38

I lean forward, releasing my arms from the blanket, and rub my middle fingers on both my temples simultaneously, trying to combat the headache caused by hours of emotional outpouring. I'm so drained. My mind's in chaos; my heart has shrivelled and feels like a solid and cold lump of rock in my chest.

She's right though. He can be strong, commanding, mature, and in control, as long as it doesn't interfere with his parent's wishes. It's his Achilles heel and partly why I was so secure in the fact he would never have an affair. Wasn't I the same? It's a form of brainwashing. It's how we were raised, and not once did either of us ever realize we had even the tiniest say in things.

"I could return. Make it public. I would get everything back and cause mayhem in the process over how they lied and produced a body. That's a bunch of criminal charges on top of everything else. They falsified my death. That in itself would run Jyeon into ruin."

"And yet you don't think they are capable of tampering with a car to off you? Do you think they'll let you reappear now? If you show up in a swarm of 'here I am,' what realistically will they do? That thought scares me. They offed you for threatening his position. What will they do for creating a mass scandal and implicating more of them and damaging the entire company?"

"Arrgghhhhh." I let out a strangled noise of despair and throw my blankets off. Exhaling heavily, getting up to pace around while stretching out my arms, and crick my neck from side to side to work out the knots. Frustrated, weighted with pressure, and so tired I can't think straight.

This is my family, husband, and entire existence, even though what she's saying makes perfect sense… It's crazy and sounds like a movie plot. I just can't.

"Let's just say that IF, and it's a big IF…..Jyeon did want me gone; then it's pretty much a given that if I turn up alive to ruin their plans, they'll make me disappear for real a second time. As payback. To shut me up. The only way I could protect myself was to hand myself to the media and make it a big deal. I would only be making enemies, though, and they would use everything that happened to paint me as a crazy vindictive bitch who staged her own death after tormenting my husband for having an affair. I know how that world works. I won't get out unscathed. And then …. maybe a real suicide, by their hands."

Greta looks completely incensed that this twisted and horrid situation could be a reality and frowns as she thinks it through. Squeezing her mug half to death before slamming it down.

"What about your money. Can't you just empty an account online to another, take it, and hide here? They might know you're alive, but they haven't found you this far. This place is so off the beaten track and back woods that they would have no thought to look in this direction. Why go back at all? You don't know if these people ever cared about you or if they're the ones who did this. Let them sweat, knowing you took all your money and ran."

"I'm dead, remember. All my accounts will be frozen while they go through the legal steps to transfer my equity to my next of kin. I won't get access unless I go through the proper procedure of proving I'm alive and I'm me. That involves going back and doing everything we just figured could be my undoing." I sigh it out. I know it's hypothetical and might not be close to the truth, but she has me scared. Looking at the bigger picture, maybe I've been naïve all these years. After all, these people forced their children to wed to keep their money and company within their hands. There's no telling what they are capable of, and I've been burying my head in the sand my whole life.

"They have you over a barrel, and they don't even know you never died. How can these people call themselves your family? You deserve more than this bullshit."

Greta pushes away from the table and leans back, abandoning her drink, and crosses her arms over her chest in a sulky fashion. A brow so low it's scrunching up her entire face.

"If I'd let them know I was alive the day I woke up in hospital…." I regret it now that everything is unraveling, and I feel like I'm losing my grip on what's mine. Questioning my choice and knowing this is an outcome of my own doing. Karma for hurting them by staying silent.

"You might be dead for real already. Who knows what they would have done to find out you didn't die after they drove you off a cliff? You have to stop avoiding the detail right there, Anna. Someone….. either Jyeon, your mother, or someone related in that family with access to your garage intended for one of you to die. And I don't think it was him." Her tone is stern, and she scolds me.

"I know, okay, I know. You think I don't want to face it and listen to you. It's just hard. I love those people. I can't process it. Even him, even now, I love him, and I don't want to feel this way, knowing he might have hated me that much. I grew up with them. They raised me. I never in a million years thought Jyeon would have an affair and my life would come crashing down on top of me, so how am I supposed to swallow the fact he might have tried to kill me? I feel like I've been living in a solitary bubble and saw only what I wanted to see." Tears blur my vision as the floodgates burst once more, and my voice rasps as my throat constricts. My chest and heart are aching all over again and tying my stomach in knots. We keep going over and over it, and it's making me dizzy with the utter lack of control over my emotions. Breaking that day I caught him with her seems to be the turning point in my ability to bottle everything up inside. Crying is becoming second nature now. He broke the dam, and now it won't stop.

"You said there were more Park family members in OLO. Uncles, grandfather, and God knows who else…. what about any of them? Would they take the initiative, and yet Jyeon still obey them and put the key there knowing it wasn't safe?"

I know what she's getting at. No matter who we find to blame and pinpoint, the certainty they would benefit from my death doesn't take away one small, crucial fact. Jyeon laid the key right there, and it was his car. A car he knew I would target and be mad over because of what it symbolized to us.

He loaded the gun with his words that night and walked off to leave me with the opportunity to take it. His cell phone was a catalyst because he knew if I looked at it, the texts, calls, messages, and whatever else he had with that woman would push me over the edge. Maybe he thought I would look through it and then take the car in a rage. I was so stupid not to piece it together. When did he ever leave his phone lying around so carelessly?

"I had twenty-eight percent, so did Jyeon. Between the two of us, we are both major shareholders, and the only reason he took the President position was that I let him. I didn't contest it or ask the board to vote because I was raised to be his second-hand man. Even though I was capable of running the entire company alone, it never crossed my mind ever to try and rise above him, as my purpose was to assist. His family all rely on Jyeon being the head. Their profits, their image, and their fat cushy lives. Keeping it in the family, they all have their finger in the pies he bakes up for them. They are all his blood relations, and all still do what their grandfather asks of them. Even at ninety, that old miser still whispers in mother's ear and has a say in most things."

"So, in the case of you two divorcing and you pulling out your bitch card and dethroning him, they would all suffer. You would be queen bee, and there's no telling what you would do about your ex's family being a major part of your company while in the throes of revenge. They had to be worried that you would somehow separate the Parks from OLO."

"Pretty much. I mean, it's not an easy task, but with the right scandal, I could have made an impact that way." I sigh, walking back to the window and staring out at the fading orange glow as our winter sun climbs higher in the sky to signal a new day. A beautiful view that I can't appreciate while feeling this way. It does nothing to warm the icy cold inside of me or the heaviness and pain I feel.

"It's an entire family fucking conspiracy. You had to go… no matter what. In the hours you went to see her and your parents' graves, it's all the time they needed to talk it out. They couldn't let you cause a scandal, and they couldn't let you take control. Maybe it's not just Jyeon or your mother-in-law at all, maybe it was a combined effort, and that entire family wanted to tie up loose ends." Her words hang in the air between us. "For all you know, they tracked the car and followed you to be sure to finish you off if a crash failed. The possibilities are endless.'

Knowing how many wealthy families have politicians, officers, and such in their back pockets, it's not all that hard to believe she might be onto something. Corruption, greed, and destructive power struggles. It's what's gone on around me my whole life. Being sized up, treated like prime livestock with every daughter and son in our entire city. Young heirs were willing to seduce Jyeon or me to get in on the golden egg that OLO was. Our money, our status. Many have killed for less in our culture's history. We've never been people.

"Please tell me your parents died of a real accident and not brake failure," Greta adds in afterthought, and I turn to her with a sad frown at the mention of them, knowing why her brain has gone there. I exhale with the weight of all of this.