PROLOGUE

The Billionaire’s Gilded Cage

By Golden Tree

They dressed her with silk and silence.

Beneath the light of Seoul’s finest chandeliers, Chaewon Kim stood like an impossibly shaped statue—flawless, beautiful, untouched. The designer evening gown clung to her body in shining folds of ivory and silver, the off-the-shoulder cut beautiful with china skin. To the observing superior, she was the very picture of poise and privilege. A beautiful heiress claiming her rightful place at the peak of authority. But beneath her composed facade, she was drowning.

The champagne-filled air in the great hall hung heavy with violin music and veiled ambition. Socialites and power brokers drink vintage wine and whisper over their jointed precious hands, immune to the war raging quietly behind the darkness of Chaewon’s almond-shaped, kohl-lined eyes. Eyes that shone with anguish.

This evening was her wedding night.

Not to the man she loved. Not even to a man with whom she knew. But to Jian Lee—the calculating, icy billionaire whose reach extended into all industries, around which rooms curved in obedience.

He was her father's greatest competitor. and now, her husband.

The ceremony itself had been quick, dignified, and business-like. White roses filled the corridor, but she’d caught no scent but the reek of betrayal. Her father's hold on her arm at the altar had been tight, almost painful. A reminder. She was the pawn. The bargaining chip. The support for titans.

Upon appearing with his omnipresent, watchful assistant, the air fell silent in respectful stillness. He stood there, devastating in an impeccable black suit cut imposingly enough to cut glass. His raven-black locks swept back, breathing the image of merciless magnetism. His unrelenting, black-onyx eyes locked onto hers as though measuring her value down to whole numbers.

No affection. No pretence. Simply an unspoken agreement sealed in two words and a stolen future.

She whispered, "I do."

And the cage door shut.

The guests clapped, tears even falling from some. For them, this was a fairy tale union—a union of two dynasties. But as the couple took their photo shoots, Jian's hand placed gently at the small of her back, Chaewon caught the cold clasp of chains closing. The media referred to it as fate. She referred to it as captivity.

That evening, while the festivities were raging indoors, she escaped onto a balcony with a view over the sparkling sprawl of Seoul. Cold touched her bare shoulders, and she embraced it, at least there was no mistake on it. The lights of the city throbbed like far-off alarms—millions of lives continuing below while her own had been taken under crystal chandeliers and champagne.

She caught her own reflection in the glass doors behind her, that of a woman with which, even now, she barely identified regal, fierce or hollow.

And then things changed.

There's a whisper, just barely. A featherlike caressing of air.

She turned.

No one.

Just one black feather lying upon the railing of white marble sleek, mysterious. Out of place in an otherwise carefully cleaned world of accidents.

She gazed at it, her heart skipping. It looked almost exactly like the ones her mother would collect, before her mysterious and unexplainable death. Her memories flooded back—gentle lullabies, whispered cautions, the smell of jasmine and fear. This feather, though, wasn't wistful. It was intentional. A sign.

There was someone here. Watching, waiting.

On the inside, Jian smiled for the cameras, revealing nothing. But when their faces met through glass, his countenance slipped—only for an instant. Not fear. Not confusion. Recognition.

She wasn’t alone in being pursued.

Chaewon drew back, her fingertips touching the feather. Chill spread along her spine. The mansion, the wedding, the man—none of them were anything they appeared.This wasn’t simply about power or revenge.

It involved survival, secrets, and blood.

Standing there in her white wedding dress, the city sparkling like an untruth behind her, she quietly promised, not to her husband, not to her father, but to herself.

She would reveal the truth about this gilded cage, and she would set it aflame from the inside out.

Even at the risk of burning herself to death