By the time Seoul’s most dangerous man closed his hand over my champagne glass at a Manhattan charity gala, I stopped believing in free will.

The crystal stem was trembling between my fingers, the Hudson glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the New York skyline burned behind his shoulders like some kind of warning. The room smelled like money and old power—Wall Street executives, Hollywood types, Korean conglomerate heirs flown in on private jets. My father’s world. The world he kept me in like a pretty, protected secret.

“Rita,” my father said, his voice smooth and practiced beside me. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

I turned, fully prepared to paste on my polite, dutiful-daughter smile.

And then I saw him.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Black suit cut like it had been sewn straight onto his body. Dark tie, darker eyes. He didn’t look like the other men in the ballroom—the ones with soft bellies and softer hands. He looked…dangerous. Coiled. Like every move was calculated.

“Kang Minho,” my father said, clapping a hand to the man’s shoulder, like he was just another business partner. “He handles our East Asian operations out of Seoul.”

Minho’s gaze moved over me in one slow, assessing sweep—my burgundy silk gown, the curve of my waist, the bare line of my shoulders—lingering a heartbeat too long on every place my father had told me to cover.

Something shifted in his expression.

Not simple appreciation. Not polite interest.

Hunger.

Recognition.

It hit me so hard my breath stuttered. The noise of the ballroom blurred, like someone had turned the volume down on the entire world.

Minho held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure,” he said, his voice deep and low, the faintest trace of a Seoul accent softening the edges of his English. Velvet over steel.

I placed my hand in his, because what else could I do?

Warmth. Solidness. His grip was firm but careful, like I was something breakable. When his thumb brushed my knuckles, a sharp little spark shot straight up my arm, like static from a winter sweater—only it sank deeper, slid into my chest, turned my lungs to glass.

“Rita,” he murmured, like he was trying the name on his tongue. It came out sounding like a secret. Or a prayer.

And I knew—without knowing why—that nothing in my life would ever be simple again.

My father cleared his throat, oblivious to the electric tension crackling between us. “Minho, this is my daughter. She just finished her master’s in literature at Columbia. I’ll have her spending more time in Seoul soon.”

Something flickered in Minho’s eyes at that. A flash of…surprise? Possessiveness? He released my hand slowly, reluctantly, his gaze never leaving my face.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Dominic,” he said. Formal words. Absolutely not a formal look.

My last name on his lips sent a strange thrill through me, like he’d just been handed a key with my initials stamped into the metal.

My father was already turning away, scanning the room for his next target. “Minho, we’ll discuss the new logistics contracts later. Rita, mingle. Smile.” His hand squeezed my arm meaningfully. “And remember: tonight matters.”

I nodded like the good American-educated daughter he’d paid so much for. But my pulse was knocking against my throat, and my skin buzzed where Minho’s thumb had touched.

Hours later, the gala noise was a dull roar behind glass doors as I slipped onto the terrace for air. Manhattan glittered below me, cold and perfect. Cars moved like veins of light. Somewhere, a siren wailed—a reminder that there was a city outside this bubble of wealth.

I thought I was alone—until I caught the faint glow of a cigarette ember.

He was standing near the edge, jacket unbuttoned, tie loosened just enough to make my stomach drop, shoulders silhouetted against the skyline. Smoke curled around him like a lazy ghost.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said without turning, his voice softer but no less commanding.

A dozen warnings rose in my mind—about dangerous men and my father’s temper and how I had been raised under Texas sun and New York steel to know better than this.

Instead, I heard myself say, “Why not?”

He turned.

Up close, his features were sharper. Cheekbones you could cut your fingers on. A straight nose. A mouth made for bad decisions. His eyes locked onto mine and held—dark, intent, like he was rifling through my thoughts without permission.

Whatever walls he’d had up in that ballroom were gone now. The rawness in his gaze stole my breath.

Longing. Conflict. Something dark and possessive that should have sent me running straight back to the crystal chandeliers and safe conversations about hedge funds.

Instead I took a step closer.

He watched me as if every inch I moved was a choice that meant something.

“Because men like me,” he said finally, something bitter under the words, “don’t deserve to be near women like you.”

I swallowed. “You don’t even know me.”

His eyes skimmed my face, my hair, the neckline of my dress, then came back to my mouth. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“That’s the problem,” he said quietly. “I’d like to.”

The air tightened. My heart was hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it.

“Rita!”

My father’s voice sliced through the moment, sharp and impatient. Minho’s expression shuttered instantly. The vulnerability vanished, replaced with professional detachment so complete I almost questioned if I’d imagined the last thirty seconds.

I hadn’t.

Not with the way my skin still remembered his gaze like the imprint of a brand.

My father stepped onto the terrace, not even glancing at Minho. “Come inside. There’s someone important I want you to meet.”

I hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat, every cell in my body resisting leaving this man, this edge of possibility. But my father’s tone brooked no argument; it never had.

I followed him back into the golden light of the ballroom, feeling Minho’s gaze burn into my back the entire way.

Inside, my father steered me toward another man, younger than most of the crowd, with perfectly styled hair and an impeccably tailored suit. Handsome in a glossy-magazine way. His smile was bright, just shy of blinding.

“Rita, this is Park Jin-woo,” my father said, his hand tightening on my shoulder. “His father runs one of our partner companies in Seoul. Park Group.”

Jin-woo took my hand. His touch was warm. Polite. Safe.

It did absolutely nothing to my pulse.

“Your father speaks about you all the time,” he said, his English almost accentless. “He says New York suits you, but Seoul will steal your heart.”

Something in his tone made my stomach knot.

“I look forward to showing you my city when you visit,” he added, holding onto my hand a second too long. “I hope we’ll have time to get to know each other properly.”

I forced a smile. “We’ll see.”

I thought it was just harmless flirtation. A business son doing his politeness dance.

The next morning, sitting in my father’s penthouse kitchen with the Manhattan skyline hazy behind him and a plate of untouched eggs between us, I learned how wrong I was.

“Jin-woo comes from an excellent family,” my father said, slicing into his toast with surgical precision. “We’ve been discussing a potential merger for years. His father thinks very highly of you.”

I frowned. “He met me once. For ten minutes.”

“That’s all it takes to see you’re a good girl,” my father said, like that settled anything. “Educated. Well-mannered. Loyal.”

Alarm pricked at my spine. “Dad, what are you talking about?”

He set his knife down and looked at me like I was a contract he needed to close. “A marriage between our families would secure everything. The deal, the future. Our name.”

For a second, I thought I’d misheard him over the hum of the fridge.

“You’re arranging my marriage?” My fork hovered halfway to my mouth, my voice pitching up. “Dad, I’m twenty-three, not—”

“You’re my daughter,” he cut in sharply. “I’ve protected you your whole life. Given you everything. This is how we move forward. You’ll thank me for it one day.”

My cage had never felt smaller.

I pushed my plate away. “What if I don’t want to marry him?”

“You don’t know what you want,” he said calmly, as if it were fact. “You’ve been living in your books and your New York cafes. This is business. Legacy. It’s bigger than your…feelings.”

Heat burned behind my eyes. The same old argument, wrapped in new stakes.

“I’m not an asset,” I whispered.

He picked up his coffee again. “In this family, you’re both. Finish your breakfast. We fly to Seoul in a few days.”

I spent the rest of that day walking the streets of Manhattan like a ghost, the city I loved suddenly too loud, too bright, too indifferent to the fact that my life had just been sold.

A week later, the skyline outside my window changed.

New York’s glass towers became Seoul’s neon-lit sprawl, the Hudson replaced by the Han River, Manhattan’s sirens by the constant hum of a city that never seemed to sleep at all.

Seoul was beautiful and overwhelming and nothing like home, and somehow exactly what I needed. For the first time, I was half a world away from my father’s fortress of a penthouse, even if I was now in his Seoul equivalent.

He installed me in a luxury hotel suite that overlooked the river, put security outside my door, and filled my schedule with lunches and charity events and “getting to know” dinners with the Parks. Everywhere I turned, my future felt like it was closing in.

So I ran the only way I could—on foot.

I slipped past my father’s security detail one afternoon under the excuse of “needing coffee,” and kept walking. Past designer storefronts and glowing signs, past couples holding hands, past teenagers in school uniforms laughing over street food. Seoul smelled like roasted chestnuts and exhaust and rain on concrete.

