Shattered Empress|kth

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟯

Y/n

I was leaving.

I folded the small outfit for Eun-jun before placing it into the suitcase, fighting back the tears. After a year of constant ups and downs, of the push and pull I had with Taehyung, I was on the verge of truly leaving for good.

While the relief was evident in my conscience, it wasn't in my heart. Instead, I ached for what I was about to do, for how I was going to betray Taehyung one last time. He was letting me leave, but all I was doing was trading one prison for another. What if he didn't win? What if I found myself waiting for a man who hadn't been able to save himself?

Then what? I had two children that were depending on me to keep them safe, and if Taehyung fell in this war, we would be at Baekhyun's mercy. I couldn't allow myself to put them in that sort of danger.

I picked up the next outfit, breathing in the clean scent of her clothing to still my nerves. My conversation with Taehyung in the wee hours of the morning still rolled around in my thoughts, the tortured look on his face breaking my heart. It was clear to me that he was grieving for Jungkook, something fierce, but there was no way he was allowing me to comfort him. Instead, he was throwing himself into finishing this war with Baekhyun, and I knew if I asked him right now, he wouldn't be able to tell me if he knew he would be coming out on top. Taehyung was not the confident Mafia don I had fallen in love with.

He was a broken man that I wanted desperately to fix.

Drawing in a breath, I tucked the outfit in my hands into the bag and walked away from the table, gazing down at our daughter in her crib. Why couldn't Taehyung see what he had right here? Why couldn't he put all this fighting aside to take care of the things that were important?

Or at least should be important. I would think that a man who had lost his entire family would see the importance of his children, of his wife, and how precious those relationships were. He wanted revenge. I could understand that. I had been there once before, wanting him to hurt like he had hurt me. The man that I had given everything to had killed my parents and taken me hostage, forcing me into a life that I didn't want to live.

I could think about those things, let them fester day in and day out to where eventually they would grow into deep-seated hate, and I would be blinded by it, wanting his death to ease the pain.

But I had pushed past that trauma in my life. I no longer wanted to hurt Taehyung. While I would never fully forgive him for having a hand in my parents' deaths, if they hadn't died, I would never have a daughter and a son like I did now.

I would have never fallen in love with Ye-jun, never had that one night with Taehyung that sent my life spiralling in a completely different direction.

They always say things happen for a reason, and I felt like I was living proof of that. My entire life was living proof.

Now I was on the verge of losing my husband.

I turned away from the crib and walked out of the nursery, my arms wrapped around my waist. Constantly in my mind, my thoughts were on Taehyung. I worried about him, about not only his ability to win this war but also his state of mind. Jungkook had been his closest friend, almost like a brother to him, and to suffer that guilt by himself wasn't healthy. I knew he blamed himself for his death. After all, it had been his plan.

But I knew that Jungkook would do it all over again to protect his don. He had known the risks, just like I did, of loving a man who seemed to be incapable of love. No, Taehyung was capable of love. I saw it every time he was around his children, how he carried every moment on his face as if he had never experienced it before.