The envelope felt heavier than it should.Hana stared at the elegant paper, her mother's familiar handwriting twisting the knife in her chest.
She read it again. And again.Her tears fell silently onto the sheets.
Her mother was gone.Her father was murdered by the very people she trusted.
Her life had been stolen, rewritten, and packaged into a nightmare she couldn't wake from.
"You said... the empire is mine?" Hana's voice cracked.
Madam Kang nodded, arms crossed like an iron gate. "Yes. Legally. But do not mistake that for power. The men hunting you... they are wolves. You are a lamb walking into a den."
Hana gripped the letter tighter.
"Who are they?"
"Three men. Han Seok-jin, Shin Tae-joon, and Ma Dong-guk." Madam Kang's lips curled in disgust. "You may have already met one of them... intimately."
Hana's mind snapped to the masked man at the auction.The voice.The venom.The laughter.
Her body turned cold.
"Ma Dong-guk...?" she whispered.
Madam Kang's silence confirmed it.
A scream of rage and shame erupted from Hana's throat.
"They will pay," she hissed through clenched teeth.
Madam Kang's cold gaze softened—for a brief second.
"Good," she said. "But not alone. Marry my son. Let Kang Joon-hyuk shield you from them. In exchange, you will play the perfect wife."
Hana's fists clenched so tightly her nails dug into her skin.
"Is that all I am now? A pawn to be moved around?"
Madam Kang's answer was as sharp as glass.
"In this world, Seo Hana, you are either the one holding the chessboard—or the pawn. Decide."
Seo Hana stared at her reflection in the hospital mirror.
She didn't recognize the girl staring back.
But she would.
She would rise.
And they would regret not killing her when they had the chance.