Burning The House Of Cards: taking revenge on my billionaire family
Chapter 97 - 96. Secrets

Chapter 97: Chapter 96. Secrets

"What is this?" Sarah asked again, a bit more tense than before.

"Just watch," Mason curled his lips. "See that man? That is Chairman Yoo from Yooshin Trading."

Sarah looked at the other person, a man who looked around her father’s age--but more handsome, to be honest. The man gave her a strange feeling, like a...

"Don’t you think Chairman Yoo looks familiar?" Mason leaned down, asking quietly he was almost whispering. Like it was a controversy. Like it was a scandal.

Perhaps it was.

Because Chairman Yoo did look familiar. He looked like how Hajin would look like when he was old, only shorter and lankier. Still, an uncanny resemblance. If it weren’t for those grey eyes, people would easily think that the chairman’s younger self was traveling to the future.

But with the eyes, people’s conclusions easily reach something else: blood. An unmistakable blood connection between the two of them.

At that moment, a voice came from the recording.

"Oh, you look surprised!" the aunt clasped her hands in delight. "This is the person I said I wanted to introduce to you, but...I don’t think I need to at all? It seems like you already know each other~"

Before the older man could respond, Hajin spoke first. "We don’t," he said sharply, even with a polite smile on his lips. "I don’t know this gentleman, Madam. Sorry if I offended you."

"Perhaps you don’t," the aunt shrugged, her smile relentless. "But my friend here seemed to know you well--don’t you, Chairman Yoo?"

The chairman, however, was staring silently as if stunned. He clasped his mouth with a slightly trembling hand, and even from the angle, Sarah could see his eyes were shaking.

"Are you..." the chairman lowered his hand, eyes widened as he took a step forward. "Are you Eugene--Ryu Yoojin’s child?"

They couldn’t see Hajin’s expression clearly from the camera’s angle, but Sarah could see how tense he was. His jaw appeared sharper, evidence of him clenching it.

"You are, aren’t you?" the handsome old man looked visibly elated, and they heard the reason why right after. "You’re my son, aren’t you?"

Sarah clutched the edge of her shirt. Even though Hajin didn’t say anything, no one would be stupid enough to refute that. Especially because it was the chairman who made the claim, when it was usually the rich father who denied it.

"No, there’s no doubt about it," Chairman Yoo stepped forward quickly and grabbed the younger’s shoulder. "You are my son--there’s no way you aren’t!"

Not to mention, he looked extremely happy, as if finding a long-lost treasure.

"Right? You’re so similar to each other--I almost thought you were twins!" the one who dragged the two of them to meet looked just as elated, clapping her hands in celebration.

"Good! This is good!" Chairman Yoo grabbed Hajin’s shoulder, shaking it slightly, tapping his upper arms as if he couldn’t wait to hug the younger man, who was only standing still like a beautiful statue. "You should return to the family! You are my son! You should become my successor!"

And the screen turned black. The recording had stopped, and the gazebo was filled with silence again. Sarah kept her gaze on the blank screen, trying to digest what she had just seen, the news she had just received.

Suddenly, she was reminded of that night, when they were arguing on the side of the road in the drizzling rain; the bitter muttering about whether he should be someone rich and powerful like Daniel for Sarah to trust him.

And then she recalled Hajin’s reaction when the older man was calling him son. There was no surprise, no shock, as if he already knew about it.

Yeah. He already knew.

"What...?" Sarah muttered unconsciously.

"Ryu Yoojin--or Eugene Ryu--was Ryu Hajin’s mother," Mason, who had been watching Sarah’s shocked expression during the playback, generously provided an explanation. "She used to work as Chairman Yoo’s secretary--well, he was still an executive director at that time."

Sarah felt her chest constructed uncomfortably.

"You should be able to deduce from that, right?" Mason continued with a smile that Sarah couldn’t see, but clear in his light, almost delighted tone. "Ryu Hajin is an illegitimate son of Chairman Yoo, the love child of their...affair."

The way he said affair was so shameless that Sarah couldn’t help but grip her clothes until her hands trembled.

