I Married My Chaebol Rival to Keep My Company novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Pen
At the reading of two feuding founders' wills, Do-yoon grabs the pen and signs the marriage agreement first; in the lift his rival hands him a cufflink from his dead grandfather's pocket.
The lawyer cleared his throat and read the condition a second time.
"Both blocks of shares pass to the grandsons, on one term. Yeo Do-yoon and Hwan Jae-wook must be married to each other within thirty days."
Nobody in the room breathed.
Do-yoon's uncle Gi-cheol sat at the end of the table with his hands folded, smiling a little.
Do-yoon knew that smile.
It was the one Gi-cheol wore when a deal was about to go his way.
"If either grandson refuses, or breaks the term of twelve months in one home, both blocks go to the acting chairs."
The lawyer didn't say Gi-cheol's name.
He didn't have to.
Gi-cheol was the acting chair of Yeoun Pharma, and he had already bought his way into the company that ran Haeryong.
Do-yoon looked across the table at Hwan Jae-wook.
Jae-wook was a huge man in a wine-red waistcoat, and he had taken the chair by the window so the light would be behind him.
He had done that for six years.
At every auction, every board meeting and every hearing, Jae-wook found the seat with the light behind it.
He had beaten Do-yoon for the harbor lease.
Do-yoon had beaten him over the patent.
They had never once been in a room together without a lawyer between them.
"This is a joke," Jae-wook said.
His voice was lazy and low, and it filled the whole room.
"My grandfather hated that family. He called them thieves at his own birthday dinner."
"My grandfather called yours worse," Do-yoon said.
"Then why would either of them do this?"
"To make us suffer."
"That works," Jae-wook said, and he laughed, short and not amused.
The lawyer slid two copies of an agreement across the glass table.
It had been drafted before either old man died.
It had a line for each signature, a line for a witness, and a clause about a monitor who would check on them.
Gi-cheol leaned forward a little.
"You don't have to decide today, Do-yoon-ah," he said, kindly. "Take your time. Take the full thirty days."
He wanted Do-yoon to wait.
Every day Do-yoon waited was another day for Gi-cheol to find a way to make him fail.
Yeoun Pharma was the only thing Do-yoon had ever built that nobody had handed him.
His name was on the door of the third floor, and eleven years of his sleep were inside the company.
He was not going to give it to a man who smiled.
He reached for the pen.
Jae-wook reached for it at the same moment.
Jae-wook was faster, but Do-yoon was closer.
Do-yoon's fingers closed on the pen first, and he signed his name on the line.
Yeo Do-yoon.
The ink was still wet when Jae-wook's hand shut around his wrist.
It was a big hand, warm and rough at the base of the thumb, and the grip didn't hurt.
It was just very firm.
His thumb lay on Do-yoon's pulse, and Do-yoon's heart began to race under it.
"You didn't ask me," Jae-wook said.
Do-yoon looked at the hand and then at Jae-wook's face.
Jae-wook's eyes were a warm amber brown, and they weren't lazy now.
"I didn't need to," Do-yoon said. "You'd sign. You'd sign just to spite him."
"Maybe I'd sign for my own reasons."
"You have reasons?"
"A few."
Jae-wook let go of his wrist.
Do-yoon could still feel where that thumb had been ten minutes later.
Jae-wook took the pen, held it a moment, and signed.
His handwriting was huge and slanted, and it filled the whole line.
Hwan Jae-wook.
Across the table, Gi-cheol's smile slipped at one corner.
Then it came back.
"How touching," Gi-cheol said. "Both of you, so quickly. I'll arrange the flowers."
"Don't," Jae-wook said.
The lawyer gathered up the pages.
"The registry opens at nine tomorrow. I've taken the liberty of booking a time."
Of course he had.
Everyone had known what the two of them would do, except the two of them.
The lift was glass, and it dropped fourteen floors above the river with Do-yoon and Jae-wook alone inside.
Do-yoon stood against one wall and Jae-wook stood against the other, and the lift still felt too small.
"Fine," Do-yoon said, to the doors. "You'll move into my place."
"My house in Hannam-dong is bigger. The monitor will want a proper address."
"Then I get the bigger room."
"Husband," Jae-wook said, trying the word out, "there's only one bedroom in the contract."
Do-yoon's ears went hot, and he hated Jae-wook for noticing.
The lift chimed at the lobby, but the doors didn't open.
Jae-wook had pressed the stop button.
Do-yoon hadn't seen him do it.
"Hwan Jae-wook."
"Open your hand."
"Why?"
"Because I'm asking."
Jae-wook had never asked him for anything.
Do-yoon opened his hand.
Jae-wook set something small and cold in his palm.
It was a silver cufflink, worn smooth, with a tiny crane engraved on its face.
Do-yoon knew it before he turned it over.
His grandfather had owned a pair of these.
He had worn them every day of Do-yoon's childhood, until the week one of them went missing.
After that he had blamed every Haeryong spy he could think of, for forty years.
"I took it from my grandfather's things," Jae-wook said, very quietly. "It was in a box with your family's name on the lid."
Do-yoon's fingers closed over the crane until it hurt.
"My grandfather hated yours," he said.
"Yes," Jae-wook said. "So explain it to me."
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