Empire of the Ring

When Youngho told her that he could help her family, Katya's eyes sparkled in hope. However, she did not know if she could fully trust Youngho. Many men tried to help her in order to earn her affections, and Youngho might be just another man looking for a love interest.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

At Youngho's question, Katya looked up at him. Mesmerized by her beautiful eyes, Youngho almost spit out the coffee he was drinking. To calm himself down, he asked for permission to light a cigarette.

"Are you interested in my personal story?"

"Well, a little bit. I don't see a lot of female field agents living alone in a remote area."

"…"

"But please don't tell me about how you became an agent. You know it's taboo."

Katya smiled.

"Well, you might be wondering how old I am. I'm a 31-year-old single mama. I have an eight-year-old girl in Volgograd and my mom's raising her for now."

"…"

"I knew that you would have a contact in Volgograd since you said that you had Russian food there."

'Wow, she's a mother of an eight-year-old? I didn't expect that.' Youngho also noticed that she was a very smart woman. She had been listening to the very little details of Youngho's words and analyzing the information from them.

"Well, Volgograd is my responsibility."

"I assumed so when I heard that the agent looking over South Ossetia had changed."

'Wow, this woman is just brilliant. She's above me,' thought Youngho.

Since his job was only to collect information and report them, he did not analyze them. However, she sounded like she could be at a higher position than a field agent. Youngho was glad that someone smart was under his supervision. She would be a great resource for him in the future.

Youngho changed the subject and asked about her family's problem. Katya was silent for a moment and started talking as if she was determined. She had a husband who had passed away. After his death, she became responsible for his debt and she had been paying it off every month, but she could never decrease the original amount.

Easily said, her dead husband borrowed money from a private moneylender.

The moneylending business was usually done by mafias. Youngho thought Sergey would be able to resolve her problem. It was a good chance for Youngho to help her and earn her trust. If the money problem was resolved, Katya would be able to focus on her job.

"May I ask how much the original debt was and how much you paid off as interest?"

She showed him a little note page that was full of numbers. When she explained what the numbers meant, Youngho became upset because she was paying off a ridiculous amount of interest.

The original debt was 30,000 dollars and she had paid off 80,000 dollars as interest, but there were still more interest to pay on top of the original amount.

Because she could not pay off any interest during the first year of her husband's passing, her debt had been snowballing into a ridiculous amount because of the high interest rate. It was not clear how long she had been an agent, but she had been putting all of her money into the paying off the debt.

Youngho felt bad. She could have resolved her problem by telling Agent Philip. Was Philip only interested in her face and body? Youngho wondered since Philip could have also figured out about her issues if he held a deep conversation with her.

The moneylenders would not be Yaniv's organization since he never did such petty business. Probably, they would be some backstreet scumbags.

***

Sergey did not answer Youngho's call. It seemed that he usually did not answer numbers that he did not know. When Youngho called for the third time, he finally answered in Russian.

"Mr. Sergey, this is Lee Youngho. My phone does not work where I am at now."

"Mr. Lee, you're already in South Ossetia?"

Since Youngho already talked about opening a retail shop in the region, Sergey realized where he was right away.

"Yes. I'm at Tskhinvali Hotel in South Ossetia. I'm calling to ask a personal favor."

Sergey was willing to help Youngho since he had never asked for a personal favor in the past. Youngho explained everything for about ten minutes and told him the name of the moneylenders. Sergey made sure of Youngho's room number a few times and said he would call him back in a few hours.

Katya was embarrassed to show her personal weak side to others, but she waited patiently in the hope of writing off her debt. It was when they were having coffee and deciding the prices for the items of the retail store in the afternoon that the lady at the front desk called for Youngho.

It was Sergey's call. He asked for the hotel's fax number, so Youngho let him know. A minute later, the front lady brought two pages of paper to Youngho. Since he did not know enough Russian to read what they were, he passed them to Katya.

Still talking to Sergey, Youngho looked at Katya's face. Her big eyes were even getting bigger. Sergey told Youngho that her debt was now gone. Sitting across from Youngho, Katya wiped her tears, saying that the document was proof that she had paid off the full amount of the debt.

