THE DOLCE VITA

To say that my life is great was… not exactly right.

It was great. I had almost everything in the palm of my hands.

But the price wasn't cheap. For life I enjoyed right now, I had to trade it with my own passion and dream.

I’m the heir of Kwon Building, Ltd, the owner of Dolce Vita’s hotel chain, also current Chief Marketing Officer of this company. My father, Kwon Young Hwan is the CEO. He might look old and calm, but look could be very deceiving. No one in this field mess with him. What he want, he’ll get. He’s very adamant in every act and decision he made. That’s the main reason why our family business expanded in such a great scale after he took over from his father, my grandparent.

That’s also the main reason why I lost my freedom.

I was only 26 when he dragged me into this business empire. I received my master degree from SNU majoring in business, delayed 2 years because I was a rebel. I don’t want do business. I fell in love with music and art. But being the only heir made you have no choice or power towards your own life. My older sister has a better luck though. She’s now working as editor in chief for Vogue Korea. My father let her go from this burdensome thing because she’s female. Just as simple as that.

Where’s the gender emancipation? .

That conservative old man is also a very great observant. He’s a good judge of talent. He can see if someone has a great potential then persuaded them to work for him. In my case, it was a coercion. I don’t know if it should be fortunate or not, but mostly his judgement was right. Most of peoples who’s recruited directly by him brought our company into starlight.

That’s… including me.

Tsk, unfortunate.

I did hope that I will fail. So he can leave me alone and let me do things that I like, which is music and art. But like I said before, he indeed had a great sense when seeing someone’s potential.

Because I did a marvelous job.

Call me cocky or arrogant, but being on the cover of Forbes Korea for two consecutive years was surely speaks much about my existence in this business world. As much as I hate this position in the first place, it also gave me lots of privilege such as money, fame, and women. I wasn't, complaining any of that. I'll never will.

I have bunches of money on my bank accounts, bunches of VIP pass to almost all places in Korea, and also bunches of women following me everywhere I go.

I’m recognizable, I made the great business offer for the company, and I have taken over other smaller but promising hotels and homestays, put them under my company name. It was my father choice, putting me as a CMO when half of the board director want me as COO.

Seeing all those achievements I made, that old fashioned old man surely has some kind of sixth sense.

~***~

NEW

“Your father sent us the file of our new candidate for Marketing Manager.”

Choi Seunghyun, my cousin, walked into my office without even knocking. I hate it.

“I won’t accept that.”

I said to him, eyes still on my laptop.

“He insisted. Besides, I already saw it and damn, she is impressive.”

I chuckled, “Your brain is inside your head. Not between your legs.”

“I’m not talking about her looks, stupid. I’m talking about her grade! Plus, she graduated from Harvard. Freaking Harvard University!”

It wasn’t about her degree nor her experience. Sure I’d heard about her once from my father. He talked so highly about this woman, saying she is the rare jewel in this business world. I could recall the way his eyes twinkling, face beaming in a mere mention of her name. She’s a good catch, I was sure of it. But living with my father started to affect me in one way or another.