Page 97 of Ruthless Arrangement

“She can never know,” he says, the words carrying clearly to where I stand frozen. “Not until we’re certain.”

Ice forms in my veins, an instant, visceral reaction.She. They’re talking about me. Or…

“Your sentiment is understandable, but misguided,” Alessandro replies, voice low but sharp. “The woman killed a man to save your life. She deserves the truth, however painful.”

My mind races.What truth? What are they hiding from me?

Alessandro reaches into his jacket pocket and extracts something small, a thumb drive. He places it on the desk between them.

“Everything’s here,” he says. “The border crossing records. The academy photos. The chemical shipment manifests. It’s comprehensive, Nico. Irrefutable.”

Nico takes the drive, inserts it into his laptop. The blue glow intensifies, illuminating the harsh angles of his face as he scrolls through whatever contents the drive holds. His expression transforms from skepticism to stunned disbelief.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, the profanity shocking coming from his usually controlled lips. “All these years. Right under everyone’s noses.”

A cold dread spreads through me.They’re not talking about me.

Alessandro leans in closer, lowering his voice further. “What about Lea? She’ll have to be told?—”

“Not yet,” Nico cuts him off. “There’s still a chance this isn’t what it appears to be.”

My fingers grip the doorframe, knuckles white with tension.What isn’t what it appears to be?

Alessandro sighs, the sound heavy with resignation. “Nico, if Professor Song is actually a North Korea operative coordinating a fentanyl pipeline through Moretti’s distribution network, we need to?—”

A sound escapes me, half gasp, half strangled cry, before I can stop it. The words slam into me like physical blows:North Korean. Operative. My mother. Fentanyl.

Both men whip toward the door. Nico’s face, when he recognizes me, does something I’ve never seen before. It crumples, just for an instant, with what looks like genuine regret. Then the mask slides back into place, but it’s too late. I’ve seen beneath it.

I push the door fully open, stepping into the room on legs that threaten to give way beneath me.

“What did you just say about my mother?” My voice sounds foreign, distant, as if someone else is speaking through me.

Nico rises slowly from his chair, hands raised in a gesture that might be meant to calm but feels patronizing. “Lea?—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off, turning instead to Alessandro. “Say it again. What you just said about my mother.”

Alessandro’s eyes flick to Nico, seeking permission, I realize with a flare of anger.As if I’m some delicate flower who needs protection from the truth. As if I haven’t spent the last six years digging for buried facts that powerful men would prefer to keep hidden.

Nico gives an almost imperceptible nod, and something in his expression shifts. The diplomat retreating, the strategist emerging.

Alessandro straightens, assuming the formal bearing that seems to come naturally to him. “Your mother, Professor Eunji Song, emigrated to the United Kingdom about twenty-five years ago, and then together with you and your father, moved to the United States under false pretenses. Your mother…” he hesitates, but only briefly, “is not South Korean. The evidence suggests she is a deep-undercover North Korea operative, using her academic credentials to facilitate a major drug trade operation to help finance military expenses for the regime.”

The words hang in the air between us, monstrous and incomprehensible. I want to laugh, to dismiss this as an absurd conspiracy theory, but the gravity in Alessandro’s tone, the documents spread across the desk, the way Nico won’t quite meet my eyes. The room seems to shrink, the air thinning until I can barely draw a breath.

“SHOW ME!” I demand, the words tearing from my throat.

Nico hesitates only a moment before turning his laptop toward me. The screen is split into two images side by side. On the left is a young woman in a crisp North Korea military uniform, her posture rigid, her expression severe but unmistakable; my mother’s eyes, my mother’s mouth, my mother’s distinctive cheekbones. On the right is the graduation photo I’ve seen a hundred times on her office wall. Eunji Song accepting her doctorate from Seoul National University, beaming with pride.

“That’s…” I start, but can’t finish. Because it is her. Unmistakably her, in both images.

My fingers move to the trackpad, scrolling through the open files with a detached, mechanical precision that belies the earthquake happening inside me. Shipping manifests for pharmaceutical components moving through shell companies with innocuous names. Bank transfers through offshore accounts, the money trail obscured by layer upon layer of corporate facades. Surveillance photos, recent ones, of my mother meeting with a man I recognize as one of Moretti’s lieutenants, the same one who confronted me at the gala.

Each new piece of evidence is another blow, dismantling the foundation of everything I’ve ever known. A lifetime of memories reconfiguring themselves in sickening new patterns.

The bedtime stories she told me about escaping from an oppressive regime—true, but not the one I’d been led to believe. The “research trips” that took her away for weeks at a time. The locked filing cabinet in her study that I was never allowed to open. The way she stiffened whenever certain political topics came up, steering conversations in safer directions.

Oh god. My father. Did he know? Was he part of it? Or was their relationship just another cover to hide behind?

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