I stopped in front of a high-end boutique, staring at a dress I could never justify buying on my carefully controlled allowance, even if I technically had a trust fund somewhere with my name on it. The glass reflected my face back at me—tired eyes, red lipstick smudged from stress.

A sleek black car rolled to a stop at the curb.

The tinted window hummed down.

“Get in.”

His voice.

I turned.

Minho sat behind the wheel like he owned the entire city, one hand resting casually at twelve o’clock, the other braced against the door. No tie this time. The top buttons of his white shirt were undone, revealing a tanned line of skin that made my mouth go dry.

“It’s not safe for you to wander alone,” he said, gaze flicking to the street, then back to my face.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” I shot back, nerves making me reckless. “No one ever explains what, exactly, I’m supposed to be afraid of.”

His eyes darkened. “Men like me.”

Every instinct I’d ever been taught screamed that getting into a car with a man who said that out loud was a very bad idea.

I got in anyway.

The leather seats smelled like him—clean, sharp, something expensive and woodsy. He pulled into traffic with smooth, confident movements, saying nothing. The city blurred past in streaks of light and shadow.

“Where are we going?” I asked finally, breaking first.

“Somewhere we can talk,” he said. “Somewhere my men can watch the exits.”

The words should have chilled me. Instead, they settled over me like a strange kind of safety.

We drove underground, into a private parking structure beneath a towering high-rise of glass and steel. The kind of building that screamed money and power in every polished surface. An elevator waited for us, doors sliding open at his nod.

He stood close enough that I could feel the heat of him at my back but didn’t touch me as we ascended. My heart was beating too fast in the enclosed space, and it had nothing to do with the altitude.

The doors opened straight into his home.

Not an apartment.

A penthouse.

Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the open space, giving an unobstructed view of Seoul’s endless skyline. The furniture was minimalist but expensive: dark leather, clean lines, a grand piano in one corner, abstract art on the walls. Everything about it screamed male, controlled, dangerous.

“Wow,” I breathed before I could stop myself.

He watched my reaction, something softening for a heartbeat in his eyes. “Water?” he asked.

I nodded, because speaking felt hard.

He moved through the kitchen with precise efficiency, muscles shifting under his shirt with every motion. He handed me a glass, his fingers brushing mine.

“You looked upset,” he said simply. “What happened?”

The words tumbled out before I could talk myself out of it.

“My father wants me to marry Park Jin-woo,” I said. The name tasted like rust. “He’s arranging the whole thing like I’m…a line item on a contract. I don’t get a say, I don’t get an out. It’s just done.”

Minho’s jaw clenched. The muscle there ticked as his hand tightened around his own glass.

“Do you want to marry him?” he asked.

“I don’t want to marry anyone my father chooses for me,” I snapped, frustration cracking through my usual careful tone. “I’ve had guards and curfews and expectations my entire life. I’ve never gotten to choose anything that mattered. Not where I live. Not what I study. Not who I love. I’m so tired of being caged.”

I hadn’t meant to say that last word out loud.

He heard it anyway.

Minho set his glass down with deliberate care, as if he were afraid it might shatter in his hand. When he looked at me, the intensity in his eyes stole my breath all over again.

“Then choose,” he said.

I blinked. “Choose what?”

“What you want.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Not what your father wants. Not what looks good in a business profile. Not what keeps other people comfortable. What you want.”

The question hung between us, heavy with meanings I was suddenly very aware of.

What do you want, Rita?

Freedom.

Choice.

A life that belonged to me.

And—terrifyingly—him.

The thought slammed into me hard enough that I staggered back a step, needing space. “I should go,” I said, panic rising. “My father will notice I’m gone.”

Minho’s mouth tightened, like he wanted to argue, but he just nodded once. “I’ll drive you back.”

The elevator ride down was silent, electric. Back in the car, his hand found mine on the console like it had always meant to be there. His thumb traced slow circles into my palm, sending shivers up my arm.

He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t have to.

Over the next week, he was everywhere.

At the café near my hotel where I tried to drink my way through jet lag with Americanos and too-sweet pastries. Standing near the back of a gallery opening when I tried to lose myself in paintings instead of expectations. Browsing quietly in the English-language section of a bookstore where I hid between shelves of novels, ignoring my father’s calls.

He never approached me directly. Never invaded my space.

Just…watched.

A dark sentinel at the edge of every room, eyes following me with a mix of vigilance and something that looked a lot like longing.

Once, our gazes collided across a narrow aisle in the bookstore. For a heartbeat, he let whatever he usually kept locked down show.

I saw hunger there. And fear. And something so protective and possessive it made my knees threaten to give out.

Then he blinked, and the mask slid back into place.

Meanwhile, Jin-woo courted me like it was his full-time job.

There were dinners at private restaurants where the waiters seemed to know his name. Drives along the river in imported cars that turned heads. Thoughtful gifts—rare books, delicate jewelry I didn’t feel like I’d earned, bouquets that filled my hotel suite with flowers like apologies I hadn’t received.

He was charming. Funny, when he wanted to be. He asked about my favorite authors, my thesis, the difference between New York and Houston, where I’d spent my childhood before my father’s empire dragged us north.

On paper, he was perfect.

But his smiles never quite reached his eyes.

Sometimes, when he thought I wasn’t looking, I’d catch him watching me with a calculation that made my skin crawl. Like he was measuring me. Weighing my worth. Planning something I had no control over.

Still, I tried.

Because maybe if I tried hard enough, I could convince myself this path wouldn’t feel like a prison.

One evening, he took me to an exclusive restaurant perched high above the city. Candlelight flickered against dark windows, Seoul glittering below like another galaxy.

“Your father tells me you always had your nose in a book,” he said, pouring me wine. “He says you used to hide in closets to read instead of playing with other kids.”

I blinked. That was…specific.

“He told you that?” I asked.

He smiled. “He’s proud of you, in his own way. He wants you to be happy.”

I almost choked on my drink.

We talked easily enough. About literature, about America, about his time at Stanford for his MBA. On the surface, it was pleasant. Normal.

Then his hand slid over mine on the tablecloth.

Possessive. Claiming.

My body reacted before my brain did. I pulled my hand back, like I’d touched a hot stove.

A flash of something ugly flickered through his eyes. Annoyance. Maybe anger.

Then it was gone, replaced by that smooth, charming mask. “I’m sorry,” he said lightly. “Too forward. I forget American women value…space.”

He paid the bill with a black card, escorted me back to my hotel, and walked me all the way to my door, his palm spread too low on my back.

“Rita,” he said softly when we stopped. “I hope you understand how much I’m looking forward to our future.”

Future.

The word felt like a trap snapping shut.

Before I could respond, his hand slid up to cup my cheek, fingers pressing just a little too firmly.

He leaned in.

His mouth brushed mine in a kiss that felt less like affection and more like he was stamping his name across my lips. His hand tightened on my waist, anchoring me, holding me in place.

My body froze. Panic fluttered in my chest, ugly and sharp. I didn’t want this. Not like this, not with him.

I was two seconds away from shoving him off and dealing with the fallout—when a voice like a blade sliced through the hallway.

“Get your hands off her.”

We both jerked.

Minho stood at the far end of the corridor, fury radiating off him in waves. His eyes were flat and cold, his body held in that loose, lethal way that said he was a breath away from violence.

“This is none of your concern, Kang,” Jin-woo said tightly, his hand dropping from my waist but not stepping back.

Minho’s laugh was low and humorless. “Everything about her is my concern.”

The possessiveness in his tone sent heat pooling low in my stomach, even as my brain screamed at me that this was insane.

“Rita is promised to me,” Jin-woo said, straightening, dropping the nice-guy act. “Her father and mine have an agreement.”

“Rita isn’t property,” Minho said, advancing, steps soundless on the plush carpet. “She doesn’t get traded in deals. She chooses who touches her mouth. Not you. Not Dominic. Her.”

My heart stuttered. No one had ever said that out loud in my life.

“Does Dominic know?” Jin-woo sneered, desperation creeping into his voice. “That his daughter is entertaining a gangster behind his back?”

The word hung in the air between us.

Gangster.

My stomach flipped.

The insult slid right off Minho. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t deny it.

He just kept walking.

“Leave,” he said, voice soft. Dangerous. “Before you say something I’ll make you regret.”

Jin-woo looked at me, eyes burning. Waiting. Expecting me to defend him, to play the obedient daughter and back my father’s chosen man.

I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t speak.

