CHAPTER 215: CHAPTER 214. SHIFTING TIDE ON COUNTING DAYS

"Huh...that’s unexpected," Sol raised his brows, propping her cheeks behind the counter. "Although you did say he’s an ambitious one."

Sarah clicked her tongue. "He wanted to curry favor with my...the chairman," she said, annoyed at the uncomfortable feeling that she still couldn’t shake away. It was as if someone was trying to gather the pieces of her broken heart and was trying to glue them haphazardly. "The other recordings are only useful for blackmail, but he could make the chairman owe him with this one."

"Well, I could respect the hustle," Sol smirked. He tilted his head and snapped his fingers after musing for a bit. "Hmm...did you scold him or something? I remembered he was calling me to apologize after the New Year. I was just woken up so I thought he was sleeptalking or something."

Sarah smirked. "Just a bit. I don’t want him snooping around when we get to the last phase."

"No one would dare," Sol shook her head.

"No one would usually dare to do that kind of drug bust, but sometimes people are overly ambitious," Sarah shrugged. "Just in case."

She swatted the steam coming from the wine glass in front of her, sighing in satisfaction at the scent of spices permeating her senses as she sipped the contents. "Oh, you put in ginger this time."

"You were nagging me so much that I had no choice," Sol rolled his eyes. "Why don’t you just ask your puppy to make it at home rather than waking me up on my day off?"

"She said it doesn’t taste the same," Hajin pursed his lips. "I would have thought you were trying to seduce her if you didn’t have a lover already."

"I didn’t," Sol replied dryly while pushing the perking head of the other person in the counter--the only one beside them in Helios.

Sarah glanced at the pouting actor, who clearly came together with Sol from the manager’s room. "Even a renowned actor can’t seduce you, huh?"

"Oh, I’m not that well-known yet," Ahn Noah laughed softly. "Just in a niche circle."

"But I heard you rejected a lot of main lead offers," Sarah curled her eyes as she glanced at the manager. "Is it because you don’t want to spend too much time on the set?"

Noah clapped his hands. "Oh! How do you know, Miss Boss?"

"Go home," Sol shot both of them a mean look, but Sarah and Noah just laughed in response.

Haa...he should just be grateful that the twins weren’t there. Or Austin.

A bunch of babies, these people.

"So?" Sol poured more mulled wine into Sarah’s glass to shut her up. "What will you do with the shares? You’ll need more now."

Sarah sighed. Yeah, that was why he felt annoyed at Jang Haneul. Although Lee Hyun did not involve himself with the company, he had more than five percent of shares in HS Stones--the whole reason why he could fund his lifestyle only from the dividends. Apparently, his mother--Sarah’s grandma--felt pity about how he always got sidelined and gave her shares to him before she passed away.

"Austin should try to take the first wife’s shares," Sarah tapped on the glass while calculating how much they already secured. "And we really need some of the executives to come to my side."

If she had known they would become this important, Sarah would have spent some time talking to them.

"What if..." Sol places the whole pot of mulled wine in front of Noah before looking at Sarah with an arched brow. "What if he told you to be the heiress?"

Sarah scruched her face and raised her glass as if she wanted to throw the contents at the manager--before deciding that it was too delicious to be wasted. Just the thought of becoming the heiress already made her sick to the stomach.

"But that would make things easier, wouldn’t it?" Hajin poked her puffed cheek.

Sarah frowned. "What easier? I’ll have to wait until his death, then."

"But..." Hajin opened his mouth, before clasping his hand over it. "Hmm...it doesn’t feel right to say it."

"You mean he’s dying?" Sarah finished it anyway.

"Really?" Sol raised his brows and Noah covered his own ears--as if he hadn’t heard much scandalous stuff in the past hour. "The poison is that bad?"

Sarah leaned back and crossed her arms, lips twisted uncomfortably. Hajin stroked her back and chuckled, taking over the conversation.

"It had been accumulating for probably half a year at this point," Hajin said. "It’s the kind that could stack damage over time--you know, like how mercury and white lead in makeup a long time ago. The chairman himself doesn’t like doing medical check-ups, so..."

"He’s just a stupid narcissist who thought he’d join the old geezers club if he did medical checkups," Sarah scoffed. "He can’t go after young women if he feels old."

"And with you causing chaos outside, any deterioration of his health would be associated with stress," Sol nodded. "So, it’s impossible to be cleaned?"

Hajin shrugged. "It seems like there’s already permanent damage at least in his lung," he said. "Even if he tried to live healthily from now on, his condition is irreversible. And at his age, he would just deteriorate more."

Sarah just sipped her mulled wine in silence. The one who was the most confused about her state of mind was probably herself. Didn’t she want the chairman to suffer? Didn’t she say she couldn’t care less if the old man dropped dead?

Just because he showed a bit of affection, she was shaken this much?

Sarah felt like shit.

"But it’s true, then; he would need to name a successor asap," Sol said. "At least, people in the company would urge him to."

Sarah clicked her tongue. "There’s no need for a successor in the first place."

"That said, Princess..." Hajin smiled and traded the empty wine glass for a warm water. "You also have your deal with your older sister."

"Ah..." once again, Sarah completely forgot about it. "Well...I promised my support if her name came up on the board of directors’ meeting, but that meeting..."

If everything went according to her plan, it would end in a month, before winter was over. The end of her plan, and the end of her father’s empire.

"It won’t be about the successor at all," Sarah shook her head.

"True," Sol nodded. "But what will you do if the chairman really asks you?"

"It won’t happen," Sarah stubbornly frowned. "Since it would mean he is admitting that he wouldn’t be the chairman for much longer."

* * *

"You can’t postpone it any longer, Sir."

The executive gathered in the chairman’s office the day he returned to the company after taking a few days of rest after the New Year. It was clear how they had been talking about it the way they immediately hounded him after all the glibbs about his health.

The chairman, who had to ask his mistress to put a bit of makeup to make him look less pale, responded coldly. "Are you saying I can die anytime now?"

"Of course, not, Sir!" Director Yoon laughed nervously. "But no one knows what will happen tomorrow. Even any one of us could have an accident tonight...right?"

The directors nodded while looking at each other, suddenly talking about all kinds of fatal experiences they had in the past. "T-that’s right, Sir. Of course, we believe you will lead us for a long time still."

The chairman didn’t look pleased at all, staring sharply at the directors who looked like a bunch of piranhas all of a sudden. Thankfully for these executives, the chief secretary stepped up for them with a reasonable excuse. "That being said, we need to start educating a new heir, Mr. Chairman."

"Mr. Park is right, Sir. Young Mas--I mean...that person was working in the company for quite a while, learning the ropes little by little," Director Shin chimed in right away. "We can start the education right away if you choose someone now. Surely, you don’t want the one you chose as the heir to struggle from the sudden burden in the future."

As annoying as it was, the chairman knew their concern had a point. Even without his sudden health problem, not having any apparent heir might shake the shareholders’ trust.

"Hmm..."

The chairman closed his eyes in contemplation, and the executives quite literally held their breath while waiting. At least if they already knew who would be appointed heir, they could start to pivot their position to the future captain.

"Fine," the chairman exhaled slowly. "I’ll have to think about it first, but I’ll make a decision soon."

Since the chairman already said that, pushing him more would only anger him. The executives left after talking a bit more about the companies while the chairman was resting, each one holding back from asking how soon would that ’soon’ be.

"If he said that..." Director Shin whispered to Director Han inside the elevator. "It means he already decided on one, right?"

"As expected, it’s her?"

They glanced at the chief secretary, who only gave them a subtle smile.