To My Brother’s Friend - Chapter 66

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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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Chapter 66
Kwon Yeol hadn’t spoken empty words.
Ever since notifying the Group that he would step back, he had completely withdrawn from all business operations.
Whether trillion-won projects stalled or the holding company’s elevation crumbled to dust—none of it mattered to him.
Instead, he poured every ounce of his focus into locating Hee-jo.
The first person he tracked down was the woman who had circled around Hee-jo, claiming to be her biological mother.
“I, I was just… told that the debt would be repaid…”
“By whom.”
The woman’s lips sealed shut.
Her eyes darted frantically—whether from the substantial sum she’d received or fear of whoever had orchestrated this, she held her ground.
Kwon Yeol’s eyes narrowed to slits.
The method for handling creatures like this was crystal clear.
Touch what they held more precious than life itself.
“Delete it.”
At Kwon Yeol’s terse command, the man standing behind him thrust a tablet before the trembling woman’s eyes.
The screen displayed real-time cryptocurrency fluctuations and asset balances from overseas digital exchanges.
Numbers that embodied the dream of a life transformed—payment for the wounds she’d inflicted upon Hee-jo.
“W, what? What are you doing…!”
“Press that button and every penny you received will evaporate. No hacker in the world could recover it.”
Kwon Yeol gave a slight nod, and the man pressed the button without hesitation.
The numbers on the tablet screen began their slow descent toward zero.
“You’d better stop this in the next second or two.”
The woman’s face drained of all color, pale as tissue paper.
“Talk. Who sent you, and where did Hee-jo go.”
“I, I only communicated through this phone!”
The woman shrieked and thrust her mobile phone into his hands.
“O, one day someone just appeared and asked if I knew Ji-young, so I said yes, and then they said they’d repay my debt! They said if I’d just pretend to be Ji-young for a few days, they’d deposit the rest of the money…”
At those words, Kwon Yeol’s brow furrowed in anguish.
He’d only learned mere days ago that this woman had caused a disturbance at the banquet hall.
His mother, Jin Seo-ryeong, had devoted herself to suppressing any leakage of the incident.
At that time, Kwon Yeol had been consumed by the scandal with Ryu Seung-won, buried beneath a tangle of betrayal and possessive fury toward Hee-jo.
So he’d never known what hell Hee-jo had descended into.
“I, oppa. Today… a report came in saying…”
“What report. That you’re not just casually connected to Han Teacher’s grandson?”
The cold words I’d spat that day echoed back like a phantom sound.
That day.
That day, Hee-jo had her soul lacerated by a woman impersonating her biological mother, yet I—her own husband—knew nothing.
I was too preoccupied with absurd rumors to notice the wounds of the one crumbling beside me.
How utterly foolish.
I’d thought I knew everything about Yoon Hee-jo. It was nothing but arrogance.
“Get Beom Jae-yeol on the line.”
“Yes, sir.”
Though Kwon Yeol had stepped down from his executive position, those who still followed him continued to address him by that title.
A meaningless, worthless title—one that had failed to protect Hee-jo when it mattered most.
Kwon Yeol considered correcting them, then thought better of it.
There was no other title that suited him anyway, and besides, every time he heard “sir,” he was forced to confront just how monumentally foolish he had been.
“Congratulations on your promotion, oppa. I made this myself. It seems you lack for nothing, so I didn’t know what else to give you… This silk thread is extremely rare.”
“What an honor. Receiving a knot from the future master of Intangible Cultural Property. I’ll treasure it always.”
“Stop it… You’ve truly become someone remarkable now, oppa. No one will ever be able to touch you again.”
The knot Hee-jo had given him was kept in the deepest corner of the safe at his residence.
Carefully preserved and mounted, untouched by even a speck of dust.
That residence, which he had never revealed to anyone, had become something like a warehouse for traces connected to Hee-jo and her brother.
The only place where I could find solace.
Much like my mother’s garden.
And so, to take revenge on my mother for striking Hee-jo’s cheek, I had burned the garden my mother cherished most.
I understood better than anyone what such a place meant.
And yet, despite all that….
I had lost Hee-jo.
I had failed to recognize her heart, her feelings, her emotions, and… her sorrow.
But still—
I wanted to grasp at even the smallest opening.
“Sir, Director Beom Jae-yeol has arrived.”
This warehouse on the outskirts of Seoul was a secret place the Beom brothers used when they needed to “handle” something.