I was pinned between two worlds, two men, two futures, and for the first time in my life I had no script to follow.

“This isn’t over,” Jin-woo said finally, his voice low and venomous. He shot Minho one last glare and stalked down the hall to the elevator.

The moment the doors closed, some of the tension bled out of Minho’s shoulders. He turned to me.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked, voice rougher now. His hand lifted toward my face, hesitated, then dropped.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

My hands were shaking.

His jaw clenched. He stepped past me into my hotel suite without waiting for an invitation, moving through the rooms with the efficiency of someone who always expects threats lurking in corners.

Watching him check behind doors and curtains, muscles coiled, hand hovering near his waistband, I understood in a visceral way that this man lived in a world completely different from my father’s boardrooms.

He was dangerous.

And I had never felt safer.

“Why do you keep appearing every time I need you?” I asked when he finally circled back to me in the living area.

He stopped only a foot away, close enough that I could smell his cologne—wood and spice and something uniquely Minho. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then dragged back up to my eyes.

“Because I can’t stay away,” he said.

The words sounded ripped from him. Like they cost him something.

“I’ve tried, Rita. God knows I’ve tried. You’re my best friend’s daughter.” His mouth twisted around the word. “Forbidden in every way that matters. But then I see you and something in me…” He shook his head, frustrated. “You make me want things I have no right to want.”

I leaned into his nearness, into his scent, into his heat. Every rational thought I’d ever had scattered like papers in a storm.

“What things?” I whispered.

His hand came up, his fingers cupping my jaw with a gentleness that contradicted everything about his reputation. His thumb brushed over my bottom lip, slow and reverent.

“Everything,” he breathed. “Your smile. Your laughter. The way you argue with me. Your thoughts. Your stubbornness. Your body. Your future. I want to be the one you choose. Not because your father arranged it. Because you want me as much as I—”

He cut himself off, like he’d gone too far even for himself.

“This is wrong,” he said tightly. “I should leave.”

He didn’t move.

Neither did I.

The air between us pulsed, charged, humming with longing and fear and that same wild hunger that had been building since Manhattan.

“Minho,” I whispered. His name felt like a plea I didn’t fully understand.

Something broke in his eyes.

He moved.

One second there was a sliver of space between us; the next, I was pressed against him, his hands buried in my hair, his mouth crashing down onto mine.

The kiss was nothing like Jin-woo’s.

It was heat and desperation and years of restraint snapping all at once. It was a man who’d been starving finally allowed to taste. He kissed me like I was oxygen and he’d been suffocating.

And I—God help me—I kissed him back.

Every nerve in my body lit up. My fingers clenched in his shirt, dragging him closer, needing more. Our teeth clicked, our noses bumped, we laughed into each other’s mouths and then the laughter died because the hunger was too much.

His hands slid down my back, over my waist, spanning my hips like he was trying to memorize every line, every curve. When he groaned against my mouth, the sound shot straight through me.

“You have no idea,” he murmured between kisses, his lips trailing across my jaw, down my throat, finding that spot that made my knees weaken. “What you do to me. How long I’ve wanted this. Wanted you.”

His phone buzzed, loud and insistent where it had fallen on my couch.

He stilled, breathing hard, forehead pressed to mine. His eyes were dark, pupils blown, mouth kiss-bruised.

“I have to go,” he said roughly. “Business.”

The word was heavy with all the things he didn’t say about that business.

He brushed his thumb over my swollen lips once, almost tenderly. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t let anyone in you don’t know. Not even hotel staff. Understand?”

I nodded, dazed.

Then he was gone, leaving my world rearranged and my heart pounding and my mouth still tasting like him.

The next morning, my father summoned me to his office in the hotel. The air was too cold, the windows too clear, Seoul spread out below like a map he owned.

Jin-woo sat in one of the leather chairs, back straight, expression pleasant.

His eyes were not pleasant.

“Sit,” my father said.

A ball of dread settled in my stomach, heavy and cold. I sat.

“Jin-woo tells me you’ve been spending time with Kang Minho,” my father said, his tone deceptively calm. “He says you’ve been…misled.”

Rage flared in me, hot and sharp. “I’ve been talking to someone you do business with. That’s hardly a crime.”

My father’s gaze hardened. “Minho is a business associate. Nothing more. He comes from a world I’ve spent your whole life keeping you far away from. You are to avoid him completely. Do you understand?”

“Dad—”

“Do you understand?” he repeated, each word dropping like a brick.

I looked at Jin-woo, at the satisfaction he barely bothered to hide, and something inside me snapped.

“I’m twenty-three,” I said. My voice shook, but I kept going. “You don’t get to dictate who I see, who I talk to, who I—”

“As long as you live under my protection and spend my money, I absolutely do,” he said, voice rising for the first time. “You will marry Jin-woo in three months. The arrangements are already in motion. This conversation is over.”

I walked out before I could say something that would burn every remaining bridge between us.

In my room, anger turned to helplessness, then to tears. I’d never stood up to him like that, not really. The confrontation left me shaky, hollowed out.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

Rooftop garden. Now. – M.H.

I stared at the message, my heart leaping into my throat.

I didn’t ask how he’d gotten my number. Or how he knew I needed him. I just went.

Seoul’s sky pressed low and gray over the hotel’s rooftop garden, but the plants were meticulously arranged, every blossom groomed, every hedge trimmed. Like my life: curated, controlled, pretty on the outside.

Minho stood near the edge, a dark figure against the city. When he saw my tear-streaked face, something murderous flashed through his eyes.

“Who made you cry?” he asked, stepping toward me.

I let out a bitter laugh. “Pick one. My father. Jin-woo. Tradition. Take your pick.”

He waited.

“He’s forcing me to marry Jin-woo in three months,” I said. Saying it out loud made it feel even more real. “He’s freezing my accounts, cutting off my cards, threatening to pull every rug he ever laid under my feet if I don’t obey. I’m trapped, Minho. There is no choice for me.”

His hands balled into fists at his sides. “There is always a choice.”

“Not for me,” I said, throwing my arms out. “I have no money that isn’t technically his. No job history. No home that isn’t tied to his name. I’m completely dependent.”

He closed the distance between us in three strides, his palms coming up to frame my face, thumbs catching stray tears. His touch was warm, grounding.

“Then depend on me,” he said, voice fierce. “I’ll give you what you need. Money. A home. Protection. Freedom. Whatever it takes. Just don’t marry him. Don’t let your father put you back in that cage.”

I stared up at him, the city blurring around us. “You barely know me,” I whispered. “We’ve known each other two weeks. You keep telling me you’re dangerous. That my father is your friend. This is insane.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I’ve built an empire from nothing. I’ve made men twice my size back down with a look. I’ve survived things your father doesn’t even have nightmares about. But you…” He swallowed. “You make me weak. You make me want to be better. To be worthy of something good. Of you.”

His confession stole the breath from my lungs.

“Minho, this is crazy,” I said, but the protest sounded thin, shaky even to my own ears.

“I know,” he said. “And I’m still asking.”

The wind tugged at his hair, rustled the leaves around us, carried the distant sound of traffic. My life as I knew it was five floors below, wrapped in my father’s dictates and Jin-woo’s plans and every expectation I’d never agreed to.

In front of me stood a man with blood on his hands and shadows in his past, offering me something terrifying.

Choice.

Freedom.

Him.

“Okay,” I heard myself say.

His eyes widened. “Rita—”

“Okay,” I repeated, stronger. “I’ll stay with you.”

The smile that broke across his face was devastating. It transformed him, stripped away the ruthless businessman and the rumored gangster and left something almost boyish, raw and open and breathtaking.

He didn’t say thank you.

He kissed me.

This time it was slower, deeper, no less consuming. Less of a collision, more of a vow. I let myself fall.

When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine, his breath warm on my lips.

“There’s something you need to know about Jin-woo,” he said quietly. “I’ve had people watching him. He isn’t what he pretends to be, Rita. The marriage he wants isn’t about romance or even just money. It’s about cover.”

My blood ran cold. “Cover for what?”

“He’s tied to a network that moves things no one with a soul should move,” Minho said. “People. Goods. Information. Across borders. Through ports. In and out of cities like they’re just lines on a spreadsheet. He needs your father’s legitimate company to wash everything. To make it look clean.”

I thought I’d been horrified before.

I hadn’t known what horror was.

“He’s using us,” I whispered. “My father doesn’t know?”

