Collateral Existence

ZAKIRAH LEE is the most feared defense attorney in Seoul. She wins cases that no one else will touch, makes enemies out of powerful men, and has built a life so precisely around her work that she has left almost no room for anything else. She doesn't need anyone. She has made certain of it.

SOPHIA LAFORTEZA is the only daughter of one of Korea's most influential families, a surgeon who saves lives in the hours other people spend sleeping. Behind the composure and the credentials is a woman who has been quietly, stubbornly lonely for longer than she would ever admit.

When Chairman Cromwell Lee is rushed to the hospital and two old men decide that the best way to tie their legacies together is to tie their granddaughters to each other, neither woman has a choice that doesn't cost them something.
So they do what they know how to do. They make a contract. Five years of marriage. A convincing performance for the families. A divorce at the end, clean and mutual, no casualties.

Except someone has already decided that Zakirah has too many enemies to keep the woman beside her safe.
And it turns out that sharing a roof with someone, even on paper, even reluctantly - has a way of making the paper feel thinner every day.

Some agreements are meant to be broken. Some distances are meant to close. And some people find each other not because fate is generous, but because two people who have spent their whole lives being necessary finally stumble into someone who makes them want to be known.