She reached for the top sheet at last. Legal language lined the page in clean paragraphs, the structure unmistakable. Engagement agreement. Confidentiality. Joint statement parameters. Financial ring fences. She read faster than most people expected. He let her.
When she finished, she set the paper down and looked at him. "You left one thing out."
"What."
"The name of the man in the video."
Evan's jaw set, the first crack in his control all evening. He shook his head once. "Not yet."
"Then you are still asking me to sign blind."
"I am asking you to trust that revealing his name tonight would make you act before you are protected. I will not give him that advantage."
"So you will protect me by keeping me ignorant."
"I will protect you by keeping you alive in this game long enough to learn on your terms."
The bluntness again. She held his eyes.
"Say his name," she said quietly, "and I will give you mine."
His gaze did not move from hers. She could feel the measure in it, could almost hear the scales. He wanted speed. He wanted yes. He wanted it without bleeding secrets he had kept folded for years.
He did not give her the name.
He shifted instead. "You want a guarantee that does not rely on trust. Here." He slid a smaller envelope across the table. Inside was a slim metal card engraved with a code and a bank name she knew only from financial magazines that treated wealth like weather. "This releases funds to Yoo Industries immediately upon our public announcement, held in a separate trust that I cannot touch and you control."
Claire stared at it. "A bribe," she said, though her voice lacked the bite she intended.
"A guarantee," he corrected. "Your father wakes up solvent. Your staff stop bleeding. Your vendors get paid. The photographers get a story. And our enemies get a message."
She closed the envelope and set it on the table between them like a neutral piece on a chessboard.
"How would you announce it," she asked.
"Quietly confident," he said. "A single photograph. A short statement. No breathless headlines. We let our stillness do the work."
"You sound practiced," she said.
"I am."
"Because you have done it before."
He held her gaze, and this time she saw the smallest shift. Not guilt. History.
Kangwoo cleared his throat softly. "Sir."
Evan did not look away from her. "He is outside," he said.
"Who," Claire asked.
"The man from the rooftop," Evan said. "He would like a word with you before you decide. He believes last night gives him that right."
Her spine went cold. "You brought me here and told him where."
"I brought you here so he would come to a room I control," Evan said. "Where he cannot record you, where he cannot corner you without me as witness. If you want to hear him, hear him here."
"And if I do not."
"Then he will find you somewhere less safe," Evan said, and there was no threat in it, only fact.
Claire looked past Evan to the river. The city was a reflection broken by current. She thought of her father's tired voice, of the list Han sent, of a photograph taken from too close, of an invitation that had not asked so much as predicted.
She turned back. "Let him in," she said.
Kangwoo left. The room seemed to change shape while they waited, the air taking on the held quality of a theater just before the curtain lifts. Evan stood but did not step closer. They were on the same side of the table now, and she could feel the difference like a shift in temperature.
The door opened. The man entered without hurry, coat unbuttoned, eyes sharp with a patience that had nothing to do with kindness.
"You have made yourself very visible," he said to Claire, as if continuing a conversation they had never begun.
"And you keep arriving where you are not invited," Evan said.
The man smiled without warmth. "Invitation is a formality rich men perform for each other. I prefer outcomes."
He turned his attention fully to Claire. "You can end this quickly. Walk away from him, and your father signs a small agreement that keeps him comfortable for the rest of his life. You keep your name. You keep your freedom. You avoid the spectacle."
"And what do you keep," Claire asked.
"A door," he said. "The one he wants to close."
He did not look at Evan when he said it. He did not need to.
Claire felt the pressure of their attention like two weather fronts colliding over open water. She was the ship between them, fragile only if she believed she was.
"You both speak in pieces," she said. "I am tired of puzzles. I am tired of being treated like the mechanism and not the mover."
"Then move," Evan said, the words low.
The man's eyes narrowed a fraction. "Choose well."
She looked from one to the other. Then she reached for the envelope, the metal card heavy in her hand, the code etched with a certainty that felt like a road and a warning in one.
"Tomorrow morning," she said, voice steady. "Nine o'clock. I will announce my decision."
The man studied her, then nodded once, as if recalculating. He turned to leave, paused, and spoke without turning back.
"Your mother would not have chosen him," he said.
The door clicked shut behind him.
The words hung in the room like smoke. Claire heard her own breath, heard the quiet thrum of the river beyond glass, heard the sound a heart makes when a past you did not expect steps into the present.
She looked at Evan. "Do not use her to move me."
"I did not," he said. "He did."
"Then tomorrow," she said, closing her hand around the envelope until the edges pressed into her palm. "Nine o'clock."
Evan inclined his head. "I will be ready."
"I will be ready," she said.
She stood. Kangwoo opened the door as if he had heard her thought. The corridor smelled like cedar again, patient and clean. When she reached the vestibule, she glanced back. Evan was still by the table, watching the river as if it might spell out a future he would prefer to write himself.
Outside, the night held its breath. Claire stepped into it, the city's cold moving over her skin like a promise.
Tomorrow, she would choose.
And whichever path she took, someone would finally learn that she was not the hinge.
She was the lock.