“No,” Minho said. “Jin-woo’s been careful to keep his hands clean on paper. I have enough to be sure he’s dirty. Not enough yet to bury him in court. I’m getting there.”

He looked at me, eyes blazing. “What I do is ugly, Rita. I won’t lie about that. But I draw lines. Lines he crossed a long time ago. I won’t let him use you as a shield for his rot. I won’t let him have you at all.”

There was something terrifying in his possessiveness.

There was something intoxicating in it too.

A few days later, I moved into his penthouse.

My father’s calls went from furious to icy to nonexistent. My accounts locked. My cards declined. Door codes changed behind my back.

Minho’s world opened.

His penthouse became my sanctuary above the city. He gave me my own room, my own closet, my own keycard, but his presence was everywhere—subtle, constant. A scarf draped over a chair where he’d left it. Coffee mugs beside the sink with a lipstick mark on one and nothing on the other. Books he’d ordered in English stacked on the nightstand beside my bed, their spines uncracked, waiting for me.

He stocked the kitchen with my favorite snacks, somehow remembering offhand comments I’d made weeks ago. He left fresh flowers on my nightstand, sometimes roses, sometimes wildflowers that didn’t seem like his style at all until I realized he’d noticed the wallpaper I’d loved as a toddler in our Houston house.

He paid attention.

In a world where I had always been managed, he saw me.

But danger threaded beneath everything.

One evening, he came home late. The elevator chimed; the door to the penthouse slid open. I stepped out from the kitchen, opening my mouth to tease him about working too much.

The words died.

There was blood on his knuckles.

Not a little. Enough to make my stomach twist. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and the skin across his hands was split, reddened. His jaw was tight, his tie gone.

“What happened?” I asked, crossing the room before I could think better of it.

He glanced down at his hands like he’d forgotten they were there. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Try again,” I said, grabbing his wrist carefully, turning his hand over. “You’re bleeding.”

He let me lead him to the bathroom. I sat him on the edge of the tub and dug through the cabinet for antiseptic and bandages, my hands trembling only a little.

“Jin-woo made a move on one of my clubs,” he said finally, voice clipped. “Sent some of his people in to stir up trouble, scare customers, make it look like I can’t protect my own territory.”

I dabbed at a cut with a cotton pad. He winced.

“And?” I asked quietly.

“And I handled it,” he said.

The casual violence in his tone reminded me exactly who he was.

“This is because of me,” I whispered, guilt churning. “Because I chose you. Because he wants to punish you using me.”

His free hand caught my chin, tilting my face up. “This is because Jin-woo is a spoiled boy who has never been told no and doesn’t know when to back off,” he said, his eyes hard. “You are not responsible for the way men like him react when they lose.”

He stood, pulling me gently against his chest with his bandaged hands.

“You are mine to protect,” he said. “That’s all you need to worry about.”

The possessive declaration sent a strange mix of fear and safety through me. Fear of being claimed again. Safety in knowing this time the person doing the claiming wanted me for me, not for what I could secure.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I wandered into the kitchen for water, the penthouse dim and quiet. The city outside pulsed, neon bleeding into the sky.

Minho stood by the window, shirtless, a glass of whiskey untouched in his hand. The muscles in his back shifted under his skin as he breathed. The faint scars scattered across his shoulders glimmered in the city light.

My throat went dry.

He turned at the soft sound of my bare feet on the floor. His gaze slid over my silk nightgown—thin straps, soft fabric clinging to new curves I didn’t usually show. Heat flared in his eyes, quickly banked but not gone.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, voice rougher than usual.

“No,” I said, coming closer despite every internal alarm bell. “I keep thinking about what you said. About me being yours.”

Something dark and bright flickered in his expression. He set the glass down with a quiet click.

“You should go back to bed,” he said. “Before I forget how much I’m trying to be the good guy for once in my life.”

“What if I don’t want you to be the good guy?” I asked softly.

His jaw clenched. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Then show me,” I whispered.

For a heartbeat, he just stared at me, war raging in his eyes. His chest rose and fell too fast. His hands flexed at his sides.

Then he moved.

Fast and sure and impossible to mistake.

His mouth found mine in a kiss that stole whatever was left of my reason. His hands slid into my hair, angling my head exactly where he wanted it. I rose on my toes, fingers splaying across his chest, feeling heat and muscle and the wild thunder of his heart.

He walked me backward until my back hit cool glass, the window at my spine and his body at my front, trapping me in the best possible way. His hands roamed down my sides, slow and reverent, like he was memorizing every inch he touched.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against my throat, his breath hot, his lips leaving a trail that felt like fire and ownership all at once. “I’ve wanted you since the minute you walked into that gala. Wanted to touch you, taste you, learn every sound you make.”

My fingers traced down his chest, over hard planes and scars, and when my nails scraped lightly across his stomach, he groaned, the sound low and rough and incredibly male.

“You’re playing with fire,” he warned.

“Maybe I want to burn,” I breathed.

Something in him snapped.

He lifted me like I weighed nothing, my legs wrapping around his waist instinctively. He carried me to his bedroom, dark and sleek and smelling like him, and laid me down on his bed like I was something precious and breakable and his.

He hovered over me, eyes dark, control fraying. “Last chance to run,” he said, voice shredded. “Because once I have you, Rita, I’m not letting you go. Not from my bed. Not from my life. Not from anything.”

Instead of running, I reached for him and pulled him down to me.

The world narrowed to skin and breath and whispered words in English and Korean I didn’t fully understand but felt anyway. He was devastatingly gentle and devastatingly thorough, worshipping every part of me like he’d been waiting his whole life for the chance.

When we finally came together, the intensity stole everything—the room, the city, the weight of our choices. All that remained was heat and trust and the dizzying feeling of being completely seen and cherished.

Afterward, he held me against his chest, one hand stroking my hair, the other pressed to the small of my back. His heart beat steady under my cheek.

For the first time in my life, I felt completely, wholly safe.

Which, apparently, terrified me even more than the alternative.

By dawn, panic had seeped in.

What had I done?

I’d slept with a man my father would never accept. A man who had enemies and scars and a past that came with blood and shadows. A man who had more power in his hands than most nations did in their cabinets.

What if this was just one night for him?

What if, once the intensity faded, I was just another woman in a long line of mistakes?

What if I’d traded one kind of cage for another?

I slipped out of bed, every move tearing at something inside me. I dressed quietly, fingers clumsy, each article of clothing feeling like armor I didn’t want to put back on.

On his nightstand, I found a pen and paper.

I wrote, my hand shaking.

I’m sorry. I can’t do this.

I left the note where I had just slept, where my body heat still clung to his sheets, and walked out before my courage failed completely.

The morning air outside his building was colder than it had any right to be. Seoul blurred through my tears as I flagged down a cab and rattled off an address from memory.

Amara’s.

We’d met at Columbia—two girls with big hair and bigger dreams, one Nigerian-American, one Italian-Dominican-Texan complication, both used to being the only brown girls in literature classes full of pale faces and old money.

She’d moved to Seoul a year ago to teach English and chase K-drama fantasies. I’d made fun of her endlessly for it.

Now she was the only person I could think to run to.

She opened the door in an oversized T-shirt, hair wrapped in a scarf, eyes widening when she saw my face.

“Oh, hell no,” she said, grabbing my arm and dragging me inside. “Who do I have to fight? Your father? That pretty boy fiancé? Some CEO? Don’t tell me it’s a K-pop idol, I’m not emotionally ready.”

“It’s worse,” I choked out, letting her guide me to the couch. “It’s a gangster.”

She blinked. “I was joking.”

I laughed, high and hysterical. “I’m not.”

She listened as I spilled everything—Manhattan, Minho, the terrace, the rooftop, the penthouse, last night. My father. Jin-woo. The dark network. The ring of danger around my life.

By the time I finished, her eyes were huge.

“So,” she said slowly. “You’re in love with a Korean mob boss who wants to save you from an arranged marriage to a guy who’s somehow worse.”

“Don’t call it that,” I muttered, stuffing my face into a pillow. “If I don’t label it, maybe it won’t be real.”

She snorted. “Baby, this is the most real thing I’ve ever heard. Netflix could never.”

“I left him,” I whispered. The words hurt. “I just…left.”

“Because you’re scared,” she said. “Not because you don’t love him.”

I didn’t answer.

My phone buzzed violently on the coffee table.

Minho.

I let it go to voicemail.

He called again. And again. And again. The screen blurred as tears filled my eyes.

