He Broke Eight of My Ribs and Offered Me $8 Million—Then Learned My Name Could Not Be Bought

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Chapter 1: The Call After Midnight

For one moment after Han Seojin called me Chairwoman Seo, I forgot how hard it was to breathe.

Then I tried to answer her.

Pain closed around my chest, and the word came out as a gasp.

“Yuna?”

I had not heard her say my name in three years. She sounded less like the attorney who once explained my father’s trust to me than someone trying to keep a frightened person on the phone.

“I’m here,” I whispered.

“Tell me where you are.”

“At the Kwon house.”

“Are you alone?”

I looked toward the staircase. Daeho and Sora had gone upstairs, but the lights were still on.

“For now.”

“What happened?”

“My husband hurt me. I can’t breathe right.”

There was a brief silence. I heard Han move, a door opening on her end of the call.

“I’m getting emergency help to you. Stay on the line with me.”

My gaze fell on the cashier’s check lying across my dress. Eight million dollars, Daeho had said. One million for each rib.

“I don’t want him to know I called you.”

“We’ll deal with that. First, you need someone to examine you.”

The word need nearly made me argue. For three years, I had practiced turning needs into inconveniences I could manage alone. I had learned to wait out Sora’s insults, to explain myself once and then stop when Daeho refused to listen.

But I could not get up from the marble floor.

“All right,” I said.

Han asked where in the house I was, whether the front door was locked, and whether I could speak without making the pain worse. She did not ask about Haneul. She did not tell me what accepting my inheritance would mean.

When she said she was also coming, I closed my eyes.

“I’m sorry to bring you out so late.”

“Yuna. You called me. I’m glad you did.”

I watched the staircase while we waited. Every small sound from upstairs tightened my shoulders. Once, a door shut, and I gripped the phone so hard my hand cramped.

Han stayed with me. When I drifted into silence, she asked me to say her name. When I apologized again, she changed the subject and asked what I could see from where I lay.

“The ugly vase Daeho bought at an auction,” I told her.

“I remember it.”

“You said it looked like a wet umbrella.”

“I was right.”

I laughed once. It hurt enough to make my eyes water.

By the time I heard voices at the entrance, I had stopped imagining that I could stand up and meet them looking composed. I was still on the floor when the first responder came into the room. Someone knelt beside me and spoke gently, asking my name and what had happened. Another person glanced toward the staircase.

“My husband did this,” I said.

The words seemed to change the air in the room. Not because anyone looked shocked. Because they listened.

They asked before helping me move. I told them about my ribs, my breathing, and the pain that ran through me when I tried to shift. I could not give them a careful sequence of the evening. They did not demand one.

As they prepared to lift me, I caught sight of the check.

“Please don’t leave that there.”

One of the responders followed my gaze.

“Is it yours?”

“He put it on me. After.”

I could not bear to touch it. The responder asked if I wanted it brought with my things. I said yes, but asked that it be kept apart from my phone and clothing. Someone placed it in a clear sleeve while I watched.

Then they moved me, and for a few seconds there was nothing in the world but the effort to draw air into my lungs.

I never saw Daeho at the foot of the stairs. Perhaps he stayed in his room. Perhaps he watched from somewhere I could not see. I kept my eyes on the responder walking beside me and let other people carry me out.

Outside, the night air touched my face. I had lived in that house for three years, and I had never been so relieved to leave it.

At the hospital, everything happened in pieces: questions, a blood pressure cuff, a clinician listening to my breathing, a careful explanation of the scans they wanted to take. I answered what I could. When I could not, they let me rest and asked again later.

Han arrived while I was waiting for imaging. Her coat was buttoned wrong, and she had brought a bag with a charger, a change of clothes, and the soft socks I had left at her office years ago.

“I couldn’t remember if they were still yours,” she said.

“They are.”

She pulled up a chair instead of standing over me. For a while, we sat without talking.

“I told my grandfather I would accept the inheritance,” I said at last. “Did you call him?”

“Not yet.”

I turned toward her, surprised.