As it happened, Jae-yeol was staying nearby.
When he heard his girlfriend’s graduate school was organizing an academic exchange trip among students, he had postponed his foundation work and followed her here.
Under normal circumstances, I would have clicked my tongue at such behavior, but with every second counting in my search for Hee-jo, the fact that Jae-yeol was close by felt like far more than mere coincidence—it felt like divine providence.
Like a sign from heaven that I could reach Hee-jo.
In that moment, I smiled bitterly at myself.
Beom Gwon-yeol, who had relied solely on rigorous data and cold judgment, now found himself depending on nothing but these hollow intuitions and signs.
“The world truly is full of surprises.”
As the warehouse’s heavy door swung open, light poured in alongside a voice that resembled mine yet carried a distinctly different tone.
“Who would have thought I’d find my older brother here at this hour? The man who knew nothing but work.”
The man who entered resembled me, but his aura was unmistakably different—masculine, cold, and formidable where mine was austere.
Jae-yeol, the youngest brother, bore a striking resemblance to Jin Seo-ryeong, with the most delicate features among the Beom siblings. He had the air of a nobleman raised in luxury, yet something sharp and dangerous lurked beneath.
Jae-yeol wrinkled his nose at the damp air of the warehouse, his brow furrowing.
Then he spotted a woman lying prostrate on the floor, trembling like an aspen leaf, and a smile of intrigue played across his lips.
“Is this the famous ‘fake mother-in-law’?”
A device flew in an arc through the air, which Jae-yeol caught effortlessly.
“Trace it. Everything connected to that phone—leave nothing out.”
Jae-yeol had a rather unusual history within the Beom Family.
During my time studying abroad in America, instead of taking the management courses everyone else did, I obsessively delved into IT—specifically the fields of security and hacking.
There was even an instance where I had secretly hacked into a case of embezzlement by an overseas branch director that had been giving Beom Hun-young considerable headaches, and uncovered decisive evidence.
Thus, before my marriage, I had entrusted Jae-yeol with data sanitization work that required both professional expertise and ruthless capability.
In exchange, Jae-yeol made a demand.
“When I make any choice, you have to take my side unconditionally.”
“What kind of choice are you planning to make?”
“Whatever it is. Well, it won’t be anything that threatens your position, so don’t worry.”
“Even if you climb, you won’t be a threat.”
“Really now. Want to see what happens if I covet your seat?”
With such playful banter, Jae-yeol obtained my “confirmation as the next successor,” and from that point on, we brothers entered into a peculiar symbiotic relationship.
“Hyung, you know this is illegal, right? Can you really do this with a Director title?”
Even as he spoke those words, Jae-yeol was already crouched on the floor, opening the laptop he’d brought and beginning to disable the security systems.
Cascades of code too dense to even read poured across the screen.
“If some creepy bugs crawl around our Yoon while I’m doing this, you’re taking responsibility, hyung.”
Letting my younger brother’s frivolous remark go in one ear and out the other, I gave a low instruction to the man standing beside me.
“What about Han Teacher?”
“He appears to be in the Gyeongnam area, but we’re still tracking Madam’s whereabouts. My apologies.”
The fact that even my intelligence network couldn’t find a trace meant that Beom Hun-young’s direct influence was at work.
“He’s tangled things quite intricately. He put some thought into not leaving a trail, but unfortunately for him, he ran into me.”
In mere minutes, Jae-yeol breached security systems that would have taken even a professional hacker days to penetrate.
“The communications between burner phones are textbook, but he laundered the server several times in between. But following the trail—it looks like hyung already suspected who it is.”
Yes, I already knew who had orchestrated this woman—not Hee-jo’s biological mother.
I simply needed evidence.
Only then could I ensure she was utterly destroyed.
“This part’s done. What about Grandfather?”
The shadow cast by the Beom Family’s tiger ran deeper and darker than I’d anticipated.
At my heavy silence, Jae-yeol lifted his shoulders once.
“Grandfather’s quite something. His determination to get you remarried no matter what is really… ah, don’t look at me like that. I’m on your sister-in-law’s side, after all.”
Jae-yeol feigned a shudder at my sharp gaze before continuing.
“Should I hand over the ledgers of those old-timers? I’ve been collecting some for later, in case I need them when asking for permission to marry Yoon. It’s quite the spectacle.”
“Enough.”
My eyes turned cold and still.
“I have an even bigger card.”

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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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