"Coincidentally, Madam Yoo couldn’t give birth to a son, only daughters," Mason kept going, his smile getting wider at how ashy Sarah looked at that moment. "Chairman Yoo doesn’t like that--he doesn’t want to give the company to his daughters. Rather than having their husbands succeed it, he would rather choose someone who bears his blood."

The smile grew deeper as he added with an audacious glee.

"Even if it came out of a sinful affair."

Sarah gritted her teeth and curled her fists, digging her nails into her palm to prevent herself from exploding. She knew it would only feed Mason’s ego, but...

God--why was it so hard to manage her emotions that day?

"Now that I think about it, he came to the recruitment despite not having any problem with his old workplace," Mason hummed while closing the laptop, tilting his head to peek at the girl’s bowed face. "He said he just wanted to get more money, but do you think so too?"

Sarah frowned, and Mason casually continued.

"Maybe he wanted to work in the family so he could have the chance to meet Chairman Yoo?"

Slam!

Sarah had to admit it this time: she had lost. She couldn’t keep her emotions in check anymore. As the stinging sensation from slamming the table spread along her arms, she took a deep breath and managed to make a sharp response.

"Are you done with your business?" Sarah asked with a vicious hiss. "I can go now, right?"

Mason would have liked it more if Sarah responded with tears and sadness, then he could swoop in to cheer her up and cement his position in her side--in her heart. Like how he had planned in the past, before the girl was sent abroad instead.

But it was okay, he thought. People usually got angry first before they got sad. It wasn’t too late to do his consolation later after she got rid of that pesky bodyguard.

"Sure," he said with a sweet smile, letting the girl walk away quickly, back to the annex.

Sarah bit her lips hard, holding herself back from running to the annex. She knew she was already lost, but she didn’t want to look even more like a loser.

So she trudged on, with tensed shoulders and needles stabbing her heart. Even when she arrived at the annex and the air conditioning cooled her heated body, her mind and heart were still flaming. She kept on pacing around the living room, the video kept replaying in her mind.

It was a provocation. It was a trick. Just by looking at the perfect angle and the distict voice, it was clear that the recording had been edited. And yet, both the video and the audio was real--they were just edited together because it was impossible to record the voice from wherever the video was taken.

Just from that, Sarah could tell that the audio was recorded by the aunt, and the video itself probably by Mason. From the start, her approaching Hajin wasn’t an effort to steal him from Sarah.

No. It was to get this recording. To get Hajin to meet Chairman Yoo.

This, undoubtedly, was Mason’s scheme to get her to dismiss Hajin. The man might not know about her revenge plan, but there was no hiding it that Sarah hated an affair. An affair between a married man with a younger woman.

An affair that went so far it bore a child.

Yeah, she knew it was a scheme. But did it change the fact that Hajin had been hiding it from her?

Did it change the fact that Hajin had been lying to her?

Sarah took a sharp breath, feeling the air stabbing her lungs painfully instead of relieving. Her head was pounding and her ears were ringing as she kept pacing back and forth for who knows how long; until her sweat disappeared and she felt chill along her back. And like a deja vu, the door opened with Hajin cluelessly came inside.

"Ugh--it’s so hot outside," Hajin groaned and exhaled in relief when he felt the soothing cold from the AC. Thankfully, the electricians managed to fix everything right away. "I hope your ice cream is still intact, Master. I don’t know if it could withstand the journey home."

The man went straight to the kitchen and hurriedly took out the ice cream tub. He was about to put it in the freezer before remembering that Sarah might want to eat the ice cream right away. "Do you want to have it now, Master?" he turned around. "Or would you like me to get you a proper lunch first...?"

His voice tapered out into nothing as he saw Sarah’s eyes. They were red, in a layer of unshed tears, and looked at him sharply in a flurry mess of question, disappointment, and anger.

Suddenly, Hajin was filled with dread. Goosebumps crawled along his spine and settled around his nape in a hot and cold sensation. He felt as if someone walked over his grave, stomped it, and messed with his corpse underneath.

It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced for a long time--or much, honestly.

"Who are you?" Sarah asked with a sharp, low voice. "Who really are you, Ryu Hajin?"

The feeling’s name was fear.