"Did you pay off her debt?" asked Youngho.

"What?! No. I just told them that was enough of her payment."

There was no way that Sergey would have been that nice to the moneylenders. He must have threatened them by force. Also, he might have gotten some money out of them in the process. Youngho thanked him and hung up after setting up their meeting in Volgograd in a few days.

Katya wanted to drink again for appreciation. Youngho did not want to get drunk again. He politely escorted her to her house and was knocked out when he got back to his room.

***

On a plane to Volgograd, Youngho smiled while thinking about Katya's kiss before hen he left Tskhinvali. She said that she was just thankful for Youngho, but since she kissed him on the lips, Youngho did not know what to do. Youngho could not stop smiling, remembering the sweet kiss of the beautiful woman. He acted cool, but in the end, he was like other men after all.

Sergey greeted Youngho at the Volgograd Airport.

Youngho got on his car, but they were not going in the direction of Yaniv's mansion.

"Youngho, we're going to the family you asked for help for."

Sergey told him about the family. Katya's mom and daughter were living in very poor conditions because of the vicious moneylenders. Because it was related to Youngho, Sergey and Yaniv wanted to help out the family. So, they gave them a new apartment and home appliances using the money that they took from the moneylenders. Youngho was thankful for Sergey and Yaniv's thoughtfulness. On the way to their apartment, Youngho bought a little stuffed animal and cookies that an eight-year-old would like. After driving a while, he was now in front of their apartment.

Youngho rang the bell. The sound coming from the inside stopped as soon as the bell rang. They seemed to be afraid of visitors because of the trauma from the moneylenders. When he pressed the bell again, the door opened with a safety latch locked.

A wrinkly woman in her fifties peeked out with a fearful face. She resembled Katya. After trying to talk in his bad Russian, Youngho asked Sergey to interpret for him. When he said that he was a friend of Katya, she finally opened the door for them.

The house was still untidy from the recent move, but Youngho could see a new TV, refrigerator, and other home appliances. When he handed the gifts he brought to the cute-looking little girl, she smiled brightly. When he told Katya's mother that he was a business partner from South Ossetia, she started crying. The little girl began to sob, missing her mother.

Katya's mother offered them to stay for dinner but Youngho said he would come back tomorrow. He handed the mother the 10,000 dollars from Katya with another 10,000 dollars from his pocket and left the apartment. Listening to how she suffered from cruel moneylenders, Youngho could not stand sitting there for another moment in anger.

She even said that the moneylenders tried to sell Katya to prostitution, so she sent her to a relative in South Ossetia. Katya was on the edge of a cliff when she left here. Looking at Youngho breathing heavily in anger, Sergey told Youngho that Yaniv took care of the moneylenders and patted his back.

In Yaniv's mansion, Youngho kept sighing as he drank vodka with Yaniv and Sergey. He was still upset about what happened to Katya's family. To Sergey and Yaniv, who were leading members of the biggest mafia organization in Southern Russia, moneylending was not an unusual business. In the very beginning when they made the organization, they could get bigger only through petty moneylending businesses. Even though they now had changed their organization into a company of legal businesses, they still felt guilty.

"Are you blaming us too?" asked Yaniv.

"No, don't worry about me. I'm just still in shock. People still have to live, so when they are rejected by banks, they turn to moneylenders. I know it's part of the cycle."

At Youngho's remark, Sergey suggested his idea.

"Boss, it's impossible for moneylenders to receive less interest rates than the bank, but we've got to get rid of those malicious moneylenders someday."

"That's good. I also want to forget about my dark past. Sergey, you should get to the business then."

"Yes, boss."

"I am a legal businessman now. Our organization shouldn't be dealing with illegal stuff by now. We'll be able to get by doing our oil business."

Yaniv laughed loudly, looking at Youngho as he continued, "We've got our lucky charm here. Because of Lee, President Putin is in my favor. What about the wine and daily necessities trading business? They're making a ton of money! Don't they sound better than petty moneylending business? Hahaha!"

At Yaniv's words, Youngho thought of something.