Park Avenue, page 29
Darius nodded. “Where do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know.” Jia sighed. “I feel like he has eyes everywhere. Security cameras, motion-activated what-have-yous, a staff of spies, PIs on the take. I want as few people as possible to know what’s going on because it’s apparently the work of a moment for him to uncover what we’re doing.”
“Which means we probably have a mole,” Darius said quietly.
“I agree. There’s no way he could manage this level of duplicity without help.” She tapped her fingers on the table. “We also don’t have time to be paranoid about it, but I want to take precautions where we can. Unfortunately, I’m not sure where the best place to go might be, unless you know of a hut somewhere on a remote island with difficult access. Preferably a single road. And no possible chance of unwanted visitors.”
“Well, I don’t know about a hut, but I can think of something close.” Darius canted his head. “A place with limited staff and challenging access.” He took another sip of his coffee and shuddered. “I think we should take the boxes to Jenny in Greece. The Marado is anchored there, about a mile off the coast of Crete.”
“The Park family’s yacht?”
Darius nodded. “If we switch off the security cameras and keep a barebones crew, we can make it pretty difficult for Seven to find out what we’re doing.”
Jia leaned back in her seat and considered. Darius could be the mole. That was entirely possible. A mole trying to steer her in the precise direction he needed her to go. It was the reason she still couldn’t trust him. Not yet. She found it hard to believe Darius would ever betray Jenny, but she hadn’t known him that long. “I don’t hate it.”
“What are our plans after that, by the way?”
Jia paused to eat more of her congee. She was running out of options. There was one surefire way to be certain Darius Rohani wasn’t the mole.
It was to put faith in her instincts. To trust him and him alone.
To make a bed with her potential enemy and lie in it.
She almost wanted to laugh at the thought, but her anxiety threatened to eclipse her. She could feel it churning in her blood, spreading like a sinister virus. Jia clenched her jaw. She wouldn’t succumb to it. It was time to make her choice.
It was time to start trusting herself.
“Jia?” Darius pressed. “What’s the plan?”
“We fake it until we make it. We wait a few days after we arrive in Greece, just to make Seven antsy. Then we act like we’ve found something important. I hint at a significant discovery to my boss, and you tell the Park kids we’ve uncovered the smoking gun and are days away from chasing down Seven’s money trail.” Her hands turned into fists. “Then we wait for him to come to us.”
“You’re trying to trick him into settling?”
“I have it on good authority that Seven won’t settle unless he’s afraid. I want to make him so afraid that he’s willing to give us at least half the keys to the kingdom. His fear is going to cost him. Dearly.”
“Calling his bluff,” Darius said. “It’s bold.”
“It’s the best I can do. He’s one step ahead of us all the time. I want to see how he acts when he’s completely in the cold.” She bent over her bowl of jook. “And I don’t want anyone but you and me to know the truth. Deal?”
Darius’s eyes widened. He understood what she was saying.
Jia was going to try to trust him.
Darius drained his coffee cup. “I’ll make the arrangements. He won’t be surprised that we’re going to Jenny in Greece. Suzy, Sora, and Minsoo will probably be there at some point, too. We can transport the boxes to the Marado ourselves if we charter a speedboat.”
Jia nodded. “And then … we wait.”
IN ARTICULO MORTIS
I told you I would leave you.
I lied.
As we near the end of this tale, I find myself mourning. Not merely for the losses already incurred but for the ones to come. The ones from which there is no escape.
Soon, Jenny Park will die. That is an inevitability. Nothing can stop it from happening, no matter how much her children or her friends or her loved ones may wish it were not so.
Jenny’s impending death has cast a perpetual shadow on this story. I find myself angry that someone so beloved would have to die to bring her fractured family together. That is the point of this account, after all. To bear witness to the things we must lose on the journey to find ourselves.
So I have returned, for the briefest time, to beg for your forgiveness. I cannot allow Jenny Park to perish in such a sad and ignominious manner. Perhaps she was, admittedly, a bit boring. Living an all-too-predictable life. Perhaps she did make craven mistakes, especially with her children. And most definitely with her husband, who was not always so terrible. There was a time, in fact, when he could have saved their marriage, if she had allowed it.
Regardless, she deserves a chance to be heard, especially at the end.
Maybe hers was not an exciting life. But it was not a bad one.
In the end, I hope Jenny Park can hold her head high and see that she was loved.
Not by me, of course.
No one who truly loves Jenny Park could do what I have done to her. I am certain you have suspected it for some time, dear reader. But I must confess it nonetheless.
I am the betrayer. I am the mole.
I am the one who has made certain our dogged heroine, Jia Song, cannot and will not succeed, no matter how hard she tries. I have lied, left notes, stolen documents, shared privileged information, and behaved traitorously at every turn. From the beginning, I have been there, like a snake, waiting to deliver a lethal strike to each of her admirable attempts to right this wrong.
I have sabotaged Jenny Park, a person I should have loved and cherished as she tried to love and cherish me, despite her many mistakes. It is unforgivable, in several respects. I have lied to her and stolen from her and left her to cry herself to sleep, cold and alone with nothing but her pain.
