Chapter 4 - The Boardroom EarthquakeThe emergency board meeting at Kwon Global Holdings was scheduled for 10:00 AM, but tension in the glass-walled boardroom was already suffocating.
The company's top executives, chief financial officers, and major shareholders sat in absolute silence, whispering among themselves. None of them had ever seen Elias Kwon like this. Sitting at the head of the long mahogany table, Elias looked like a statue carved from black ice. His tie was slightly loosened, his shirt collar open, and his eyes were bloodshot from a night without sleep.
The door swung open, and Daniel Park—Elias's lead attorney and the man who had casually joked about me leaving just the night before—hurried inside, dropping a thick leather briefcase onto the table.
"Elias," Daniel panted, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I checked with every precinct, airport, and private airstrip in the tri-state area. No sign of her. But... we found something else."
Elias didn't blink. "Speak."
"The black card your grandfather left behind," Daniel stammered, casting a nervous glance at the other executives. "It was pinged an hour ago at a private boutique bank in Milwaukee. Someone just withdrew five million dollars in liquid capital from the undisclosed trust."
A murmur rippled through the boardroom.
"Who authorized a withdrawal from the Old Man's legacy account?" a senior board member demanded. "Only a direct bloodline or—" He stopped, his eyes widening in horror.
"My wife," Elias finished, his voice dropping to a terrifying, dead whisper.
Before anyone could breathe, the boardroom's main projector screen flickered to life. The IT security director, white-faced and trembling, tapped his keyboard. "Mr. Kwon, we... we have a live data feed breach on our primary server. Someone is overriding our firewall from an external network."
"Shut it down!" Daniel shouted.
"We can't," the technician stammered. "The override key... it's using an administrative credential that hasn't been active in five years."
On the massive screen, the Kwon Global corporate logo vanished. In its place, a single, elegant line of text appeared, written in a font that made Elias's blood run cold:
May you like
"A life goes on, Elias. But an empire doesn't run without capital."
Beneath the message, a digital ticker began counting down, flashing the transfer of controlling shares in Kwon Global’s most profitable subsidiary—straight to Vale Logistics.
