Chapter 72
“Of course, my stepmother didn’t stab her to death herself. But the circumstances surrounding my mother’s death were suspicious.”
“Can I ask… how she passed away?”
Sarah asked as cautiously as she could.
Seung-tae blinked slowly, as though recalling something from a long time ago, then began to speak.
“My father always told me this: ‘Your mother is a disgrace to this family. So forget about her.’”
That was something Seung-tae had heard so often as a child that it was practically carved into his ears.
A disgrace to the family.
He hadn’t really understood what disgrace meant at that age, but he knew it wasn’t a good word—
because the relatives always whispered behind his back about how his mother had died.
“My mother died in a car accident. In the driver’s seat was her lover. It was a double suicide.”
“……”
“They even found a suicide note written in my mother’s handwriting in the glove compartment. Everything matched perfectly. The police closed the case in two days.”
He had never questioned his mother’s death.
He was told to forget—and he thought that’s what he was supposed to do.
“But one day, an old woman came to our house and said this: ‘The price for my son’s life wasn’t enough.’”
No one paid attention to her.
The guards chased her away like some bothersome stray animal.
But she kept coming back, again and again, muttering that the money wasn’t enough.
Seung-tae’s encounter with the old woman hadn’t been by chance—
she showed up almost every day, night and day, until he couldn’t avoid her anymore.
Not out of pity or compassion, but simply because he couldn’t stand the sight of her anymore,
he shoved some cash from his wallet into her hands.
The old woman greedily crumpled the bills and stuffed them into her pocket, then muttered:
— If I’d known, I wouldn’t have settled for so little from that woman of this house.
— That woman? You mean someone else gave you money too?
— Who else? The madam of this house, of course. Three hundred million won for a life—too cheap! She even helped with the steering wheel and made sure they both died.
“The steering wheel? What do you mean?”
“It turned out that the old woman’s son was the man driving the car—my mother’s lover.”
“……!”
Sarah’s eyes widened until they couldn’t anymore.
She stammered unconsciously.
“T-then… are you saying your stepmother might have paid them to stage the accident as a suicide?”
“That’s what I thought. So I got the case file and started re-investigating. But…”
“But what?”
She unconsciously leaned forward, her voice lowering to a near whisper.
“The old woman had alcohol-induced dementia. And within a month of my investigation, she died.”
“…Then what happened? Did you find any other evidence?”
“It was too long ago. And everything I found was circumstantial at best. Not nearly enough to prove my stepmother killed my mother.”
“Damn…”
Sarah slumped her shoulders in genuine disappointment.
Seeing that, Seung-tae smiled lightly, trying to shift the mood.
“Why do you look so down, Sarah?”
“I just… I feel bad. It must’ve been hard for you. If it’s true, then your mother didn’t die in an accident—she was murdered.”
“It was hard at first. It felt like the world I knew and trusted was collapsing. But not so hard that I wanted to die. Honestly, I only know my real mother’s face from a photograph. I don’t remember her at all. I hated that as a kid… but now, as an adult, it’s almost comforting.”
“Still…”
“What I want is the truth. What happened that day. How my mother really died. If it was suicide, why she left me behind like that.”
For the first time, Seung-tae’s profile looked lonely—
like a solitary pilgrim walking across a barren wasteland with no grass in sight.
Without realizing, Sarah reached out a hand toward his face—
then quickly caught herself and pulled it back, changing the subject before he could notice.
“Anyway, I’m curious—what does uncovering the truth have to do with me?”
“You remember I said you reminded me of my mother?”
“Yes. Do I look like her?”
“No. Not physically. But my mother was an actress too. Not a famous one, but still.”
An actress? That caught Sarah off guard.
She’d assumed a wealthy family like his would have married within their social circle.
“An actress? Oh—so that’s why your stepmother said she hated me for being one.”
“And you’re about the same age my mother was back then. To my stepmother, you probably feel like a nightmare come to life—a ghost risen from the past.”
“A ghost?”
“The more you shake her up, the more her composure will crack. She’s not as strong as she looks.”
“So… my role was that serious?”
Sarah’s face turned mock-serious.
Seung-tae smiled gently.
“You’ve done perfectly so far. I couldn’t ask for more.”
“Well… that’s a relief.”
“Let’s stop with the gloomy talk and head out, shall we?”
Since she seemed lost in thought, Seung-tae brought the conversation to a close.
“Oh, yes. Sure.”
Sarah hurriedly packed her bag and stepped out the door.
As she bent down to put on her neatly arranged shoes, Seung-tae spoke from above.
“By the way, have we cleared up the misunderstanding?”
“What misunderstanding?”
“That your involvement was… impurely motivated.”
“Impure? Please. That’s a reasonable misunderstanding. Anyone would think the same. A completely believable, logical misunderstanding.”
Though she was embarrassed, Sarah puffed out her chest and acted nonchalant.
Whether he noticed or not, Seung-tae gave her a faint, unreadable smile and got into the car with her.
“By the way, this time my father might be the one to contact you first.”
“To tell me to break up with his son?”
Sarah’s face brightened with curiosity.
“On the contrary—he’ll probably want to see what kind of daughter-in-law you’d make.”
“…I believe your father’s a man of principles.”
“My father? Principles? The man got himself a mistress less than a year after his first wife died.”
“……”
“Haha. If you don’t want to marry me, Sarah, you’d better keep your guard up.”
Sarah laughed it off as a joke.
But just two days later, what she’d dismissed as a joke actually happened.
“So, how’s the food? To your taste?”
“…Yes, sir. It’s delicious.”
That morning, she had received a call from Oh, the chief secretary of Vice Chairman Seung-tae.
He’d simply said, ‘The Vice Chairman wishes to see you,’ and then arrived with a car.
When Sarah frantically called Seung-tae, all he said was, ‘Enjoy lunch with my father,’ which was no help at all.
And so, she’d been dragged to a restaurant and was now sitting across from Seok-hoon, sharing an awkward lunch.
She was so nervous she couldn’t tell if she was eating meat or fish, or whether it was going into her mouth or her nose.
“Eat more. You eat so prettily.”
Even though she was deliberately picking at her rice, counting grains one by one, he said that.
Maybe she should start splitting each grain in half.
The longer Seok-hoon’s smile lingered, the more danger Sarah felt she was in.
“I spoke to Chairman Seo yesterday.”
“Ah… yes.”
“He wouldn’t stop bragging about his granddaughter. I asked why he’d kept you hidden all this time, and he said you asked him not to say anything. You didn’t want word getting out in the entertainment industry because you wanted to be judged for your acting alone.”
“What? I—I said that?”
What on earth had Chairman Seo told him?
In just two days, the man’s entire attitude had flipped.
According to Seok-hoon, Sarah had supposedly hidden her background to avoid using her family’s influence—
wanting to succeed purely through her own effort.
The only true part of that story was the effort.
She was so baffled she couldn’t even respond.
“Admirable. I heard you started going to film sets alone at seventeen?”
The facts about her humble beginnings were true,
but his tone and demeanor were completely different from when they first met—gentle, almost affectionate.
