The Cello’s Last Ransom
"I don’t need a lover. I need a shield. And in exchange, I will become your bank."
Han Seo-yoon is the "Iron Queen" of the Han-Guk Group. To the public, she is the perfect, cold-blooded successor; to her scheming uncles, she is a target that needs to be removed. When the Board of Directors demands she stabilize her image through marriage or forfeit her seat, Seo-yoon realizes she needs a husband who is two things: desperate enough to obey and invisible enough to control.
Enter Kang Jin-hyuk.
Once a prodigy cellist whose music could move audiences to tears, Jin-hyuk is now a ghost of his former self. Disgraced by a scandal he didn't commit and drowning in his father’s medical debts, he spends his days in backbreaking labor, his gifted hands calloused and scarred. He is a man who has lost everything—except his pride.
When Seo-yoon appears at his bedside with a black-ink contract and a check that would solve all his miseries, the deal is simple:
The Role: Act as the devoted, doting husband of the Han-Guk heiress for three years.
The Rule: No personal questions. No touching. No genuine feelings.
The Reward: Total financial freedom and the restoration of his family’s honor.
But as they move into a house that feels more like a museum than a home, the contract begins to blur. In the boardroom, Seo-yoon is a shark, but behind closed doors, Jin-hyuk discovers a woman who forgets to eat, can’t sleep without the lights on, and hasn't heard a note of music in years.
As Jin-hyuk slowly begins to "repair" the woman who bought him, Seo-yoon finds herself tempted by the one thing she can't put a price on: his heart. But with her uncles closing in and the truth of Jin-hyuk's past scandal threatening to break, they must decide if their "fake" marriage is the only thing real in their lives—or if the cost of loving each other will be the destruction of the empire they both fought to save.