“I’m protecting myself,” I said, my voice hollow. “Before he can hurt me worse.”

Amara’s answering look said she didn’t agree, but she didn’t push.

By evening, I was wrung out. Exhaustion dragged at my limbs. I curled up on her couch in one of her T-shirts, watching some American sitcom dubbed into Korean that neither of us paid attention to.

The pounding on the door came just after dark.

Heavy. Controlled. Not the frantic beating of a drunk or the uncertain tap of a neighbor.

We exchanged a look.

“That’s him,” she whispered.

“How do you know?” I hissed back.

“Because my building has three stories and no one else here knocks like they’re used to doors opening whether they want to or not.”

The pounding came again. “Rita.”

His voice.

She swallowed. “I’m going to open it.”

“Amara—”

She gave me a look. “If you don’t talk to him, I’m disowning you as a friend.”

She cracked the door.

Minho filled the frame, larger than the space, eyes wild in a way I’d never seen on him before. His tie was loose, hair slightly mussed, as if he’d run his hands through it a hundred times.

“Out,” he said, voice low, eyes never leaving me.

Amara’s gaze ping-ponged between us. “You good?” she asked me.

I nodded, because whatever else I was, I wasn’t afraid of him.

“Text me if you’re not,” she told me, grabbing her phone and slipping out past him. “I’ll be downstairs, rehearsing how I’m going to tell this story to our future wine club.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

The room shrank around us.

“You left,” Minho said.

He stood in front of the couch, looking like he’d been dragged through hell. His voice was quiet, which was somehow worse than if he’d yelled. “You gave yourself to me, and then you ran away without a word. Like it meant nothing.”

Tears burned behind my eyes. “I was scared,” I said. “Scared you’d wake up and regret everything. Scared I’d wake up and realize I’d built something huge on…on air. Scared I was just—”

“Just what?” he demanded, stepping closer. “Just another body in my bed? Just another night? Just a conquest?”

I flinched.

His laugh was sharp and humorless. “Rita, I told you what you mean to me. I’ve shown you in every way I know. What more do you need?”

“I need to know this is real,” I cried, the words ripping out of me. “That I’m not just something you want because my father says you can’t have me. That when the danger fades and the forbidden part isn’t exciting anymore, you’ll still want me. Still—”

“Love you?” he finished, his voice suddenly soft.

My heart stopped.

I looked up.

He was closer now, close enough that I could see the faint smudges under his eyes, the tightness in his mouth. His hands were trembling.

“I fell for you the moment you walked into that gala,” he said. “Before I knew your last name. Before I realized how complicated this would be. Before I knew your father would put a bullet through my skull if he thought it would keep you away from my world.”

His hands came up, cupping my face, thumbs brushing away tears I hadn’t realized were falling.

“I’ve lived thirty-five years without feeling what I feel when you’re near me. I’ve had power. Money. Fear.” His mouth twisted. “None of it has ever made my heart do what it does when you smile. None of it has ever made me want to burn cities down like I do when you cry. You think this is about a game? About forbidden fruit?” He shook his head. “You’re not something I want, Rita. You’re everything I didn’t know I needed.”

Whatever stubborn wall I’d tried to build around my heart cracked completely.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

The admission felt like stepping off a skyscraper without a harness.

“I’m terrified. This is too fast, and it doesn’t make sense, and everything in my life is on fire—but I love you, Minho.”

The relief that washed over his face was almost painful to look at. He smiled then—a slow, luminous thing that made my chest ache.

He kissed me.

This kiss was different. Less desperate, more tender. Like the kind of kiss that belongs in vows, not back alleys.

When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to mine. “Come home,” he said. “Let me show you, every day, that you are not a mistake. That you’re my choice. My only choice.”

I went.

The following weeks were a strange, beautiful, terrifying stretch of time.

Minho courted me properly, which felt surreal for a man who supposedly owned half the shadows in Seoul. He took me to galleries and actually listened when I ranted about symbolism. We walked through parks at night surrounded by his discreet security, his hand warm in mine.

We had late-night conversations on his rooftop garden about everything—childhoods, fears, the difference between Houston summer storms and Seoul monsoon rains, the books that had saved me in middle school, the first time someone had put a gun in his hand.

Danger, however, never stayed far away.

Threatening messages pinged my phone from unknown numbers. My father’s voice went from furious to broken to resigned over the span of a few calls before he stopped leaving voicemails at all.

Minho tightened security around me. I rarely went anywhere without a car and at least two of his men nearby. He pretended it was business as usual; I pretended I didn’t notice the glint of weapons under their jackets.

One afternoon, he brought me to his downtown office.

The building was all gleaming glass and polished stone, the kind of place you’d expect a tech CEO to work, not a man with his reputation. Employees in suits and pencil skirts moved efficiently through the lobby. The plaque in the front listed a legitimate import-export company, a consulting firm, and three other subsidiaries.

“This is the part of my life that looks respectable on paper,” he said as the private elevator carried us to the top floor. “I wanted you to see it. To know I’m not only what people whisper about.”

His office was big but simple—large desk, tasteful art, bar cart, another sweeping view of the city. No gold, no gaudy displays, just competence.

“I see you,” I said, walking around the room, touching the edge of his desk, trailing my fingers along the back of his chair. “All of you. Even the parts you try to hide.”

Something heated and dangerous flared in his gaze at that.

He sat down, leaned back in his chair, and held a hand out.

I went without thinking.

He pulled me onto his lap, his hands settling around my waist like they belonged there. “You shouldn’t look at me like that here,” he murmured.

“Like what?” I teased, though my voice came out husky.

“Like you’re about to climb across this desk and ruin my ability to focus for the next week.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Who says I’m not?”

He groaned. “Rita.”

“To be fair, you started it,” I said, fingers playing with his tie. “You brought me to your lair.”

“This is an office,” he said, as if that meant anything. “With cameras.”

“Turn them off,” I whispered.

Something inside him broke all over again.

He kissed me, deep and hungry, utterly unconcerned about meetings or cameras or anything except the way my body melted against his. He lifted me, turning, setting me on the edge of his desk. Papers scattered like confetti.

“Minho,” I gasped, half laugh, half warning. “Someone could walk in.”

“Let them,” he growled against my throat. “Let everyone see you’re mine.”

The possessive declaration sent a shiver through me. His hands slid under my blouse, fingers splaying across my skin. The risk of discovery made every touch feel more intense.

He was just starting to forget where we were when the office door slammed open.

“What the hell is going on here?”

We froze.

Minho’s body instinctively shifted, shielding me from view. I scrambled to fix my shirt, cheeks burning, heart racing for all the wrong reasons.

My father stood in the doorway, face purple with rage.

Behind him, Jin-woo smirked.

“Dominic,” Minho said evenly, as if we hadn’t just been caught in the most compromising position possible. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh, really?” my father shouted. “Because it looks like I just walked in on my daughter spread across your desk like some—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Minho cut in, voice suddenly deadly quiet. “Rita is not ‘some’ anything. She’s the woman I love. The woman I intend to marry. You will speak about her with respect.”

He paused.

“Or I’ll forget you’re her father.”

The room went silent.

My father’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut. Shock warred with fury on his face. Jin-woo’s smirk vanished.

I stared at Minho, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.

Marry.

He’d never said it out loud before. Not like that. Not in front of anyone.

“You think I would allow my daughter to marry a thug?” my father finally managed. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“I don’t need your permission,” Minho said, pulling me gently off the desk and to his side. “She’s an adult. She makes her own choices.”

“Not while I’m alive,” my father spat. He turned his anger on me, the full force of it making my knees want to buckle. “You’re coming home with me. Now. This insanity is over.”

I’d spent my entire life obeying that tone.

Not this time.

“No,” I said, my voice shaking but clear. “I’m staying with Minho.”

My father stared, as if he didn’t understand the words. “Rita.”

“I love him,” I said. “I’m sorry if that disappoints you. I really am. But I’m choosing him.”

His face went red. “Then you’re choosing to be cut off. No money. No safety net. No inheritance. You want to throw your life away on a criminal? Fine. Don’t expect me to save you when his world tears you apart.”

The words sliced through me. Not because of the money—I’d already lost that in all but name—but because of the casual way he threw away our relationship.

“I never needed your money,” I said quietly. “I just wanted your love. Your approval. But I guess those were always conditional.”

For a second, something like pain flickered in his eyes.

