A/N: So...There's a lot happening in this chapter. I suggest you take a look back at Chapters 14, 15, and 23 before reading this one, as there is a strong reference to something that happened that you might have forgotten about.

When Yi Jeong had at last reached the long row of executive offices on the top floor of the museum, he'd found his father leaning against his grandfather's door, a mixture of shock and confusion on his face. Now the man that he had resented for years appeared strangely human as he crossed the office to where his first love—Yi Jeong now knew—stood.

"Is it true?...Well? Is it?!"

So Ri didn't answer him, and he grabbed her by the arms.

"So Ri-ah, what did you do? Why did you...why didn't you tell me?...Say something, damn it!"

Tears spilled out of her eyes, and she trembled as she lifted her head up.

"I was trying to tell you, you idiot," she choked out. "That night at the club. You wouldn't listen to me. You wanted her!"

"No...No, I didn't...I didn't...damn it...it's always been you...it's always been you!" This only seemed to make her cry more, and she pulled away and collapsed onto the chair behind her.

"I didn't know...I didn't know...I swear I..." Hyun Sub trailed off and shook his head. Yi Jeong swore he saw tears in his father's eyes.

"Look at the two of you," Yi Jeong's grandfather interrupted. "How can you both bring such shame on your families? And now she wants to expose us all to the ridicule of the nation." So Ri only cried harder as his grandfather continued. "I told you from the beginning that girl was going to bring trouble."

"You knew about this, didn't you?" Hyun Sub shot back.

"I only learned of it recently," So Yeong-cheol replied, his voice clipped.

"You knew I had another son, and you kept it from me." Hyun Sub stormed up to the old man's desk.

'Another' Yi Jeong mouthed.

"That's hardly a thing to boast about."

"That's hardly a thing to keep from the boy's own father!" Hyun Sub swept an angry arm over the desk, and a flurry of papers descended to the spotless marble floor. A pitcher wobbled, then tipped onto the ground, shattering.

"Appa. Harabeoji. What are you saying?" Yi Jeong finally managed.

"Yi Jeong, you may wait outside," his grandfather answered, keeping his eyes on Yi Jeong's father.

"Harabeoji, I'm not going to wait outside like a small child. Since you want me to take responsibility for the museum, I think I have a vested interest in what goes on in it. And whatever else you've been doing behind my back, like planting that Su Pyo character to humiliate my fiancee."

"Ah yes, what about your little fiancee?" Yeong-cheol's face twisted with irritation. "Who you insisted on seeing all these years against my wishes and you thought I wouldn't know? Have you any idea what you've done? Parading around with that commoner like our family is a weekly drama series. Do you really think she's that innocent? Do you know everything about her? Do you know the kinds of people she associates with?!"

"Ga Eul has the truest heart of anyone I've ever known, and you had her painted as a damn opportunist!"

"I didn't paint anything, and I didn't plan that whole scene with her ex-lover, if that's what you think."

"He's not—"

"I believe he planned that himself. Getting in his fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose. I'm sure the magazine paid him nicely enough. No. I'm talking about someone else."

"Someone else? What the hell do you mean, someone else?"

"Her friend, the one who worked for the Song family. Or perhaps you don't know. You were in Sweden at the time."

His grandfather produced a manila folder from his top desk drawer.

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to use this, Yi Jeong, but I'm only sorry you forced my hand on it. I imagine it wouldn't look good in any light, but especially with the charges I will be bringing against the Song family, I imagined this will make quite the headline in the morning." So Yeong-cheol trailed off as he held up a large photograph of a couple kissing on a residential street. "Do you know who that is? I'm assuming from the look on your face that you do."

"What is...where did you get that?" Yi Jeong asked.

Stony faced, the old man stood, drawing himself up to his full height though keeping his hands planted firmly on his desk. "No one crosses me, Yi Jeong. You seem to have forgotten that. Perhaps living abroad for four years went to your head." He turned to Yi So Ri, who had stopped crying but still leaned wearily against the arm of her chair. "Perhaps living in Paris for twenty years went to yours. But this is my museum and my father's before me, and I will not have its stability and repute torn apart by the reckless antics of a talented but foolish boy with his head in the clouds and an upstart of a woman whose actual value is so little her own husband bartered with me against her reputation and has already deserted her to the wolves. That's why you're here to beg me, isn't it? Hasn't your husband already gone back to Paris? My, my, first that bastard child of yours and now this—"

"That's enough," Hyun Sub growled.

"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish by coming here, any of you, but I've tolerated all I will tolerate. Now leave before I cut both of you off. Get out!" Yeong-cheol banged his fist on the manila folder.

Flinging herself from the chair, So Ri fled the room. Hyun Sub rushed out after her, only pausing to call after Yi Jeong, who didn't respond but stood paralyzed by the photo on his grandfather's desk.

The photo captured the couple in question from the side. The woman—Ga Eul—leaned against a brick wall and had her face upturned to a terribly familiar man, though Yi Jeong had, indeed, never met him.

The black Chanel purse he had given her in Sweden hung precariously on the edge of her shoulder like it might slide off at any moment and drop to the dirty pavement, forgotten.


Ga Eul's head slammed into the car window as it careened off the bridge. Searing pain shot through her skull, and she clutched her head, her fingers burrowing into a blood-soaked clump of hair. Squeezing her eyes shut, she braced herself for the impact of the car crashing beneath the water. Dizzy and barely clinging to consciousness, she gasped for air as the car began to fill up. Then a rounded bar press into her stomach, and it dawned on her that she was in the driver's seat. But if she was driving, then her brother must be in the...passenger...seat…

She opened her mouth to scream, only to take in a mouthful of water as the car sunk lower.

