March 6, 2024. Incheon Port. 11:34 PM.
The first thing I noticed was the smell.
Rust. Saltwater. Old blood, maybe. The kind of smell that sticks to metal that's seen too much.
I was sitting with my back against the container wall. Hands zip-tied behind me. Ankles roped together. My shoulder hurt where they'd shoved me in.
There were five of them. Three I recognized from previous jobs. The other two were younger. Cheaper.
One of them was smoking near the door. Tall. Scar running down his jaw. He'd been watching me for the past ten minutes, waiting for something.
"You're boring, you know that?" He flicked ash in my direction. "Most people cry by now. Or they try negotiating. You just sit there."
I looked at him.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know. Something. Anything." He crouched down. "Chairman Park was on the floor this morning. Screaming. Crying. That was entertaining. You? You're like a fucking statue."
"Is this your first time?"
He stopped. "What?"
"Your first time handling someone like this. That's why you keep talking."
His face hardened. He stood up and kicked me in the ribs.
The impact threw me sideways. My head hit the metal wall. I tasted blood.
"Feel something now?"
I spat blood onto the floor. "Better."
He kicked me again. Harder this time.
Someone grabbed his shoulder. The older one. Thick neck. Forty-something.
"Enough. We're on a schedule."
Scar-jaw straightened his jacket. "Yeah. Fine."
Thick-neck pulled out his phone. Dialed. Waited.
"We're ready... Container 4-7-7-B... Yeah, he's secure." He glanced at me. "No. No problems... Understood."
He hung up.
"Let's finish this."
Two of them grabbed my arms. Dragged me deeper into the container. There was a metal hook welded to the floor. They chained my zip-tied wrists to it.
I couldn't move now. Couldn't even sit up properly. Just slumped against the wall with my arms pulled behind me.
Scar-jaw lit another cigarette. Stared at me.
"You really thought they'd let you walk away? After everything?"
I didn't answer.
"Lee Jae-sung sends his regards," he continued. "Told me you were the best they ever had. Fifteen years. Never made a mistake."
Lee Jae-sung. Managing director at Hanseo Strategy Partners.
The firm I'd worked for since I was twenty-seven.
"He said you knew too much. You really thought they'd let you walk away?" Scar-jaw took a drag.
He crouched again.
"But that's the problem with being indispensable. Eventually, you become a liability."
"I signed the NDA."
"NDAs don't mean shit when you're the one who wrote half of them." He smiled.
"Then who gave the order?"
"Does it matter?" He thought about it. Then laughed. "They asked me to pass along a message." He stood. "They said thank you. And they're sorry."
"They're not sorry."
"No." He laughed. "They're not."
Thick-neck checked his watch. "We need to move."
They walked toward the door.
"Wait."
They stopped.
"The Samyung job. Who set it up?"
Scar-jaw looked back. "What do you mean?"
"Chairman Park. The acquisition. Someone leaked that I was coming. That's why he was ready. That's why he made a scene."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he smiled.
"You really haven't figured it out?"
"Tell me."
"There was no leak." He took a final drag and dropped the cigarette. Crushed it under his boot. "They wanted Park to make a scene. They wanted your face on every security camera. Every phone. Every news site."
My stomach dropped.
"The whole thing was a setup. They've been planning this for six months. You were always going to end up here."
He walked out.
The others followed.
The container door swung shut.
Darkness.
I heard the forklift approach. Felt the container lift off the ground.
We moved. Forward. Turn. Forward again.
Then we stopped.
For three seconds, everything was silent.
Then we tilted.
The container flipped. I slammed into the wall. The chain yanked my arms. Something tore in my shoulder.
We fell.
CRASH.
The impact shook my entire body. Water started pouring in through the seams.
The water rose fast.
Past my legs. My waist.
I pulled against the chain. The zip ties cut deeper into my wrists. Blood mixed with seawater. The plastic wouldn't break.
My chest.
My neck.
I tilted my head back. Gasped for air.
The ceiling was three inches above the water. Two inches. One.
Memories started floating in my head when my eyes started closing
I was seven when they found me.
Eating from a dumpster behind a restaurant in Bucheon. No parents. No home. Just a kid covered in dirt.
The orphanage was grey concrete. Thirty kids. Four staff members. Not enough food. Not enough blankets.
The older kids ran everything. Hierarchy. Violence. If you were weak, you got nothing.
I was small. They beat me every day for a month.
Until I learned.
Don't cry. Don't ask for help. Don't show weakness.
And when you get the chance, hit first.
The streets.
I left the orphanage at sixteen. Just walked out one day. No plan. No money.
Seoul was big. Loud. Full of people who didn't see you unless you made them.
