Chapter 7: The Burned Bridges And The Black Car
At exactly 9:59 a.m. the next morning, someone knocked on the door of Caroline’s cramped, studio apartment.
The apartment was located in the worst part of the industrial district. The paint was peeling, the radiator clanked violently, and the hallway constantly smelled of boiled cabbage and despair.
Caroline stood in the center of the tiny room, holding her backpack. She was wearing her best clothes—a simple black skirt and a white blouse—though they felt utterly inadequate for whatever world she was about to enter.
She took a deep breath, walked to the door, and unlocked the three deadbolts she had installed herself.
Jin stood in the hallway.
The massive bodyguard looked entirely out of place in the dingy, flickering fluorescent light of the apartment corridor. He wore a perfectly tailored dark suit, an earpiece, and an expression of complete indifference.
“Miss Pitman,” Jin said, his voice a deep, resonant baritone. “It is time.”
“I’m ready,” Caroline said, stepping out into the hallway and locking the door behind her.
“Mr. Lee instructed me to confirm your intent before we place you in the vehicle,” Jin stated, blocking her path slightly. “If you get in the car, the transition is permanent. Your previous employment has already been terminated. Your lease on this apartment has been bought out and cancelled as of this morning.”
Caroline stared at him in shock. “You cancelled my lease? Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”
“You will be provided for,” Jin said, his face unreadable. “But you need to understand. There is no safety net after this. If you fail Mr. Lee, you cannot simply resign and return to this life. This door is locked forever.”
“Good,” Caroline said, her voice hard. “I hated this apartment anyway.”
Jin’s eyes narrowed slightly, processing her lack of hesitation. “Your sister’s medical facility has been contacted. Mr. Lee’s financial team wired the three-month deposit at 8:00 a.m., along with a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer for experimental therapeutics.”
Caroline felt the air rush out of her lungs. Her knees briefly went weak.
She had spent months calculating tips, skipping meals, and crying in the dark over that deposit. And Lee had resolved it with a single phone call before breakfast.
“She’s… she’s safe?” Caroline asked, her voice cracking.
“She is currently being moved to the VIP recovery wing,” Jin confirmed. “She will not experience pain today. Now, are we leaving?”
Caroline didn’t look back at the door. “Take me to him.”
They walked down the four flights of stairs in silence. When they reached the street, a sleek, black Lincoln Navigator was waiting, engine purring softly. Another bodyguard stood by the rear door, scanning the street with tactical precision.
Jin opened the door for her. Caroline climbed into the back seat. The leather was soft, and the interior smelled of expensive cologne and ozone.
The windows were heavily tinted. As the SUV pulled away from the curb, Caroline watched her old neighborhood blur into the background. The pawn shops, the broken streetlights, the bakery where she used to scrub pans at 4:00 a.m.—they all faded away like a bad dream.
“Where are we going?” Caroline asked, looking at Jin through the rearview mirror.
“To the forty-second floor,” Jin replied vaguely. “Your onboarding begins immediately. Mr. Lee does not waste time.”
“What exactly will I be doing?” she pressed, needing some semblance of control.
“You will be finding lies,” Jin said. “Mr. Lee controls a vast network of shipping, real estate, and information brokering. He requires someone who can look at a thousand pieces of data and see the one piece that does not belong. Someone invisible, who knows how to observe.”
“He wants an auditor?” Caroline asked, confused. “He hired a waitress to be an auditor?”
Jin let out a low, humorless chuckle. It was a terrifying sound.
“He did not hire an auditor, Miss Pitman. He hired a survivor,” Jin corrected her. “An auditor looks for bad math. You are going to look for bad men.”
If you were suddenly thrust into a criminal empire, would your first instinct be to hide, or to figure out how to rule it?
The SUV smoothly navigated through the financial district, pulling into the subterranean parking garage of a towering glass skyscraper. There were no corporate logos on the building. No directories.
They took a private, key-card-accessed elevator that shot up with stomach-dropping speed. When the steel doors finally parted, Caroline stepped out into a completely different reality.
The forty-second floor was a massive, open-concept nerve center. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows offered a dizzying, panoramic view of the entire city. Men and women in sharp suits moved with quiet urgency, carrying tablets, whispering into headsets in multiple languages.
It didn’t look like a mafia hideout. It looked like a Fortune 500 hedge fund.
Jin led her past the bustling desks, toward a massive glass-walled office at the far end of the floor.
Lee Dong Wuk was standing by the window, his back to the door, looking out over the sprawling metropolis below. He wore a slate-grey suit today, his posture as perfect and rigid as a blade.
Jin knocked once on the glass door and stepped aside, gesturing for Caroline to enter.
Caroline walked in. The heavy glass door clicked shut behind her, sealing out the noise of the floor. The silence in the office was absolute.
Lee didn’t turn around immediately.
“The view from up here,” Lee said softly, his voice echoing slightly against the glass. “It makes everyone look very small, doesn’t it?”
“It makes them look like ants,” Caroline replied, standing near his massive oak desk.
Lee finally turned. His dark eyes locked onto hers, assessing her cheap skirt and blouse, but showing no judgment.
“Sit,” Lee commanded, gesturing to the leather chair across from his desk.
Caroline sat down, keeping her spine perfectly straight. She refused to show how intimidated she was.
Lee walked over to his desk and picked up a thick, black leather-bound ledger. He dropped it onto the desk in front of her with a heavy, intimidating thud.
“I told you last night that I build my organization on talent, not pedigree,” Lee said, leaning over the desk, invading her space. “This ledger contains the shipping manifests for our West Coast imports over the last three months. It is supposed to be a closed system. Perfect math.”
“But it’s not?” Caroline guessed.
“It is not,” Lee confirmed, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. “Someone inside my organization is skimming. They are moving cargo off the books. It is a small amount, designed to look like standard transit loss. But I do not tolerate theft.”
“You want me to find the missing money,” Caroline said, reaching for the ledger.
Before her fingers could touch the leather, Lee slammed his hand down on top of it, stopping her.
“No,” Lee whispered, his face inches from hers. “My accountants can find missing money. I want you to find the man who thinks he is smart enough to steal from me. And I want you to tell me exactly how we are going to break him.”