I hope you forgive me, dear reader. Despite my monstrous choices, I hope I am not your villain.
But I must admit I always intended to harm her. Alas.
An omelet cannot be made without breaking a few eggs.
TRUTHFULLY
T Minus 8 Days
Jenny Park knew she’d made a mistake the moment she decided to take the short journey from her olive tree estate in Crete to the Marado late that evening. Though it was anchored only a mile offshore, it wasn’t the right night to be at sea. The wind was too strong, the water far too choppy. Beneath her feet, the yacht buoyed about, small waves cresting against its sides and sending sprays of water onto the deck.
This was neither the right place nor the right time for a confrontation.
But there would never be a good time to do what she had to do. To say what she had to say.
Chilsoo had come to Greece. At first, she hadn’t believed it. Her heart had leaped when she heard he was coming, in that terrible way the heart betrays itself when it comes to love. But of course, he hadn’t come to see her. Even knowing how limited her time on earth was, he still did not have the courage to face her. He’d gone to their outrageous excuse for a boat, intent on speaking with their children, who’d gathered in Greece two days ago to spend the last vacation of her life together.
Chilsoo hadn’t come to see her. He’d come to argue and bully their kids about the money.
The money, the money, the money. If Jenny could change one choice she’d made during her life, it would be about the money. Instead of buying them freedom, it had become an anchor around their necks.
Chilsoo shouldn’t have come to Greece. He should have been smart enough to see through Jia Song’s plan. But he’d taken whatever bait she’d offered. He’d allowed his fear to best him. As much as Jenny hated to admit it, she was glad he’d been so weak. She was running out of time, and she had spent far too long waiting in the wings, hiding her pain and granting him the grace he didn’t deserve.
She’d gathered her strength before making this journey. She’d fought for the willpower to do what needed to be done. And she’d arrived at the boat without any fanfare, much to the surprise of her kids, who’d protested and insisted she immediately retire to her stateroom to rest.
Jenny was done with resting.
She checked her watch. Before, when they’d come to Greece together, she and Chilsoo would take an evening stroll along the deck of the Marado at the same time every night. This yacht that he’d christened to honor Jenny’s mother and celebrate the strong women of her family, the divers who’d defied death to provide for their families.
She waited belowdecks for him, lingering on the first step leading upward.
Jenny loved the water, but she’d never enjoyed boats. Truthfully, she didn’t think her husband did either. He loved what boats represented. The statement they made.
Chilsoo had been like that all his life. A showman through and through. When they’d first met in Busan many years ago, it was what had drawn Jenny to him. He was the kind of young man who moved about the room like the sun. And when the sun shone on her, Jenny had felt truly seen, for the first time in her life.
Jenny took a deep breath and started up the steps, her hand clutching the polished wooden railing.
She’d been so weak for so long. The cancer had done more than steal her vitality. For too long, it had taken her will to live. It had eaten at her from the inside, hollowing her, leaving her with nothing but skin and bones. Jenny had watched her face shrink and shrivel. In the mirror, she’d seen a haunting memory of her own mother, who’d perished from lung cancer.
The greatest of ironies. Her mother had not smoked a day in her life.
But her father had smoked unfiltered American Marlboros until the morning of his death, though it wasn’t cancer that took him. Jenny always believed he’d died of a broken heart, almost a year to the day after his wife had passed.
That was the kind of love she’d wanted for herself. The kind of love she thought she’d had. Maybe it wasn’t passionate anymore, but it was loyal. Steadfast, despite all.
But when the doctors had deemed her cancer terminal, her husband had stopped seeing her.
The sun had moved on to shine elsewhere.
Jenny made it halfway up the stairs, the boat rocking beneath her feet, causing her stomach to churn. She gritted her teeth. Remembered all the nausea, all the suffering, all the shame of these last few years. Of hiding from her kids when she needed to go to the doctor, because she hated them seeing her like this. Of getting up from bed in the middle of the night and struggling to make her way to the bathroom without help.
She wouldn’t ask her husband. Even then, she knew he was disloyal. And she would never ask for help from a man who couldn’t keep his family.
If a man couldn’t keep his family, he couldn’t keep anything.
Jenny took a deep breath and continued climbing.
A purple sky came into view as she neared the top, her body swaying from the motion of the Aegean Sea.
Jenny found Seven exactly where she knew he would be: at the very front of the boat, as if he were its captain. As if the waters below him moved at his will. Like Neptune with his trident.
“Sora-appa,” she said.
He turned, his eyes widening. “Why are you still awake?” he asked in Korean.
“I can’t sleep with the boat swaying like this.”
Seven smiled to himself, as if he knew her so well. “You were always a bad sleeper.”
“No,” she replied. “I wasn’t. When I was home in Korea, before we met, I slept well.”
“Your stories always kept you awake.”
“No. I chose not to sleep because I loved them more than I loved to sleep.”
He laughed. “You haven’t changed, you know. You still like to argue with me.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me like that. As if we are still familiar and close.”
“You are the mother of my children. I will always value you, even if you don’t believe that I do.”
