Contract Marriage with a Male Friend - Chapter 68

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#68

Even having heard the words she so desperately wanted, An Soo Yi found herself unable to answer at once.
All the events and thoughts came flooding back at once, leaving her mind a tangled mess.
Dok Go Beom Jin, still holding her hand, gazed at her confusion with aching eyes and spoke.
“The reason you’re rejecting me. Is it because of Grandfather?”
“…….”
“If it’s only that.”
Beom Jin carefully traced the ring on her finger with his thumb.
“I can wait.”
At those words, Soo Yi lifted her gaze.
“As long as your heart doesn’t change.”
……Dok Go Beom Jin speaks as though he already knows her heart.
Whether he was certain, or simply wanted to believe.
“The Group and the Successor Position mean nothing to me, hold no interest. They were merely justification to keep you at my side.”
There was not a trace of falsehood or hesitation in his eyes.
“I’ll choose you whenever it comes to it. Even if I have to cast everything away.”
“……What do you mean by that?”
“If I have to abandon my family and the Group entirely to be at your side, I’ll do it gladly.”
Soo Yi’s pupils trembled with shock.
“Does that even make sense?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“The Chairman trusts you. He believes you’re the only talent capable of leading the Group.”
“That’s irrelevant. Grandfather can’t decide my fate.”
Beom Jin’s gaze was frighteningly resolute.
That blind devotion made Soo Yi’s breath catch suddenly.
“I’m……not confident.”
Soo Yi averted his gaze and slowly withdrew the hand he’d been holding.
“I need time.”
“I’ll wait. Until you come back.”
“…….”
“Forget about the company, forget about Grandfather—just think about what brings peace to your heart. That’s enough.”
Beom Jin’s tender voice seeped painfully into Soo Yi’s chest.
“But I’ll come tomorrow. Just let me see your face.”
“…….”
“An Soo Yi.”
Beom Jin called her name with an urgency that bordered on desperation.
Soo Yi reluctantly gave a small nod.
“Go inside. You must be tired.”
“Not until I see you go in.”
She hesitated briefly, then slowly turned and stepped into the house.
Click—
Even as the door closed, Beom Jin’s gaze remained fixed on her.
It was only much later, accompanied by the sharp engine sound cutting through the night air, that he heard the car pull away.

***

Beom Jin understood Soo Yi well.
When her mind grew complicated or backed into a corner, she needed time alone to think deeply.
In her current state of confusion and anxiety, whatever he said would fall on deaf ears.
So he refrained from pressing her further and turned to leave without resistance.
The one mercy was that she had not rejected his promise to visit again tomorrow.
It felt like a silent signal that she would not sever him completely.
Not yet.
‘This isn’t the time to speak. Not now.’
Originally, he had planned to confess his heart to her alongside the truth he’d uncovered during his business trip.
But his plan had fallen apart.
“…….”
Beom Jin’s face went cold as he gripped the steering wheel.
He drove sharply toward Muk Am Won, the family estate.
“Chairman, Master Beom Jin has—”
Before the butler guarding the study could finish, the door burst open.
“Y-Young Master.”
“Never mind. I have urgent matters to discuss with Grandfather. Leave us, and let no one inside.”
“Yes, sir.”
The butler carefully closed the door and withdrew.
Only a heavy silence hung in the shuttered study.
Beom Jin strode directly to his grandfather’s desk and stopped before it.
“I’m coming from the house in Ungyeong District. Soo Yi was there.”
“…….”
“What exactly did you say to her?”
Click.
Dok Go Hyung Jun slowly removed his glasses.
On the desk lay faded documents, heavy with the weight of secrets.
“These are materials related to a project that Kangho Construction executed twelve years ago.”
At this sudden tangent, Beom Jin’s brow furrowed.
“Right now, I’m speaking about my wife.”
“This project connects to your wife’s family.”
Beom Jin’s face hardened at the unexpected turn.
“Shim Hyung Chul, now dead, was working in collusion with your uncle. Your uncle covered it up by staging an accident and killing him.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with Soo Yi.”
“At the time, Shim Hyung Chul was responsible for processing the compensation payments to businesses and residents bound up in the development site.”
Beom Jin’s pupils trembled slightly.
……Surely not.
“Even I didn’t suspect those documents had been falsified. He was such a conscientious and loyal man.”
Beom Jin’s face twisted.
Which meant the information he himself had verified was also fabricated.
‘Damn it…….’
When Beom Jin returned from his studies in America after becoming entangled in an unfortunate incident, her family’s collapse was still fresh.
Two people who met during the loneliest period of their lives drew close in an instant.
They bared their entire histories and the deep-seated wounds buried in their hearts, and it was then that Beom Jin learned how her family had been destroyed.
He had been deeply grateful for that truth.
Not from some background investigation backed by family power, but because Soo Yi had opened her heart to him and shared her story of her own accord.
He wanted to stand wholly at her side as Dok Go Beom Jin the man—someone entirely separate from the Kangho Group.
But after learning that Soo Yi desperately wanted to find her father, his resolve changed.
He accepted his grandfather’s proposal and returned to the company of his own will.
Because fulfilling that girl’s fervent wish ultimately required the power and information that the Kangho Group possessed.
Having joined for that reason alone, his lack of interest in succession was natural.
But he needed to be recognized for his abilities and earn his grandfather’s Trust so he could move people as he wished. Only then could he protect Soo Yi—so he had merely pretended to be invested in the line of succession.
And so the investigation had revealed that Soo Yi’s father, just as she’d said, had drifted through gambling dens, become addicted, and thus surrendered the company.
Since it came through the Group, he had believed it to be truth.
Never did he imagine that his grandfather’s most trusted right hand and the uncle he’d deemed incompetent had conspired together to fabricate a lie.
“Does Soo Yi know all of it?”
“Half. Since I was the one ultimately responsible at the time, she believes I was the architect of it. After listening to her and investigating, I discovered the dead man and your uncle were involved.”
Beom Jin took a sharp breath.
In that instant, the decision was made.
“As of today, I’m stepping back from all my duties.”
“What, what are you—”
“My wife is An Soo Yi alone, and a life without her holds no meaning for me.”
Soo Yi would never return to him.
Not while he remained with the Kangho Group.
“Beom Jin.”
“The Group matters far less to me than Soo Yi does. Surely you already know that.”
Know it well—that his stubborn eldest grandson had run away from home at seventeen, abandoning family to pass himself off as an ordinary lawyer’s son, all to keep one girl at his side.
Dok Go Hyung Jun had long since learned what the only way to hold that obstinate boy would be.
“I intend to place the New Business Division under Soo Yi’s care.”
At his grandfather’s declaration, Beom Jin’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“……Under Soo Yi’s?”
“I wish to correct the wrongs my subordinates have committed, even now, and provide fitting compensation. She is also too talented to let go.”
The Chairman planned to separate the current new business operations into a completely independent entity and place it entirely under Soo Yi’s management.
It was his way of recognizing Soo Yi not merely as the family’s daughter-in-law, but as a legitimate business partner.
“Of course, I know that this alone cannot fully atone for the sins our house has committed.”
How could it be otherwise.
Unless time could be rewound.
Still, Dok Go Hyung Jun resolved to do his utmost within his power.
“Please grant that child an opportunity to hear my apology directly—as the head of this Group, and as a grandfather.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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