The silence between them stretched like a wire ready to snap.
Joon-Hyuk had never looked at her like this—so fiercely protective, yet heartbreakingly soft. His suit was soaked from the rain, his hair sticking to his forehead. He looked less like a billionaire and more like a man who had just run through hell.
For her.
They sat on the bench inside the subway station, shoulders barely touching.
"I never wanted this," Hana whispered, staring ahead. "I just wanted peace."
"You deserve peace," he said gently. "But people like Baek won't give it to you. That's why I'm here."
Her eyes glistened.
"Why now?" she asked bitterly. "Where were you when I was being sold? When I was drowning in silence?"
Joon-Hyuk flinched. He didn't look away.
"I was a coward," he admitted. "I was angry… at you, at my mother, at the world. I didn't know what you meant to me until the moment I saw your name on the hospital file. And then it was too late. You were already broken."
A single tear rolled down Hana's cheek, but she wiped it quickly.
"I don't need a hero, Kang Joon-Hyuk."
He smiled faintly.
"Too bad. I'm already standing in the fire."
Back at the Kang Mansion, Min-Ji was pacing like a cat in a cage.
The mansion had been tightened. Security doubled. The private investigator she hired had already sent over a dossier on Baek Do-Won.
She stared at it now—photos, financial records, rumors of coercion and silencing victims.
This wasn't just a man with ambition.
He was a predator.
And Hana was the bait.
She picked up her phone.
"Prepare the legal team," she ordered coldly. "If this man moves one finger toward my family again, I'll burn his entire empire down."
That night, Joon-Hyuk brought Hana back to his penthouse—not the Kang estate.
Not yet.
He poured her tea in silence. The kind she used to drink. Jasmine.
Her eyes flickered with surprise.
"You remembered?"
"I forget business meetings," he said, "but never you."
The corner of her mouth twitched, and for the first time in a long while… she let herself smile.
Tiny. Fleeting. But it was there.