'Yi Jeong,' she mouthed at the terrible sight of the unconscious man in the seat next to her. Struggling to undo her seatbelt, she tried to keep her eyes open, but a heavy weight had settled over her body, and for once she could feel her lungs burning and the ache from where she'd hit the frame of the car and the glass shards that dug into the side of her head.

But she had to keep her eyes open.

She had to get them both out of the car.

She had to fight it.

She had to fight it.

She had to fight it.

She had to…

She had…

She...

Ga Eul awoke with a start in the darkness, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust enough to see that she was in her old bedroom at her parents home where Yi Jeong had dropped her off some hours before. Only her mother had been home then, and she had insisted that Ga Eul get some rest. Ga Eul must have been more tired than she realized. The digital clock on the nightstand told her she had slept through the night, and a few tendrils of sun creeped across the gray dawn sky outside her window.

A car alarm went off across the street, then stopped. High pitched squeals of school children floated up to her and hung suspended before fading off down the street.

Yi Jeong had already seen to it that she had today off of work, but she knew she would have to go back tomorrow. Sighing, she closed her eyes against the headache enveloping her outside her dream world.

She remembered what the autopsy report had said—that her brother had died from injuries sustained during the crash, not from drowning. Maybe before he even hit the water, he was already gone.

"Yi Jeong," she whispered.

"Yi Jeong was supposed to protect her from this sort of thing!"

At the sound of her father's voice, she sat up, a light blanket falling from her shoulders. Absently, she noted that she was still wearing the clothes she'd borrowed from Yi Jeong's apartment.

"Yeobo, it's not like he is behind this. You mustn't believe everything you—"

"There's a picture! A damn picture! Do you know what this will do to her?! I can't...I've got to—"

"Yeobo, yeobo, your heart. You shouldn't be...Sit down. Let me get you a glass of water."

Emerging from the bedroom, Ga Eul crept down the hall and descended the stairs.

"I'm going to break every bone in his damn body!" her father persisted.

"Not Yi Jeong," Ga Eul protested, stepping down to the bottom of the stairs where they could see her.

Her mom paused with a pitcher of water mid-air before she set it down steadily.

"No, no, sweetheart, not him." Her mom's face, though, looked troubled even as she tried to smile reassuringly. She motioned for Ga Eul to have a seat at the table across from her father.

"Let me get you something to eat. You must be starving by now."

"Not particularly." Ga Eul replied, sidling up to the table. In truth, she felt sick to her stomach. "What were you talking about just now? Su Pyo? Yi Jeong told me he would clear all of that up. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have engaged with him."

Her parents exchanged a glance.

Suddenly, her mother slammed the dish she'd pulled out down in the center of the table.

"You tell her, or I will!"

"That boy showing his face here again was a bad omen," her father grumbled.

"Tell her!" At her tone, Ga Eul jumped. She hadn't seen her mother display so much emotion in years.

"Sit down, Ga Eul," her father commanded, rubbing his hands over his head. "And get me a bottle."

"Yeobo-"

"I said get me a damn bottle!"

Metal screeched against wood as Ga Eul pulled out a chair and sat across from her father, who looked more haggard than he had the night he'd lost his job due to Madame Kang's ruthless scheming. Her mother returned with a bottle of soju and a glass, and he poured himself a glassful and downed it in one gulp.

When he set the glass down again, his fingers shook.

She held her breath for his next sentence.

"I suppose I've never explained to you...why I took such an issue with Gong Yoo after your brother passed." Incrementally, he turned the glass in his hands left then right, as if he were gauging his words by the weight between his fingers.

Ga Eul laughed nervously.

"I thought you didn't like him before that."

"Well, I didn't. He ran with a reckless crowd. I know he was your brother's oldest friend, but there comes a time when you've got to cut a man loose or go down with him. Do you understand?"

"Um...not...not exactly."

"A few days after your brother died, Gong Yoo showed up here."

"You were with your grandmother at your aunt's house," her mom offered quietly.

"He was claiming...it wasn't an accident. That it was his fault your brother had died. You don't know this, although I had suspected, but Gong Yoo got involved with a gang when he dropped out of school. He thought someone in the gang had it out for him because of some things he knew. Your brother was driving Gong Yoo's car that night. Gong Yoo thought someone had tampered with the brakes." Grief welled up in his hard eyes. "Your brother is dead because of him."

"When your brother moved out, I thought we might never see him again. But Gong Yoo said he had decided to come home, and he took off in the car," Ga Eul's mother added weakly, her voice cracking. "And then he...I'm sorry." She sniffled and dabbed her eyes with a rough paper napkin.

"Yah...Why didn't you tell me this before? I'm not a child!"

"Why didn't you tell us you saw him?!" her father demanded.

"Excuse me?"

"A few years ago. He came to the house, and your grandmother let him in. I sent him away, but he saw you after that. What did he do to you?"

"Do...do to me? N-nothing, we just ate and talked for a while. That's all. I didn't tell you because I knew you'd be mad."

"Your brother is dead because of him!"

"But he didn't kill him, Appa! Maybe he did bad things, but still...why are you telling me all this now? Was he here again?! He told me he was leaving the country."

"Did he tell you that before or after this?!"

Ga Eul's father shoved an open newspaper toward her where two headlines caught her attention.

The first made mention of a lawsuit against Song construction by no other than the Woo Sung Museum.

The second showed a picture of her and Gong Yoo on a night she barely remembered.

Chu Ga Eul's Former Lover had Ties to Mafia, Song Construction

She certainly didn't remember the moment captured in the photo.