Then his expression hardened.

“You’ll regret this,” he said to both of us. “I promise you.”

He stormed out, Jin-woo trailing behind him. The other man shot us a look of pure hatred over his shoulder.

The door slammed.

Silence rushed in to fill the space they left behind.

I turned to Minho. Tears blurred my vision. Relief, grief, liberation—they all crashed over me at once.

“I just lost my father,” I whispered.

He pulled me into his arms, holding me like he never planned to let go. “You have me,” he said fiercely. “You’ll never regret choosing me. I’ll make sure of it.”

I believed him.

Even as the world tilted under our feet.

My father made good on his threat.

My bank accounts froze. My cards were declined at a grocery store like I was some teenager who’d stolen their parents’ plastic. Emails from lawyers started piling up in my inbox, full of legalese about trusts and responsibilities and how he was “disappointed” in my judgment.

Minho didn’t flinch.

He moved money into an account in my name. Gave me my own card tied to his business empire. Bought me a car I didn’t know how to drive yet but promised to learn for the sake of independence.

His devotion was overwhelming.

So was the pressure building at the edges of our lives.

“Jin-woo is pushing harder,” Minho said one night on the balcony as Seoul spread out below us. “He’s trying to reroute shipments through my ports. Meeting with people I don’t like.”

“This is because of me,” I said, the words tasting bitter.

“This is because he’s never been told no and thinks he can bully his way into my territory and your life,” Minho said. “He doesn’t understand the word ‘no’ when it comes to you. I’m going to teach him.”

I shivered, not from the wind.

That night, I woke to an empty space beside me in bed. Panic flared for a second before I heard his voice in the next room, speaking rapid Korean into his phone.

I crept down the hall, stopping outside his office door.

I understood more Korean than I could speak now, thanks to him. His words were low, clipped. “Danger.” “Protection.” “Rita.”

I went back to bed, heart pounding, dread curling in my stomach.

In the morning, he insisted I stay at the penthouse.

“Just for today,” he said, kissing my forehead. His hand lingered on my stomach, though I wasn’t pregnant yet, like he was already imagining a future. “I have some business to handle. I’ll be back by evening. Stay here. Stay safe. Promise me.”

I promised.

By ten that night, the promise felt like a noose.

By midnight, I was pacing.

His security told me he was fine, that everything was under control, that he’d ordered them not to let me leave.

I didn’t believe them.

My phone rang just after.

Unknown number.

“Rita,” Jin-woo’s voice slid down the line like oil. “If you want to see Minho alive again, you’ll come to the address I’m sending. Alone. No guards. No police. You have one hour.”

The line went dead.

A location pinged on my phone.

An old warehouse in a part of the city I’d only ever seen from a distance.

Every rational thought screamed at me to tell Minho’s men. To let them handle it. To stay where it was safe.

Every part of me that loved him couldn’t stand the thought of him bleeding somewhere alone because of me.

I slipped out the service entrance past a guard who was more interested in his phone than the back hallway, hailed a cab, and gave the driver the address with a voice that didn’t sound like mine.

The warehouse district was dark and empty, the buildings hulking shadows against a cloudy sky. The taxi driver hesitated, but I threw money at him and stepped out before he could question me.

The warehouse door stood half open.

Of course it did.

“Great,” I muttered. “This couldn’t be more of a horror movie cliché.”

I pushed it open.

The inside was cavernous and dim, all rusted metal and old oil stains. My footsteps echoed.

“Jin-woo!” I called, my voice bouncing off the walls. “I’m here. Where is he?”

Lights snapped on, harsh and blinding.

When my vision cleared, I saw them.

Jin-woo, standing smug and pristine in a tailored suit.

And Minho, tied to a metal chair, lip split, blood on his face, hands bound behind his back. His eyes—God, his eyes—were blazing with fury and fear when they found me.

“Rita,” he shouted. “No! You shouldn’t have come.”

“On the contrary,” Jin-woo said smoothly. “I’m thrilled she did.”

He stepped toward me, hands in his pockets like this was a business meeting. “I’ve learned something about men like Minho. You don’t hit them in the wallet. You hit them in the heart.”

His hand shot out, gripping my arm. His fingers bit into my skin.

Minho roared, straining against the ropes. The chair screeched on concrete.

“Let her go,” he snarled. “Touch her again, and I swear to God—”

“You’ll what?” Jin-woo asked, tightening his grip. “You’re tied to a chair. Your empire is under attack. Your little princess walked right into my hands. Maybe you’re not as dangerous as everyone says.”

He yanked me closer, his other hand sliding up to fist in my hair, turning my face so I was forced to look at Minho.

“I want you to watch,” he told Minho. “While I take everything you care about. Starting with her.”

His fingers slid down my arm in a slow, possessive stroke.

Fear burned off like fog under anger.

All those self-defense lessons my father had insisted on, the ones I’d rolled my eyes at as a teenager and half-assed through because I never thought I’d need them—they came back in one blazing instant.

I drove my elbow back as hard as I could.

It connected with his ribs. Hard.

He grunted, stumbling. His grip loosened.

I spun away, heart pounding.

“You little—”

His hand cracked across my face before he finished the sentence.

Pain exploded along my cheek, sending me sprawling. The concrete tore at my palms.

“Rita!” Minho’s voice was raw, feral. I heard the splintering of wood, the snapping of rope. I looked up through a haze of pain.

He was on his feet.

The chair lay in pieces behind him. His wrists were still bound but in front of him now, rope frayed and bloody where it had bit into his skin. His whole body vibrated with lethal intent.

“You just made the last mistake of your life,” he told Jin-woo.

The other man grabbed a gun from somewhere under his jacket, pointing it at Minho.

I was already moving.

The weapon skidded across the floor as Minho tackled him. They crashed to the ground, a tangle of suits and fists and rage.

More footsteps thundered into the warehouse.

For a second, my heart stopped.

Then I saw the faces.

Not Jin-woo’s men.

Minho’s.

Black-clad, efficient, weapons drawn. They moved like a unit, covering entries, shouting commands in Korean, returning fire when bullets flew from the shadows.

I scrambled for the gun that had slid across the concrete, my hands shaking so badly I could barely keep my grip. I ducked behind a pillar, pressing my back to cold cement, the noise of the fight loud and distant all at once.

A hand grabbed mine.

I jerked, ready to swing.

“It’s me,” Minho said, pulling me behind cover. His wrists were free now; the rope dangled from one hand like some kind of broken promise. There was blood on his face and rage in his eyes.

“I told you to stay home,” he ground out. But his hands were gentle as they skimmed over me, checking for injuries. His jaw clenched when he saw the blooming mark on my cheek. “He hit you.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. My cheek throbbed. My ribs ached. “How did your men know I was here?”

His gaze flicked to my ear, my wrist, my phone. “I always have trackers on you,” he said without a shred of apology. “In your phone. In your jewelry. In your car. The second you left the penthouse, I knew. The second you got in that cab, they followed.”

Anger and relief warred inside me.

“You’re insane,” I whispered.

“Maybe,” he said. “But you’re alive.”

His men were dragging Jin-woo away, his suit torn, his face bloody. He was screaming threats, spitting promises of revenge.

Minho watched him go, chest heaving, eyes dark and cold. For a second, I thought he might actually kill him then and there.

Instead, he turned back to me, cupping my face in his hands, his thumb brushing over the swelling cheek.

“You could have been killed,” he said, his voice shaking now for the first time. “Why would you risk that?”

“Because I love you,” I said simply.

His breath hitched.

“Because the thought of you bleeding out alone in some empty warehouse while I sat safe in a penthouse made me want to rip my own skin off,” I added. “Because if they were going to hurt you, they’d have to go through me.”

The hardness in his expression cracked.

“You terrify me,” he admitted. “The depth of what I feel for you—it terrifies me. I’d burn this entire city to the ground if it meant keeping you safe. I’d burn the world.”

He kissed me there, in the middle of the chaos. It was desperate and grounding and full of too many words neither of us had the language for.

“Let’s go home,” he whispered against my mouth. “I need to see you in my bed. In my kitchen. On my roof. Alive. Whole. Mine.”

Back at the penthouse, his men melted away into doorways and strategic points like shadows. He insisted on checking every inch of me for injuries, his hands gentle, his brow furrowed.

When he found the bruises where Jin-woo had grabbed my arm, his jaw tightened, his eyes going dark.

“I should have killed him,” he said, voice low. “I wanted to.”

