Money Loving CEO's Detective Lover

By the time they left the mall, it was nearly midnight and decided to call it a night. Gayoon was extremely tired by then. They got into the car and drove off. Minho noted her exhaustion.

"Where do you live?" he asked. "I'll drop you off."

"Oh, uh…"

She was unsure whether to let him drop her off. If Junho found out she was on a date, he would probably march out of the house to interrogate Minho. For some reason, she felt that letting the two men meet was not going to end on a good note.

"You can drop me off at the nearest station!" she said. "I'll take a bus home."

"The last bus left an hour ago," Minho pointed out. "And I doubt the subways will run at this time. I'll drop you off."

Gayoon was hesitating. She quickly took out her phone and texted Junho.

"Ahjusshi, where are you?" she wrote. Within seconds there was a reply.

"I'm at the hospital, checking up on your partner," he replied. "Why?"

She hurriedly wrote back. "Bring us jjajamyeong!" 

There, she thought. That should delay him for a while.

"Where do you live?" Minho asked again.

""Just off the southern intersection," she replied. "Near the residential area."

Minho sped up the car. They were relatively silent throughout the ride as Minho struggled to come up with things to ask her. Rule number 6 stated to ask her about herself. What should he ask?

"Lee Shawn," he spoke up. "What happened to him?"

"Oh, after you dug up his dead body, we cremated him," she stated. "And Kim Joon was sent to jail. He'll be behind the bars for a long time."

And in hell I hope, she added inwardly. That ghost gave her a lot of stress. Even Taejoon had not fully recovered from his fever yet. It might take him a few more days to heal.

Minho nodded and was silent again, trying to come up with more questions. Should he ask her about work? Or her favorite hobbies? Or her family? His mind swirled with questions and he decided on the latter.

"Do you live alone?" he asked. 

"No," Gayoon said. "I live with my grandmother. Ahjusshi lives as a tenant above us. You know the one who helped to raise me. He was a friend of my mom's and after she passed away, he took care of me."

"Tenant?" he said thoughtfully. He just realized that the bit about her ahjusshi was new information for him. He could not recall any such detail from her previous file when he was looking for a surrogate.

"He's mostly an introvert," Gayoon lied. "Prefers to work as a freelancer and stays in his home. His family died a long time ago and he came to live with my grandmother afterwards. He's really nice. I joined the police academy because of him. To me, he's like a father."

"What about your own father? Why isn't he around?"

Gayoon became quiet, fidgeting her fingers. She seemed as if she was recalling something very painful.

"He…" she began. "He left. He left my mom before I was born. I tracked him down a few years ago but the meeting was not a happy one."

Her mind drifted off towards the last words her father had uttered at her. She had traveled on her own during her pregnancy. There was a time when she had run away on an impulse so that she could keep her baby. 

It was a silly decision but her overwhelming emotions for her child made her realize that the hasty choice to break the curse via surrogacy was wrong. She had no one to talk to and had hoped that her father may be able to help her make a decision. Alone and heavily pregnant, she somehow made the journey through the biting winter to reach her father's house.

But instead of a warm welcome, she was treated as a plague.

"You're a curse to us!" he had yelled. "Nothing but a calamity! You and your mother had destroyed my life! Get out of here and never come back!"

Those were the last words her father had told her. The memory was still burnt into her head, scarring her for the rest of her life. That incident made her realize that she could never be a good mother to her child nor give her the stable life she needed. With a heavy heart, she had to stick by the contract she had signed with the mysterious sperm donor.

Minho knew he unknowingly touched a sore spot. Gayoon looked like she was about to cry and it made him clench his fingers tightly around the steering wheel. He did not know why but an unreasonable anger was building within him against the man who made her sad. 

Being a person who hated his own criminal father, he knew very well how it felt to be abandoned. He probably would not have hated his father if the man had taken responsibility for his actions and given them an explanation on why he murdered their mother.

But the coward ran away, leaving Minho and Mina to fend for themselves. Unlike Gayoon, they had no one to lean on or look up to as a father figure.

"That ahjusshi...was he the one who raised you all these years?" he echoed. "And not your real father?"

"Yeah," Gayoon nodded. "Ahjusshi is more of a father to me than my own dad. It's ironic, right? He never let me miss my family and always had my back. I'm grateful that he was there for me all the time…"

And she was. She was truly grateful to Junho for his kindness. It was impossible to imagine her life without him and she had vowed to clear his name so that he could return to his family someday.

Minho sighed. "You're lucky," he told her. "To have someone like him to rely on. Not everyone has that luxury."

"You speak as if you have a bad relationship with your dad too," she guessed.

"He killed my mother and ran away," Minho said abruptly. Gayoon blinked in surprise. He was so straight forward about it yet, she knew he was sad.

"I'm sorr-" she began but Minho cut through her words.

"Don't be," he shrugged. "He should be the one to say sorry. Not you.���

On that note, Minho was quiet again. Gayoon took the hint that he wanted to be alone with his thoughts and did not press the matter any further for the rest of the way.

Rule 6: Took an unexpected turn.