I slept in PC rooms. Twenty-four-hour internet cafes where you could rent a chair for a few thousand won. Ate convenience store rice balls. Showered in public bathrooms.
I needed money.
So I worked. Construction sites mostly. Mixing cement. Carrying steel beams. The pay was shit but it was cash.
The foreman was an old guy named Park. Missing two fingers on his left hand. He didn't talk much, just pointed at what needed to be done.
One day, a delivery came. Papers. Contracts. Building permits. Park couldn't read them well—his eyes were bad, and the legal language was dense.
"Hey, kid," he said. "You went to school, right? What's this say?"
I read it. Explained it. Pointed out a mistake in the measurements that would've cost them money.
After that, he had me handle paperwork sometimes. Filing documents. Checking invoices. Making sure the numbers matched.
It wasn't much. But I learned how construction companies worked. How money moved. Where corners got cut.
I learned that the real work wasn't the labor.
It was the contracts.
The move up.
At nineteen, I was working nights at a warehouse in Guro. Loading and unloading shipping containers. The company was mid-sized, importing electronics from China.
One night, I noticed something wrong. The manifest said two hundred units. The actual count was one hundred eighty.
Twenty units missing. Every shipment.
I didn't say anything. Just watched.
Turned out the warehouse manager was skimming. Selling the extras on the side.
I kept quiet. Kept notes.
Three months later, the owner showed up for an inspection. Korean-Chinese guy, late fifties. He was pissed because the numbers weren't adding up.
The manager blamed the shipping company. Blamed customs. Blamed everyone.
I was sitting in the break room when the owner walked past. I stood up.
"Excuse me."
He stopped. Looked at me like I was dirt.
"Your warehouse manager's been stealing from you," I said. "Twenty units per shipment. Four months. That's about sixteen million won."
Silence.
"You have proof?"
I pulled out a folded paper from my pocket. Dates. Shipment numbers. Discrepancies.
He took it. Read it. Looked at me.
"Why tell me?"
"Because you're losing money. And I want a better job."
He fired the manager that night. Hired me the next day.
Not as a loader.
As an assistant.
The education.
I worked for him for three years. His name was Cho Min-soo. He ran five companies : imports, logistics, a small manufacturing plant. All legitimate. Mostly.
He taught me things school never did.
How to read a balance sheet. How to structure deals so you always had leverage.
"Business isn't about products," he told me once. "It's about information. The person who knows more wins."
I absorbed everything.
I learned accounting. Contract law. How banks worked. How loans were structured.
By twenty-two, I was handling negotiations for him. Meeting with suppliers. Dealing with creditors.
One day, someone from a bigger company approached him. They wanted to buy one of his logistics subsidiaries.
The offer was generous. But there was a clause buried on page seventeen that would've let them claw back thirty percent of the payment within two years.
I caught it. Rewrote the terms. Saved him forty million won.
He looked at me differently after that.
"You're wasted here," he said.
"Then where should I be?"
He made some calls.
Two weeks later, I had an interview with a consulting firm in Gangnam.
The real game.
The firm was called Apex Advisory
A shadow company. Small office. Ten people.
They didn't consult on business strategy or marketing.
They consulted on problems.
The kind of problems companies couldn't solve publicly.
A competitor undercutting prices illegally? We found evidence and leaked it to regulators.
A board member blocking a merger? We found leverage and made them resign.
A scandal about to break? We buried it before the media got wind.
I started as a researcher. Digging through documents. Finding connections. Building files.
I was good at it.
By twenty-five, I was running cases.
By thirty, I was the person families called when they needed someone erased from the board.
Not killed. Just... removed. Cleanly. Legally.
Back to the present
The water covered my mouth.
I held my breath.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
My lungs burned.
My vision blurred.
I thought about the orphanage. The streets. The climb.
Thirty-six years.
And for what?
So other people could build empires?
So other people's sons could inherit what I helped create?
I had no family. No friends. No name anyone would remember.
Just a body at the bottom of the ocean.
Twenty seconds.
In that final moment, one thought:
If I had one more chance...
I wouldn't live for anyone else.
Just for me.
I'll leave for my sake...!
Nothing.
Bright light.
Machines beeping.
I gasped. Coughed. My lungs burned like I'd just surfaced.
But I wasn't underwater.
Hospital bed. White sheets. IV in my arm.
"Jin-woo! Oh God, Jin-woo!"
A woman's voice. Crying.
I opened my eyes.
A woman was holding my hand. Forty-something. Expensive clothes. Jewelry. Tears streaming down her face.
I'd never seen her before.
"Sweetheart, can you hear me? Say something!"
My throat was dry. "Who—"
The woman smiled through her tears. "It's okay, Jin-woo. Mommy's here."
Jin-woo?
Silence.
End of the prologue