Chapter Twenty-Seven – The Ultimatum
The fight with Amara lingered in his chest long after it ended. Her voice still echoed in his head, sharp with pain and betrayal: “Why are you pushing me away?”
He wanted to tell her everything, to lay his heart bare, but instead, he gave her silence. Because silence was safer. For her.
Or so he tried to believe.
But that night, the safety he clung to was ripped apart.
His father summoned him to the study—a place that always felt more like a courtroom than a room in their house. The shelves of leather-bound books, the massive oak desk, the weight of portraits staring down from the walls—it all pressed against Joon-Ho until his breath grew tight.
His father sat behind the desk, posture straight, gaze like steel. His mother lingered in the corner, her face calm, unreadable.
“Sit,” his father commanded.
Joon-Ho obeyed, though his hands tightened on the armrests of the chair.
“You’ve been careless,” his father began, voice low but sharp. “Your name is everywhere now. Every move you make is being watched, dissected. And yet, I hear whispers.”
Joon-Ho’s stomach sank. He said nothing.
His father’s eyes narrowed. “A girl. A foreigner. Do you think I wouldn’t hear?”
The air grew heavy, suffocating.
“She is not one of us,” his father continued, each word a blade. “She cannot stand beside you. She does not understand our world, our duty, our name. You will end this nonsense immediately.”
Joon-Ho’s chest tightened, his pulse quickening. He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to argue, to shout that Amara wasn’t nonsense, that she was the only thing keeping him sane.
Instead, he forced out, “And if I don’t?”
The silence that followed was brutal. His father leaned back, his gaze unflinching. “Then you are no son of mine. You will have nothing. No inheritance. No company. No name.”
The words hit harder than he expected. Not because of the threat of money or power—he had never cared for those. But because of the finality of it. The way his father spoke as if he was nothing outside of the Daehan name.
His mother finally stirred, her voice soft but firm. “Think carefully, Joon-Ho. One girl is not worth throwing everything away.”
Joon-Ho swallowed hard, his throat tight.
They didn’t understand. To him, Amara wasn’t one girl. She was the only thing that had ever felt like freedom.
But sitting in that suffocating room, with his father’s gaze pinning him down like a cage, Joon-Ho said nothing.
Because for the first time, he realized the choice would soon be forced on him.
And either way, he was going to lose.