“You didn’t,” I said. “For me.”

He looked at me. “I won’t lie to you. There are things I’ve done that you’d never approve of. Things I’m not proud of. But I won’t add something you can’t live with to that list. Not if I can help it.”

“What happens now?” I asked as he wrapped me in one of his shirts, the fabric swallowing me.

“Now,” he said slowly, “I make sure your father and Jin-woo both understand that you’re under my protection permanently. Jin-woo will lose what matters most to him—his business, his freedom, his reputation. Not his life. That would be too easy. As for your father…” His expression turned complicated. “I’ll try to make peace. For your sake. But you need to understand, Rita—he may never accept us.”

The thought stabbed at my chest, but I’d made my choice.

“I know,” I said. “But I have you. That’s enough.”

“You have all of me,” he said. “Every dark piece. Every light one. Every scar, every stupid soft part you somehow dragged out of me. I’m yours.”

The next morning, I woke to another empty bed.

Panic flared for one wild heartbeat.

Then I saw the note on his pillow.

Rooftop. Come when you wake.

I dressed quickly and took the elevator up.

The rooftop garden had been transformed overnight.

Roses. Thousands of them. Red and pink and white and colors I didn’t even have names for. They spilled out of planters, lined the pathways, climbed trellises. The air was thick with their scent.

Minho stood in the center of it all in a charcoal suit, no tie, the early Seoul sun painting his skin gold.

My breath caught.

“What is this?” I whispered.

He turned. For the first time since I’d known him, there was naked vulnerability in his expression. No mask. No armor.

“I’ve done everything wrong with you,” he said, walking toward me. “I chased you when I should have stayed away. I claimed you before I’d earned the right. I pulled you into my darkness and put you in danger.”

His hands found mine, fingers curling tightly.

“But I love you, Rita. More than I thought I could love anything. You made me want to be more than the man people whisper about. You made me want to build something that lasts. Something beautiful.”

He sank to one knee on the stone path, surrounded by roses and morning light.

My heart stopped.

From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a box. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a ring—a flawless diamond surrounded by smaller stones, elegant and timeless.

“Rita Dominic,” he said, his voice steady despite the faint tremor in his hands. “Will you marry me? Will you let me spend the rest of my life proving I’m worthy of you? Protecting you. Choosing you. Building a future with you—even knowing where I come from?”

Tears blurred everything.

“Yes,” I sobbed. “Yes, Minho. Of course yes.”

His shoulders sagged with relief. He slid the ring onto my finger, the metal cool against my skin. Then he stood, lifting me off the ground, spinning me in a circle. His laughter—real, unrestrained—spilled out, echoing over the city.

When he set me down, he kissed me like we had all the time in the world.

“You’ve made me the happiest man alive,” he murmured against my mouth. “I’ll spend every day making sure you never regret it.”

Planning a wedding while navigating Minho’s world was a kind of surreal I couldn’t have imagined back in that Manhattan ballroom.

He insisted on handling security, logistics, venues, vendors—everything that could possibly be a target. But he asked my opinion on every detail that mattered to me. Flowers. Dress. Music. Guest list.

We chose a small ceremony. No extended family, no business associates who would turn it into a networking event. Just a handful of people who knew the truth and loved us anyway.

For weeks, my father’s silence was a weight in my chest. His absence from my life was a wound that throbbed even in the middle of my happiness.

Two weeks before the wedding, my phone rang.

His name lit up the screen.

My heartbeat stuttered.

I answered on the third ring.

“Rita,” he said. His voice sounded older. Tired. “We need to talk.”

We met at a small café in a part of Seoul I didn’t immediately recognize—neutral ground, but swept by Minho’s men all the same.

My father looked…smaller. The tailored suit was the same, but there were deeper lines around his eyes, gray at his temples I hadn’t noticed before.

“I was wrong,” he said without preamble, as soon as I sat down. “About a lot of things. About Minho. About trying to control your life. About thinking I knew what was best for you solely because I’m your father.”

I stared at him, unsure what to do with that.

“Jin-woo showed his true colors,” he continued. “Minho’s investigation uncovered more than I ever wanted to know. He brought it all to my attention. Quietly. Efficiently. Before any of it touched our company. Before any of it touched our name.”

His mouth twisted. “The man I thought was the perfect son-in-law was planning to use our business as a front for things I will spend the rest of my life trying to forget. If Minho hadn’t intervened, we’d both be ruined. In jail. Or worse.”

Hope flickered, hesitant and fragile. “So you’re saying…?”

“I’m saying I owe Minho an apology,” he said gruffly. “And I owe you one too. I tried to protect you by making every decision for you, and in doing so I caged you. I didn’t trust you to know your own heart.” He reached across the table, covering my hand with his. “I see now that he loves you. That you love him. That he would die—kill—for you.”

“That’s not what I—”

“I’m not saying that’s good,” he cut in. “But I am saying it’s real.”

Tears stung my eyes.

“Does this mean…” My voice shook. “You’ll come to the wedding?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “If you’ll still have me,” he said, and for the first time in my life, I heard uncertainty in his voice.

I was out of my chair and around the table before I knew I was moving, throwing my arms around him like I had when I was eight and he’d come home from a business trip with a stuffed bear that smelled like duty-free cologne.

“Of course,” I said into his shoulder. “Of course, Dad.”

Behind us, I felt more than saw Minho enter. His presence was a new constant in my life, a gravity I’d grown used to orbiting.

My father straightened, wiping at his eyes. He turned to face him.

“Dominic,” Minho said carefully.

“Minho.” My father extended his hand.

They shook. It was awkward, cautious. But genuine.

“Take care of my daughter,” my father said. “With my life,” Minho replied, his hand finding mine, tugging me gently to his side.

My father watched us for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe you will.”

The wedding day arrived in a blur of silk and flowers and nerves.

The venue was a rooftop garden atop one of Minho’s buildings, transformed with soft lights, white blossoms, simple wooden chairs. Seoul spread out around us, skyscrapers glinting in the afternoon sun.

My father walked me down the aisle.

His hand trembled slightly on my arm. “You look beautiful,” he murmured. “Your mother would have been proud.”

My throat closed. “Thank you,” I whispered.

But all my focus was on the man waiting at the end of the aisle.

Minho stood at the makeshift altar in a black suit that fit him like a second skin, white shirt crisp, tie perfectly knotted. His eyes never left mine.

When I reached him, he took my hands, his thumb brushing over my knuckles in that familiar, grounding way he always did when the world tilted.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said under his breath. “And you’re mine.”

Our vows were raw and simple, spoken in English and Korean, tripping over both languages as we promised things we had already been living.

When the officiant finally said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Minho didn’t hesitate.

He pulled me in and kissed me with a joy that made our small group of guests cheer and laugh and wipe at their eyes. His arms around me felt like home.

“Mrs. Kang,” he murmured against my mouth. “I like the sound of that.”

The reception was held in his penthouse, transformed into a fairy-tale space with lanterns, music, and far too much food. My father gave a speech that had everyone choked up, talking about learning to let go, about how real love meant trusting someone to choose their own path.

Minho followed with his own, voice thicker than I’d ever heard it, thanking my father for raising the woman who’d changed his life, who’d given him a reason to walk out of the shadows.

Later, as we danced under the stars on the rooftop, his hand splayed across the small of my back, he leaned down.

“I have a confession,” he said.

“What?” I asked, smiling.

“I started falling for you the moment I saw you in that Manhattan ballroom,” he said. “But I didn’t fall completely until the night you chose me. Fully. When you looked at what I was, at what my life meant, and decided you’d rather walk into the fire than live one more day in your cage.”

“My therapist is going to love that metaphor,” I said dryly.

He laughed quietly.

“You saw all of me,” he said. “The good, the bad, the ugly. And you stayed. That’s when I knew I’d never let you go.”

“I chose you because beneath all the darkness, I saw something beautiful,” I said, laying my hand over his heart. “A man who is fiercely loyal. Who protects the people he loves. Who would rebuild himself from the ground up if it meant giving his family peace. You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done, Minho. You’re also every gentle touch, every midnight talk, every time you’ve held me when the world hurt too much.”

His eyes glistened. He kissed me like it was an answer.

When the last guest left and my father hugged us both one last time before disappearing into his car, Minho scooped me into his arms.

“I’ve waited for this,” he said, carrying me to our bedroom. “For the moment you’re completely, unquestionably mine.”

