Worlds Apart - Taekook - Book 2

Chapter 263 - Pleasure & Business

"I don't have to be here, Mrs Yang. Ours ties are no longer binding."

Ho-Joon decided that he would visit Nuri after too many missed phone calls and text contact from her. He wasn't obliged to have any contact with her at all but if he knew what she was up to, he could at the very least, report back to Han-Shik if he was asked.

"Why are you here then?" Nuri demanded to know.

"Because I owe it to the family. I didn't think it was fair to abandon you completely."

"When can I go home?"

Ho-Joon didn't hang around after the brothers had left the legal meeting that day. Mi-Youn showed him out via the staff exit and they'd left Nuri with her dramatic self. He understood the shock caused by the will contents but he knew that the impact wouldn't have been so great, had the woman not believed that she was untouchable.

"The house is no longer your home. It was always Ryan's property and he passed it on to Jungkook."

It wasn't Ho-Joon's problem that Nuri relied on the legalities of marriage when it came to inheritance so he had little sympathy for the woman who betrayed the sanctity of her union and still expected to emerge victorious. Ryan's former partner was the opposite of Nuri and Ho-Joon saw that his boss had been happy. Advice fell on deaf ears when Ho-Joon urged Ryan not to give his relationship up for heirs, but that's what he did. He didn't doubt that Ryan grew to love Nuri but it wasn't in the same league and he thought it was bordering on insanity to trade what he had for a legacy.

"What is Jungkook going to do with it? He lives in Seoul? He hardly needs the money now he's got his sugar daddy! That house is mine... I have belongings in there!"

Ho-Joon hadn't expected Jungkook to leave like he had on his eighteenth birthday. He'd always anticipated difficulties in getting the youngest son to comply with the world Ryan wanted to raise him in. Jungkook was never happy to go shopping and didn't like being chauffeured around. The youngest son had been non-compliant the majority of the time, yet that was the biggest tragedy because Ho-Joon knew how misplaced the trust in Jung-Yoo was and he always believed that Jungkook had the making of a good businessman.

"I have a list of the items that are yours and they are in boxes in one of the garages, which I can access. What Jungkook chooses to do with the property is up to him, now."

"Han-Shik won't like that!!"

"That is for Han-Shik to sort out with his brother, should he have any reservations about it."

"My boys will soon come around. They won't let me be left out in the cold."

Ho-Joon notes that Nuri was hardly 'out in the cold as one of her friends had a very nice house with a guest room. "You aren't out in the cold, Mrs Yang." He says, looking around the tidy, well maintained, nicely furnished living room.

"My friends won't turn their backs on me, especially knowing what Ryan did and how he turned my boys against me. When he told me on his death bed that my part in this was done and it was him who'd reunited the boys... I was devastated... he used me!"

Creases appear in Ho-Joon's forehead as he raises his eyebrows and frowns at the same time. His face expressing his disbelief at the stories Nuri tells herself. Not only was he by Ryan's side, in the hospital room throughout his admission there, only leaving if Ryan was sleeping... he knew the situation and the man well enough to know that he would never have said such a thing, even in his last moments.

"I am leaving now. I have things to do and there isn't anything I can help you with. If you change your mind about the boxes in the garage, you have my number."