeon without reservation.

Yet Taegeon remained completely untouchable, wearing the expression of a man who wanted for absolutely nothing. He looked exactly as Jaeha himself had once looked, before desire had dragged him into this madness.

“So that means you only need me to pull off that luxury redevelopment project for your family’s conglomerate.”

“…”

“Fine. Then I’ll state my terms as well.”

At those words, blood finally rushed back into Jaeha’s frozen fingertips. If the conversation had devolved into an exchange of terms, then he was standing on stable ground again.

Lee Jaeha moved through a world overflowing with material wealth. Transactional matters required no psychological effort from him. Whether Jang Taegeon demanded capital, assets, influence, or leverage, Jaeha could provide it with ease. The instant he was given an opportunity to turn his affection into currency, his expression perceptibly brightened.

Taegeon tracked the shift in his face, his dark eyes following it with an intensity that felt almost physical, like a tongue dragging slowly across Jaeha’s skin. He reached into the inner pocket of his tailored suit jacket, withdrew a fresh pack of cigarettes, and slipped one between his lips.

Jaeha blinked as his corporate conditioning activated automatically.

“Director Jang, this dining room is strictly non-smoking.”

“Have you spent your entire life obeying every petty law, Executive Director?” Taegeon’s face remained unreadable as he flicked open his lighter. “Doesn’t Yooshin Group engage in plenty of systemic tax evasion?”

The Zippo’s cap snapped shut with a sharp metallic click. Flame seared the end of the cigarette, and a faint hiss escaped the scorching tobacco.

Jaeha clamped his mouth shut as helplessness washed over him in a suffocating wave. With a sinking certainty, he realized he had absolutely no idea how to make a favorable impression on this man.

Dealing with an elegant Omega would have been nothing more than an analytical exercise, a puzzle to be solved. He could not determine whether this total collapse in communication stemmed from the fact that he had completely lost his heart to Jang Taegeon, or whether Taegeon was simply a fundamentally hostile conversationalist.

Perhaps it was a catastrophic convergence of both.

Raw nervousness rattled through Jaeha’s bones. He wanted nothing more than to wring his hands together in desperation, yet he forced himself to remain motionless and stared blankly at the pristine white linen napkin draped across the table.

Only then did it occur to him that they had not even ordered from the menu.

The private room contained no background music, no murmuring staff, and no soft clatter from the restaurant beyond its walls. There was only Jaeha, Jang Taegeon, and the suffocating pressure of the man’s territory.

The moment they had taken their seats, Taegeon had dismissed the hotel staff with a flat and uncompromising command. No one would dare cross the threshold until the predator summoned them.

The tension that had briefly receded returned with vicious force. The thick, intoxicating scent of wild rugosa roses and heavy sea salt churned Jaeha’s stomach with visceral vertigo. It felt as though he were stranded aboard a storm-tossed vessel, staring at a solitary rose blooming in defiance upon a jagged reef in the heart of a vast and indifferent ocean.

Taegeon exhaled a slow, languid cloud of gray smoke. Then his lips parted.

“I’ve got no taste for it when the hole that’s supposed to be whimpering beneath me comes stuffed with too much corporate baggage.”

His speech was informal now, entirely stripped of courtesy.

The rudeness of his earlier comments seemed trivial beside the raw and unfiltered vulgarity of that declaration. Only then did Jaeha realize that, until this exact moment, Jang Taegeon had actually been treating him with a degree of basic respect.

“At the end of the day, once I shove it in and shoot, the transaction is over,” Taegeon continued coldly. “I don’t give a damn about all the elaborate window dressing, either.”

“…”

“I’m asking whether you’ve got the spine to throw everything away and show up at my estate with nothing but your naked body.”

Jaeha swallowed hard, his throat parched. The question reverberated through his core as though it had been voiced by his own hidden and submissive desires.

“There is only one condition I require from this transaction with Executive Director Lee.”

“…”

“Liquidate your entire stake in Yooshin Group. Leave everything behind and come to my house as my person. If you can carry out that submission, then who knows? Perhaps the fact that you were born an Alpha will not offend my pride after all.”

What had Jaeha said in response at the time?

He must have nodded quietly.

That specific memory was futile and tragic.

Lee Jaeha’s profound unhappiness had begun at that exact point.

***