“Kuhjimal,” Jenny murmured. She switched to English. “If you valued me, you wouldn’t treat me like this. You wouldn’t have done what you did.”
He sighed as if he were the one exercising extreme patience. “I tried to be there for you, Jeeyun-ah. You didn’t want my help.”
“I was dying. I needed you. Every day I wanted you to be there.”
“I tried my best.” He shook his head. “But with you, my best was never good enough.”
“No. Even when I became sick, it was never about what I needed. It was you who always wanted more. I gave and gave. Then, when I needed you to be there for me—to help me—you complained about the burden.”
“It isn’t easy watching someone you loved die.”
Jenny gripped the metal railing beneath her fingers. “I know you, Park Chilsoo. Watching me die made you feel sad and old, and you hated to feel sad almost as much as you hated to feel old, so you found someone who made you feel young and strong and powerful again.”
For the first time, anger creased his brow. “No one asked you to sacrifice everything for your family. I’m entitled to be happy, Jeeyun-ah. I’ve earned it.”
“If your happiness is at the expense of your responsibilities, is it truly happiness?”
“That sounds like the exact thing you would say.” He switched back to Korean. “I am not sacrificing myself for anyone anymore. Our children are grown. It’s time you found another purpose.”
Jenny started to laugh. It racked her tiny body until coughs began flying from her lips. Still, she continued laughing. “Keegah makyuh,” she mumbled. How ridiculous. “Life lessons from the man who has stolen everything from his children.”
“They will be fine.” He spoke in a measured tone. “Minsoo is smart and successful. Sora is a doctor who has married into a wealthy, influential family. And now maybe Suzy will finally accomplish something with all her wasted talent.”
Anger sparked, and Jenny doused it before it could catch flame. She didn’t have the willpower to control the heat of her emotions. She needed to be cold. Steady. Calculating. The exact sort of person her husband had always wanted her to be. “They told me to fight back. For a long time, I didn’t want to. But I will fight back now. Until the day I die, I will fight.”
“For the money?” He laughed. “What a hypocrite. You always said the money ruined us.”
“No.” Jenny shook her head. “It’s not for the money. It was never for the money. I will fight to tear down this idea you have built of yourself. I will fight until everyone you know—everyone whose opinion you value more than that of your own family—sees through all the lies and the storytelling. Until they see the small, worthless man you are. The kind of man who would steal from his kids. The kind of man who would abandon his dying wife. When I am done, no one on the Upper East Side will invite you to anything. No charity balls. No philanthropic societies. You will just be Seven Park, the man who was once someone who mattered. Forgotten.”
She watched the words land on him, selfish satisfaction warming her veins. That was the thing about sharing a life with someone for decades. When you were there to share in all the highs and lows of life, you knew exactly what to say or do to provoke a certain reaction. With Seven, Jenny had spent most of their marriage knowing what not to do.
She’d avoided making him angry because it was the way of things. Her aunt had turned an unseeing eye on her husband’s extramarital affairs. Everyone had known. No one had said anything, even while he bought and maintained a home for his mistress and their two children. In Jenny’s generation of women, saying something made it real. Shattered the illusion these women had labored all their lives to construct.
It was about loyalty. Loyalty meant keeping silent and staying true. Jenny believed in loyalty. But why did it only seem to matter to the women?
Park Chilsoo was a small-minded and weak man who needed the praise and acknowledgment of other small-minded and weak men. The kind of men who cared about the legacy they left behind for their families more than the type of human beings they’d shaped them to be.
His nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed dangerously. He took a step toward her.
Jenny wanted to back away. Instead, she held fast. Defiant.
Seven scoffed. Then he relaxed, his features softening. “You won’t fight. I know you won’t. You’ve never had the stomach for it. Fifty million to walk away, right now. Fifteen million cash for each of the kids. You keep Park Avenue and the apartment in Kangnam. Everything else stays with me.” He paused. “Soljigi, you wouldn’t know what to do with all of it anyway.”
Soljigi. Truthfully.
Jenny laughed, the sound tight with pain. “Soljigi? You shouldn’t even be thinking of such a word.” She advanced a step farther. Lifted her chin, though her knees shook. Not with fear. But with emotion. Like a dam shuddering under the weight of everything it has held back for far too long. “Fifty million is not half. I want half of everything.”
“Where is your proof it isn’t half?” he asked.
“We found it. We had it. We will find it again.”
“No, you won’t. There’s nothing to find. You don’t have enough time to look anyway.” Again his expression turned sympathetic. “Take the deal. Be done with this so we can both move on. Spend the days left to you with your grandchildren, not with your lawyers.”
Jenny lunged for him. He sidestepped and took hold of her wrist.
“Let go of me,” she said.
He pushed her back, more forcefully than necessary. Jenny stumbled. Then she stood again, her legs still shaking. “You are not a man. What kind of man pushes his wife?”
“You are sick and weak. I didn’t push you. You tripped.”
“You wanted me to fall,” she said. “That would make your life much easier. But I won’t make it easier for you. This new family you want to build, the one you think will be better than the first? It won’t be. Because you will still be that poor boy’s father. Because of that, he will never learn what it means to be a man.”
