For six years, I cared for eighty-two-year-old Mrs. Sun-Hee Choi in her Richmond District apartment in San Francisco, refusing every envelope of cash she handed me.
Attorney Arthur Pendelton’s voice on the phone was clipped and formal. “Daniel, the court’s lockout order on Mrs. Choi’s residence takes effect in forty-eight hours. You need to retrieve any personal items you might need from the apartment before then.”
He didn’t mention the restraining orders Oakes was threatening to file. He didn’t have to. The pressure was already immense.
I used my key, the heavy brass cool in my palm, and let myself into Mrs. Choi’s apartment. The air inside was still and cool, thick with the scent of old wood, dried flowers, and her faint, lingering perfume. Dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight slicing through the drawn blinds. Every object, every faded photograph on the wall, seemed to hold a memory of her.
The place felt profoundly empty without her gentle presence.
I walked through the rooms, picking up a framed photo of us laughing in her garden, a small porcelain teacup I’d often used. My official task was to retrieve “personal items,” but I also felt a desperate need to find something, anything, that could explain Oakes’s sudden turn. Rachel Adler’s words about his foundation’s debt still echoed in my ears, making his offer of $100,000 for the building seem even more predatory.
Upstairs, the attic stairs creaked under my weight. It was a place I’d only been a few times, usually to help Mrs. Choi bring down seasonal decorations. Boxes of old letters, family heirlooms wrapped in yellowed newspaper, and forgotten keepsakes lined the walls.
In a dark corner, tucked behind a stack of Korean folk art prints, stood a small, intricately carved antique Korean chest. It was made of dark, polished wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I remembered Mrs. Choi telling me it had belonged to her grandmother. I carefully opened the lid.
Inside, beneath layers of silk scarves and old photographs, I found a bundle of official-looking papers, secured with a frayed silk ribbon. They were not old family letters. They were certified demand letters, legal documents, their edges crisp despite their age.
My hands trembled as I carefully untied the ribbon. The letters were primarily in Korean, but the bold headers and official stamps were unmistakable. They were dated from four to five years ago, long before I ever met Mrs. Choi. My eyes scanned the text, picking out familiar names and amounts.
Min-Jae Choi. Mrs. Choi’s late son.
And then, the numbers hit me like a physical blow: “₩1,250,000,000.” A quick mental conversion to US dollars, based on the current exchange rate, made my stomach clench. That was approximately $1,150,000.
The letters detailed “illegal gambling debts” and referenced an “offshore Seoul syndicate.” They were aggressive, threatening. They demanded immediate payment from Min-Jae Choi.
Tucked among these demand letters was another, more recent document, dated just a few months before Mrs. Choi’s passing. This one was in English, addressed to her directly. It was a formal notice from a US-based law firm, acting on behalf of the “Seoul International Credit Recovery Syndicate.”
The notice stated they were actively “monitoring the estate of Sun-Hee Choi for asset recovery against outstanding liabilities of Min-Jae Choi.” It cited complex international legal precedents for pursuing debts against heirs when the primary debtor was deceased and the estate held significant assets.
I slumped onto a dusty trunk, the papers fanned out around me. This was the first time I had ever heard about Min-Jae’s debts. Mrs. Choi had never mentioned them, not once. It wasn’t just a simple personal inheritance. It was something far more complicated, far more dangerous.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Offshore syndicate. $1.15 million in gambling debts. A direct claim on Mrs. Choi’s estate. And Master Oakes, the man trying to freeze everything, had been Mrs. Choi’s husband’s apprentice decades ago. He must have known.
The cold, still air of the attic suddenly felt heavy with unspoken secrets. I clutched the demand letters, realizing that Oakes’s actions, Rachel Adler’s claims about his own debts, and these hidden syndicate demands were all part of a far larger, more intricate web.
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