HEART LIES

GEPETTO

Time passed, and Gong Yoo was a dedicated father and husband. His son was five years old, and so was Jae Kyeong.

People said the private jet from Jeju got caught in a storm, and so Ho Gong Yoo, Cha Shin Hye, and their 5-year-old son perished on the journey back to Seoul.

Hyeon Ju fainted in front of the news, hospitalized for a week. The woman couldn't accept the person she despised and loved the most was gone.

What surprised her more was to be visited by an older man who seemed to have aged prematurely.

"Hwang Hyeon Ju pudi give me your son," Gong Yoo's father asked.

Hyeon Ju chuckled, "I beg your pardon."

"Gong Yoo is gone, I have no heir, I can not leave my empire-."

"Wait a minute,기억 안나? [kiyeokanna=don't you remember] because I do. What was it you said? A dog without pedigree, a bastard."

"Hyeon Ju-ah, the man left his cane to his secretary to hold and got down on his knees, "jebal, Hwang Hyeon Ju, give me your son, I will make him the one and only heir."

"And what will you do of his pedigree? He is still a-."

"Let's work together to cleanse him. Help me wash Jae Kyeong first by letting him have my name and adding him to the family register."

And so in that hospital room, Hyeon Ju gave her son up for adoption, offering him a better future, but soon she would offer Ho Jae Kyeong the world.

Her business flourished. Hyeon Ju opened hotels and underground casinos with the best hostesses. She married twice once a businessman in Taiwan who also happened to be a drug lord. He died killed by rivals, Hyeon Ju's relationship with him was poison full of abuse, possessive and violent Tang Wai made Hyeon doubt about blowing candles on her next birthday cake.

After she married Yeom Jang, it was a consensual marriage, he was a good friend, and he was gay. Hyeon was his cover; she played the good wife handling business while he met his Brazilian lover, depressive, he committed suicide.

The environment she evolved in wasn't compatible with raising a child.

Jae Kyung went to live in the Ho mansion, where he received the highest education and taught to ignore his mother's existence.

And as promised, she worked to purify Jae's lineage; the quickest way was to hold the families. For that, she didn't aim at the fathers, who were like old tigers roaming in dens.

No, she aimed at the children, the future heirs who would sit with her son at negotiation tables.

One by one, she would tint them with drops of the darkness of her concoction.

Hyeon Ju read, she saw what motivated beings: Greed, love, fame, money.

Also, she saw the addiction which ruined them, drugs, alcohol, gambling, compulsive lying, sex, everyone had an inner monster.

It was the monster who she would bait to finally put a leash around their neck, making them her servant, which, when the time would come, she would hand to Jae Kyeong.

Chae Ji Seong, the Nams, the chungs, and many were just puppets on Hyeon Ju's multiple strings. Without forgetting the businessmen, women, celebrities, politicians, and others who used her services, Seoul, no, the country, Hyeon Ju held them all. A puppet master who could cut the lifeline of her chiffon dolls at any moment. Ji Seong seemed to be running free; the time had come to tighten the leash around his collar.