“You asked me to tell him. I will. But I heard you struggling to breathe. I thought he could wait until you were safe.”

I stared at the edge of the blanket. My grandfather had waited three years. A few more hours would not change that. Still, part of me had expected my return to become everyone’s urgent business the instant I said yes.

“Thank you.”

“There’s something else,” Han said. “When I answered the phone, I called you Chairwoman Seo. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You were surprised.”

“That doesn’t make it accurate. Your father left you voting interests in a trust. There are steps to take before you exercise them, and that is not the same thing as holding a corporate office.”

I thought of Daeho telling me what my family could never earn. The truth about my father would shock him. I had spent the whole ambulance ride wishing, fiercely and uselessly, that he had known it earlier.

Maybe then he would have stopped.

The thought made me feel ill.

“He didn’t know who I was,” I said.

“I know.”

“He knew I was his wife.”

Han looked at me.

“Yes,” she said. “He did.”

The scans confirmed fractures in eight ribs. The clinician explained what they had found and what they would keep watching, particularly because breathing was so painful. I tried to pay attention. I asked them to repeat part of it when the words slipped away from me.

Later, with my permission, they recorded the injuries they could see as well as what I told them. Before anyone took photographs, they asked me again. I wanted the record. I also wanted to pull the blanket over my head and never let another person see me.

Both feelings stayed with me while I said yes.

Han waited until the clinician had finished before asking whether I wanted to make a fuller account for her. I told her I could try.

I described Sora’s claim about the company documents. I said I had denied taking them and that Daeho had demanded an apology anyway. I told Han he stopped hurting me only when Sora said she was satisfied. I repeated what he had said about the check and the divorce papers.

At one point, I lost track of what had happened first. I pressed my palms into the mattress, trying to force the evening into order.

“We can mark that as uncertain,” Han said.

“But it matters.”

“It may. We don’t make it more certain by guessing.”

She read back the notes she had made. Where I knew his exact words, she put them in quotation marks. Where I could only remember their meaning, she said so. I corrected one sentence, and she changed it without argument.

She asked what I wanted done with the check.

“Keep it safe,” I said. “I haven’t accepted anything from him.”

“I understand.”

“Eight million dollars,” I said, hearing how absurd it sounded aloud. “He thought that would make it finished.”

Han did not tell me the money was nothing. For most people, it would change every choice they could make. Daeho had used it as a way to end the conversation before I could speak.

“It doesn’t decide what happened,” she said.

A nurse came in to discuss visitors. I had assumed that being married to Daeho meant he could walk in and speak for me if he wanted. Instead, she asked whom I wanted the hospital to contact and whether I wanted information about my care given to anyone else.

“Han,” I said. “She can receive updates. Not my husband. Not his sister.”

The nurse made a note and asked if there was anyone else. I thought of my grandfather, who did not yet know I was here.

“Not tonight.”

After she left, I asked Han if they would listen to me.

“They took down what you said,” she answered. “If anything changes, tell them. You can ask again, too.”

It was a small answer. I trusted it more than a promise that no one could possibly keep.

My phone lit up on the bedside table.

Sora.

Han saw my face and reached for the phone only after I nodded. She held it where I could read the message without lifting my arm.

You’ve made this much worse by leaving. Tell Daeho you’re sorry for taking the documents. He might still let you come home.

For a moment I was back on the marble floor, hearing her tell him when she had had enough.

I put the phone facedown.

“I want to answer her.”

“What would you say?”

“That she knows I didn’t take anything.”

Han waited.

“She’d only show him my reply,” I said.

“We can preserve the message as it is. You don’t owe her an answer tonight.”

I nodded. Han saved what was on the screen with the time visible, then returned my phone to the table. It felt like an accomplishment not to pick it up again.

Near morning, I finally slept for a few minutes. I woke when the door opened. Han came in quietly, but I could tell from her face that something had happened.

“Is it my grandfather?”

“No. He knows you’re safe. He said he’ll wait until you’re ready to talk.”

I swallowed. “Then what?”

“Daeho called the hospital.”