The possessive note in his voice sent a familiar heat curling low in my stomach.

I spent the night learning what it meant to be loved by a man who had once believed he didn’t deserve anything good and now cherished every inch of his miracle.

Sometime in the months that followed, life settled into something that resembled normal.

Well, our version of normal.

We traveled between Seoul and New York, building a bridge between our worlds. Minho began quietly shifting more of his business into legitimate ventures—real estate, tech, global logistics without the shadows. The darker parts of his empire he either sold off to people he trusted to run them with stricter lines or dismantled entirely, brick by poisonous brick.

“I want our children to grow up proud of their last name,” he said one evening on the rooftop, his hand on my flat stomach, the city glittering around us. “Not whispered about in back rooms.”

I laughed. “Children, huh? Plural?”

“As many as you’ll give me,” he said.

Three months later, I stood in our bathroom, staring at a plastic stick with two clear lines on it.

My hands shook.

“Minho?” I called, my voice unsteady. “Can you come here for a second?”

He appeared in the doorway, tie half loosened, sleeves rolled up, looking like every dangerous fantasy I’d ever had, and then his gaze dropped to the test in my hand.

His face changed.

“We’re…?” he asked, almost afraid to hope.

I nodded, tears already spilling over. “We’re.”

The sound he made was something between a laugh and a sob. He crossed the room in two long strides, lifting me off my feet and spinning me around like he had on that rose-covered rooftop.

“We’re having a baby,” he kept saying against my hair. “You’re giving me a family. You’re giving me everything I didn’t even know I wanted.”

The pregnancy was, in many ways, easier than I’d expected. Morning sickness was a demon for a few weeks, and my ankles turned into balloons no matter what I did. But Minho hovered in the best possible way.

He went to every appointment, holding my hand so tightly during ultrasounds that my fingers went numb. He rubbed my feet at night without me asking, talked to my swelling belly in Korean about the city we lived in, the stories he wanted to read to her, the mistakes he never wanted to repeat.

The man who once commanded fear with a glance turned to mush every time our baby kicked.

My father softened too. He became a regular presence in our lives again, flying between New York and Seoul, showing up with tiny designer outfits I told him were ridiculous and he insisted were “investment pieces.”

Even Minho’s most hardened associates treated me like some sacred entity, their usual roughness smoothed away when I waddled into a room.

“Boss’ll kill us if we let you trip on anything,” one of them muttered once, moving a cord out of my path so fast it almost seemed to vanish.

Nine months after that rose-drenched proposal, our daughter was born.

She came screaming into the world in a swanky Seoul hospital room, all eight pounds of her full of opinions. She had a head of dark curls, my warm complexion, and Minho’s dark eyes.

He cried.

This man who’d broken bones and careers without blinking, who had once watched a warehouse full of enemies disarmed with ice in his veins, sobbed like a child when the nurse placed our daughter in his arms.

“She’s perfect,” he kept whispering, his voice rough. “You’re perfect. Both of you.”

My father held her next, his big hands surprisingly gentle as she wrapped her tiny fingers around his thumb. The hardness in his expression melted completely.

“What will you name her?” he asked.

Minho and I exchanged a look.

“Saraphina,” I said. “Saraphina Kang.”

“For the angel she is,” Minho added, kissing the top of her downy head. “Born from something that should’ve been impossible and somehow became the most real thing in our lives.”

Life shifted again.

Minho continued moving his business into the light, closing doors on old habits and opening new ones. Deal by deal, he became less of a whispered threat in Seoul’s underbelly and more of a legitimate power player in the daylight.

Not everyone liked it.

Not everyone survived the transition.

But slowly, everything dangerous about his world turned away from us and toward nameless boardrooms and market charts, the violence dulled by contracts and lawyers.

Our home filled with laughter and toys and the constant background noise of cartoons in multiple languages. The rooftop garden that had once witnessed desperate confessions and dangerous proposals became Saraphina’s playground, her little legs pumping as she ran between roses and herb beds, her giggles echoing over the city.

On our second wedding anniversary, we stood on that same rooftop, watching the sun drop behind the Seoul skyline. Saraphina was asleep downstairs, tucked into a bed that probably cost more than my first car. My father had volunteered to babysit, hovering more than any grandfather I’d ever seen.

Minho stood behind me, arms wrapped around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder.

“Do you remember when I first brought you up here?” he asked.

“When you told me to choose you?” I said softly. “Yeah. I remember.”

“I told you then that you deserved everything,” he said. “I meant it. I still do.”

He turned me in his arms, his expression serious.

“I have something to tell you,” he said.

My heart skipped a beat. “What is it?”

“I’m out,” he said simply. “Completely. Officially. The last of the illegal holdings are gone. Sold. Dismantled. There are no more shadows in the corners, Rita. Not ones with my name on them, anyway.”

Tears flooded my eyes. “Minho…”

“My empire means nothing compared to you and Saraphina,” he said. “Compared to any other children we might have. You gave me a reason to want to live long enough to see them grow up. I’m choosing that. I’m choosing you. Every time. Always.”

I kissed him through my tears. The salt on my tongue tasted like loss and relief and a thousand prayers no one had taught me to say out loud.

Two years later, we welcomed a son.

We named him Dominic Minho Kang, after both our fathers. A bridge between where we came from and where we were going.

He had my nose and Minho’s serious expression even as a newborn.

Our family was noisy and messy and full of a kind of happiness I’d once thought belonged only in books.

On Saraphina’s fifth birthday, the rooftop garden was full. Children ran between planters with sticky hands and wild hair, balloons bobbed in the breeze, my father tried—and failed—to operate a bubble machine with the solemnity of a man negotiating a billion-dollar merger.

Minho stood beside me, a rare softness in his gaze as he watched our daughter boss around kids twice her size.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“For what?” I asked.

“For taking a chance on me,” he said. “On a man who didn’t deserve you. For seeing past the monster everyone else thought I was. For giving me this.” He gestured to the chaos around us. “A life I never thought I’d be allowed to have.”

I turned in his arms, my heart so full it hurt.

“Thank you,” I said, “for fighting for me. For teaching me that love can be a home, not a cage. For giving me freedom and safety at the same time. For letting me choose—and then choosing me back, every single day.”

He kissed me, slow and sweet, our children’s laughter ringing around us like a blessing.

“I’d do it all again,” he murmured against my lips. “Every fight. Every danger. Every bad decision that led me to you. It was all worth it.”

“I love you, Kang Minho,” I said. The words had come easily for years now, but they still felt like magic.

“I love you more, Rita Kang,” he replied, his smile devastating. “Today. Tomorrow. Every day after. Until my last breath and beyond.”

As the sun dipped behind Seoul’s skyline, painting our world in molten gold, I stood between the man I’d chosen and the family we’d built and knew, with an certainty that went deeper than fear or doubt or blood, that this was exactly where I was meant to be.

I’d walked through fire. Faced down men who thought they owned me. Defied a father, a fiancé, a city full of expectations. I’d fallen into a love that should have destroyed us both and come out the other side holding everything I’d ever needed.

Our story began in darkness, in a Manhattan ballroom and a Seoul terrace and a warehouse that smelled like rust and danger.

It bloomed into something fierce and bright and enduring.

Minho had promised to give me everything I deserved.

He kept that vow in ways my younger self could never have imagined: freedom within safety, passion within commitment, danger transformed into adventure—not the kind that leaves bodies behind, but the kind that leaves memories.

And most importantly, a love so complete it remade us both.

Our children would grow up knowing that love doesn’t mean control. That protection doesn’t require cages. That strength, real strength, is softer than fear and fiercer than any threat whispered in a dark alley.

We’d broken rules. We’d rewritten the ones that mattered. We’d taken two broken pieces, two lives shaped by expectation and violence, and built something whole.

As the first stars appeared over Seoul, I rested my head on my husband’s shoulder, listening to our kids argue about cake flavors, feeling my father’s contented presence at my side.

If I’d had to, I would have done it all over again.

Every terrifying decision. Every dangerous kiss. Every sleepless night.

Because it had all led me here.

To this family.

To this rooftop.

To this impossible, perfect, too-good-to-be-true life we’d bled and fought and loved our way into.

Our story might have started with a trembling champagne glass in Manhattan and a man I’d been warned about all my life.

It ended—or rather, it kept going—with a simple truth:

Together, we had turned a monster into a man, a cage into a home, and a forbidden love into a forever.