Good Wife

Prologue Broken

The crunch of the wheels drummed angrily across the gravel pavements as a slim figure walked briskly down the dark road, her movements hesitant yet rushed as though she was running away from something...

Or someone.

It was the dead of the night. The roads were empty, and the neighbourhood was shrouded by darkness. Physically and emotionally, everything was dark to the woman dragging her luggage forcibly away from hell.

A hell that was once home to her.

But no longer. She would never go back to that hell ever again.

Despite how quiet the estate was, the night was anything but quiet to Yoon Jin Ah. Her flurried heartbeat was loud against her eardrums, erratic and fearful yet holding a tinge of suppressed anger over the whole situation. Her veins were as cold as ice, much like the biting frostiness that was slowly sucking the life out of her heart as she forced her feet to carry her further and further away from the Yoo estate.

And as she expected, running footsteps followed her, thumping loudly against the gravel as her husband of ten years raced across the uneven street to get to her.

"Jin Ah! Please!" His desperate shouts followed her. "Please don't leave."

A large hand took a hold of her slender wrist, tight enough to keep her from walking further but loose enough such that he wouldn't bruise her.

Even that one touch conveyed the desperation in his heart, for Yoo Jin Woo never once envisioned a day where his wife would leave his side.

Yet, the touch that she once embraced from the bottom of her soul was now one that she found herself rejecting from the bottom of her heart.

"Let me go, Jin Woo. I'm leaving." Jin Ah whispered into the night, her voice devoid of any emotions.

That emptiness in her stare alarmed Jin Woo greatly as he desperately grasped at thin straws, hoping to reach down deep enough, past the penetrating walls that his wife has put up to protect herself. To protect herself from him.

It hurts that the very safe haven he had promised to provide her was one that she was running away from.

Where was his Jin Ah hiding?

More importantly, what could he say now to make her stay?

Anxious, the normally sure and decisive man was anything but calm. Because of that, his next words left his mouth in a rush, sounding harsher than he intended them to be since his heart was screaming for her to stay.

"Damn it, Jin Ah, please stay. We can sort this out!"

"Sort this out? How?" Jin Ah's voice rose in exasperation, the woman forgoing her usual giving disposition as she finally stood up for herself. "Do you even have the slightest inkling of what's going on in there?"

He didn't...and Yoo Jin Woo would never begin to understand just how much his wife had to endure for her to break so completely. To a man who has always been focused on building the company, he had rightfully assumed that his wife had been perfectly content at home. There were tense moments now and then but family and drama went hand in hand.

For as far he knew, there have never been any unresolved conflicts between them. Little did he know, this was only the start of all the problems. The accumulation of stress and hurt has finally broken Jin Ah to the point that she could no longer stay.

If she stayed, she might as well die.

Stunned to silence, it was clear that Yoo Jin Woo had no scathing remarks towards her question, probing Jin Ah to air her frustrations openly, confessing to the hurt that she has been suppressing all this time.