The Su Group is on the verge of bankruptcy. To save her critically ill father and the family business, Su Wanqing, the eldest daughter of the family and a graduate of a top art academy, is forced to sign a three-year marriage alliance contract and marry Lu Chengyuan, president of the Lu Group, known in business circles as the "Glacier Cheetah."
He is a ruthless, emotionally frozen head of a wealthy family. After upheaval in his family during childhood, he has become utterly indifferent to love and views marriage as a tool for exchanging benefits. She is a talented oil painter with a spoiled, sharp-edged exterior and a resilient core. Her paintbrush is her last defense against reality, and even trapped in a contractual marriage, she refuses to become a decorative trophy.
Their wedding is minimalist, and their life afterward is distant. He stays at the top floor of the company headquarters, leaving her only one rule: dinner with his family at the old residence once a week. She keeps to her private studio, using paint to trace her stubborn vision of the world onto canvas. But at a family dinner, her keen eye for color exposes a flaw in the Lu Group's brochure, earning her the first genuinely warm look from him. When online abuse targets her, she proves herself by winning an international award with her painting "Roses in the Ruins." When her father's condition turns critical and he needs rare medication, Lu mobilizes his private connections overnight to get it, then lies that it is "part of the contract." On a stormy night, an electrical fault leaves her cowering in a corner of the studio, afraid of the dark. When he opens the door, she instinctively grabs him as her "lifeline."
When a rival kidnaps her to force him to abandon a project, he races away from an international meeting to save her, only to find her curled up on an iron rack, still fiercely protecting the canvas bearing his profile. His furious reproach at the hospital hides a concern he cannot bring himself to voice. In his drawer is a child's drawing that reads, "Big Brother, wait for me to come home," an old work by his missing younger sister.
