The Heiress

Chapter 108

Chaeyoung bit her lips as she stared at the vault in front of her. Her heartbeat was as loud as thunder, wildly racking against her chest. She clenched her fists before taking a deep breath.

'This is it.' She thought while trying to compose herself. She then slowly opened the vault and held her breath, as the light of the room slowly reached the innermost parts of it.

'Eh?' She looked confusedly at the box that was inside the vault. It looked ordinary, nothing but a brown box made of wood. It was not big, just about one foot wide and half a foot tall. She slowly took it out of the vault and carefully put it onto the table, which was at the center of the room.

Then, she slowly opened it.

Chaeyoung furrowed her brows when she saw a stack of papers inside the box. Articles and some photos were revealed, the moment she opened the wooden box. No letters, no hidden messages were inside. Just a lot of news articles and a small stack of papers that were neatly folded and held by a rubber band.

The news articles were written in the language of a western country. Chaeyoung guessed that it was the language of Italy. A country full of small gangs, mafias and mercenaries. It was a country, controlled and occupied by the most ruthless people in the world. That country was the home of mafia and drug empires.

This was not the first time that Chaeyoung encountered that language. However, she could only recognize a small number of words from the article. 'I need to learn this language as soon as possible to read these articles,' she thought as she continued separating the articles from the photos inside the box.

Though she could not understand the whole article, Chaeyoung could clearly see from the photos that those news articles were about an explosion that killed a lot of kids and innocent people.

Then, her eyes were glued to the last photo in the box. It was an old, yellowish photo of six people, wearing an all-black uniform.

"Military," she thought out loud before she held her breath in surprise. She held the photo closer to her eyes so she could see the features of the people on it more clearly.

The first one to the left was a western man who looked very tall and bulky. Chaeyoung wondered if he was the leader of the group. Then, next to him was another man who was half feet a shorter than him. He was holding a pistol and proudly showing it to the camera. Her eyes did not linger on the second person too much as she looked at the woman next to that man. The woman was sporting a bob with....

This woman…

Was her mother!

Once again Chaeyoung's heart started beating even faster. What was her mother doing with some western men? Why was she wearing their uniform?

Claire was smiling shyly, she was holding what looked like a military issued binoculars. To her left was a man who was looking at her, instead of the camera.

Chaeyoung narrowed her eyes at the man before she let out a gasp. That man looked exactly like Henry Lee!

Chaeyoung widened her eyes as she looked at the photo again. Her mother and Henry Lee were together in the same photo! Was it possible that they were members of the same military unit before?

Her eyes traveled to the person next to Henry Lee. It was a woman that was on the other photo with her mother. The photo that was given by Jia Yan's father. She was still smiling as she held her hands on top of Henry's head, creating some sort of letter V that looked like horns at the back of his head. The woman's other hand was also doing the same to the man next to her.

"Jia Yan's father," she murmured as she remembered Mr. Jia's photo from the internet.

Chaeyoung felt helpless while looking at the photos. Just who was her mother? Her mind was buzzing with ideas as she let out a long sigh and looked at the articles again.