Chapter 8 - The Fall of the Vultures
The sentencing was handed down six weeks later.
The judicial panel showed no mercy. The combination of forensic financial evidence, recorded audio of the conspiracy, and the severe physical trauma documented by the national forensic service resulted in historic penalties.
Kwon Daeho was sentenced to fourteen years of imprisonment with hard labor for aggravated bodily harm resulting in permanent impairment, combined with eleven counts of corporate embezzlement and breach of trust.
Kwon Sora was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for criminal instigation, evidence fabrication, and transnational money laundering.
All remaining assets of the Kwon family—their properties, their vehicles, their art collections, and their private bank accounts—were seized by the state and the court-appointed bankruptcy receiver to satisfy their creditors, with Haneul Holdings taking top priority.
On the afternoon following the final verdict, I visited the Seoul Detention Center one last time.
I did not go to gloat. A dragon does not celebrate the death of an ant. I went to close the door on the three years of Lee Yuna forever.
I sat in the private executive visitation room, separated from the prisoner by a pane of reinforced glass.
When Daeho was brought in, he looked like a ghost. His hair had been shaved to the regulation prison length. His face was gray, lined with deep creases of exhaustion and despair. His hands were covered in rough calluses from the metalworking shop in the prison compound.
He picked up the phone with trembling fingers, pressing it to his ear.
I lifted mine.
“Yuna…” he whispered. His voice was hoarse, cracked from weeks of screaming in his dark cell. “You came.”
“I came to return something,” I said.
I slid a small envelope across the metal counter on my side of the glass. The guard took it, inspected it, and passed it through the security slot to Daeho’s side.
Daeho opened it with shaking hands.
Inside was a simple, thin gold wedding band—the ring he had bought for four hundred thousand won at a small jewelry shop in Jongno three years ago, when he thought he was marrying a penniless archivist.
Daeho stared at the ring, tears pooling in his bloodshot eyes and dripping onto the metal table.
“Why did you do it, Yuna?” he wept. “Why did you hide who you were? If you had told me… if I had known you were Chairman Seo’s granddaughter, I would have treated you like an empress! I would have given you the world!”
I looked at him through the glass, feeling nothing. No anger. No pain. Only a profound, vast emptiness where my youthful love had once lived.
“That is precisely why I hid it, Daeho,” I said softly.
He blinked, uncomprehending.
“I wanted a man who would love me when I had nothing,” I explained, my voice steady, carrying the weight of painful wisdom. “I wanted to know that if I lost everything, if the world stripped me bare, the person sleeping beside me would still hold my hand with kindness. I wanted to be loved for my heart, not for my grandfather’s ships.”
Daeho’s breath hitched. A fresh wave of tears cascaded down his hollow cheeks.
“And what did you do?” I continued, my eyes narrowing slightly. “The moment your sister told a petty lie, you didn't ask for the truth. You didn't protect me. You calculated the cost of my suffering. You thought my bones had a market price.”
“I was a fool…” he sobbed, banging his forehead against the glass. “A blind, arrogant fool! Please, Yuna! Appeal the sentence! Ask for a presidential pardon! I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you! I will be your dog! I will crawl on my knees behind your car!”
“A dog is loyal, Daeho,” I said coldly. “You are merely a parasite that starved when the host walked away.”
I slowly rose to my feet. The tailored wool of my coat draped gracefully over my shoulders.
“Your sister was transferred to the Gongju Correctional Facility this morning,” I added. “She will spend her twenties and thirties behind concrete walls. And you will spend yours remembering that you once held the greatest treasure in this country in your hands… and threw it away for eight million dollars.”
“Yuna! Don't go! *YUNA!*” he screamed, lunging against the glass, his handcuffs rattling violently against the steel frame.
The guards immediately grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him back down onto the chair, twisting his arms behind him.
I set the receiver back on its cradle.
I did not look back.
I walked out of the visitation center into the brisk, clean winter air of Seoul.
The wind swept down from Mount Bukhan, cold and sharp, but for the first time in three years, when I drew a deep breath into my lungs, my chest did not hurt.
May you like
The bones had healed.
***
