the bookworm crush

On the night she was abandoned, Lillian Lowell set fire to her grandmother's yard with her own hands. Amid the roaring flames, she met Shane Lloyd, the bloodied heir to the Lloyd family. He took her in, playing a careful game, intending to use this "thorny rose" to disrupt the balance between their two powerful families. But with each of her fierce counterattacks, he found himself falling deeper. From then on—he sparks the fire, she fans the flames; he sets the trap, she breaks the game. A woman of fierce clarity and a man of meticulous schemes join forces to crush their enemies, finding redemption in each other's chaos. Between calculation and sincerity, they burn a path through the ashes to a new future.

When Yvonne Carter was a child, she was a chubby girl who had a crush on the class nerd, Derek Lawson. As she grew up, her parents tricked her into going abroad and marrying a stranger. To get close to Derek, Yvonne applied for a job as his assistant. However, she accidentally inhaled an aphrodisiac and ended up spending the night with him. When Derek woke up, the beautiful "Cinderella" was nowhere to be seen. The only person in sight was the timid, plainly-dressed Yvonne, who had come to deliver documents. Derek mistakenly thought she had witnessed the previous night's events and ordered her to locate that woman. Eventually, he discovered that his "wife" was actually Yvonne, but by then, she had left in disappointment. He chased after her to the airport, where he confessed his deep love for her, and they embraced and kissed.

In high school, Thorn and his boyfriend Jett had their intimate video secretly recorded and leaked by the school bully, Pitch. Unable to endure the public scrutiny and domestic violence, Jett took his own life. Driven by revenge, Thorn underwent a gender reassignment surgery and became Rose. She entered Pitch's life to get close to him. There, she discovered that Pitch's bullying actually came from his own twisted crush on Thorn. She also found out that Pitch's father-in-law, Thanes, was the one who had murdered her parents. During her pursuit of revenge, Rose saw her best friend, Jennis, brutally killed by Pitch's wife, Denee. Pitch also died when he took a bullet for Rose. Denee couldn't take this anymore, and she turned against her own father. In the end, Rose let go of her hatred. Guided by Jett's spirit, she found a way to move on with her life. This violent quest for revenge exposed a powerful family's drug crimes and ended a cycle of hatred that had plagued three generations.