Minho was the eldest son of a family empire built on crime and blood. Since childhood, his fate was carved for him: one day, he would inherit the throne of the underworld. Power was his birthright. Freedom was not.

But when he was twenty-one, he met Yoona. She was only eighteen then — an ordinary girl, untouched by shadows. For nearly five years, their love burned in secret, fragile but defiant. Minho, who had known only duty, finally tasted light. Until his family destroyed it. His mother despised Yoona, calling her weak, unworthy of their name. And Minho, torn between love and loyalty, obeyed. He ended it.

He told himself life would move forward, but it didn’t. What he longed for most wasn’t power, but something softer — a wife, a family, a child to call his own. He dreamed of holding his baby, of waking to its cries, of being a father in ways his own had never been. It was his deepest hunger. Yet every woman who entered his life slipped away: some infertile, some unwilling, some recoiling at the very thought of motherhood.

By fourty-three, Minho was a man with everything — wealth, power, fear at his command — and yet nothing. Nights in his mansion echoed with silence. Dinners with allies left him hollow, watching their children run into their fathers’ arms. He played with children on the street, smiling, but inside he was breaking.

And then Yoona returned.

By chance, they crossed paths again. Winter nights drew them together, their homes along the same road. She walked bundled in her scarf, shivering, while Minho, hardened, barely felt the cold. Slowly, the old bond rekindled. For the first time in years, he revealed his heart. He confessed his longing to be a father, his fear that time had betrayed him. His voice shook as he described wanting to cradle a baby in his arms, to hear it laugh, to raise something pure in a life drowned in blood. To anyone else, it would have sounded pathetic. To Yoona, it was devastating.

But Minho did not know the truth she carried.

Two decades earlier, after their brutal separation, Yoona had discovered she was pregnant. Four weeks. A spark of life she had not asked for, but one she could not ignore. Terror consumed her. To raise Minho’s child meant tying herself forever to his family’s empire — to his ruthless mother, to a dynasty steeped in blood. She imagined her child growing under their shadow, suffocated by violence, condemned to a life she could never protect it from.

The nights were unbearable. She lay awake, hand pressed to her stomach, whispering apologies to the life she wasn’t strong enough to keep. She dreamed of a baby’s laughter, only to see it twisted into nightmares of guns and blood. In the end, she made the only choice she believed she had. Quietly, desperately, she ended the pregnancy before it rooted deeper in her life.

She walked out of that clinic hollow, carrying a grief that never left her. And Minho never knew.

For twenty years, Yoona bore the secret alone. Every time she saw a child’s smile, she wondered what her own might have looked like. Every time she remembered Minho, she remembered what could have been.

Now, walking beside him once more, hearing him confess that fatherhood was his greatest dream, the truth clawed at her. Should she tell him? Could she? After two decades, after a lifetime of silence — could she reveal what they had lost?

And if she did… would it break him, or destroy them both?