Chapter 22 · His Signature, Not His Hand

"Don't move." Jae Min's arm came down across the service elevator's open doors before I could step past him. "Not until you tell me what you heard."

"I heard you selling something in Korean at eleven at night." I kept the ledger flat against my chest, both hands over the cover like it could stop him from seeing what was underneath. "That's all I heard. Ask your own translator."

"You are my translator. That's the problem."

He stepped in. The doors tried to close on his shoulder and gave up, groaning back open, and now there was no elevator, no hallway, just him, close enough that I could smell soap and something sharper underneath it, like he hadn't slept since the meeting.

"Move," I said.

"Not until you give me that book."

"It's not yours."

"Everything in this building is mine to ask about, Ms. Santos." My last name came out of his mouth like a slap, deliberate, testing whether I'd flinch. I didn't. "Especially a ledger with numbers that don't match the ones the board saw.