Yoona had been born into a family feared by entire cities. The Seol syndicate—cold, wealthy, merciless. Yet inside their mansion, behind the carved doors and silk curtains, lived a secret tragedy: the blind daughter no one dared to mention.

She hadn’t been blind at birth. When she was six, her stepmother—elegant, venomous—had pressed a bowl of acid into her hands under the guise of “helping with chores.” One slip. One scream. One flash of burning pain, and her world collapsed into darkness forever.

From that moment on, Yoona became the difficult child. Not because she misbehaved, but because she could no longer see the faces that despised her.

She grew up surrounded by people who pretended she wasn’t there.

Maids bathed her with cold water even when she begged them to stop. Her siblings pushed her down hallways just to hear her stumble. And the house whispered behind her back, as though blindness made her deaf too.

Her father—boss of the syndicate—was the only one who loved her, even if he never said it aloud. He visited her room quietly at night, watching her sleep with guilt tightening around his heart. But in front of the family, in front of the men who followed his orders, he kept his face hard as granite. He could not show softness. Even for her.

So instead, he hired someone to stand where he could not.

Christopher.

Twenty-eight, towering, shoulders like armor. His presence filled the hallway long before his footsteps did. He came from a life opposite to Yoona’s—raised in a broken apartment two hours outside the city, where rent was late and meals were cheap. Money had been a curse that clung to him even when he finally earned enough to escape.

And now he stood guard over a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

At first, Yoona rejected him the same way she rejected every caretaker before him. “I don’t need help.” “Leave.” “You’re fired.”

Her voice was always quiet, but sharp enough to cut. Christopher didn’t move.

He was stubborn in a way no one else had ever been with her. The maids resented her. Her siblings mocked her. But Christopher listened. Even when she hurled frustrated insults at him. Even when she refused to take his hand while walking down the stairs. Even when she locked her door and he sat outside for hours, waiting in complete silence.

Day after day, he stayed.

Not because of the paycheck—though it was more than he’d ever earned. But because he saw something no one else in that house bothered to notice:

Yoona wasn’t difficult. She was alone.

And slowly, painfully, unexpectedly… a quiet, fragile friendship began to grow between the blind mafia heiress and the bodyguard who refused to leave her side.