Vengeful Desires

14-

When he first met Soo-jin, they were well into their tumultuous teen years, yet their future union already carried the weighty inevitability of something preordained.

Born into immense privilege, branded from birth as representatives of their respective chaebol dynasties, their lives had been meticulously choreographed from the moment they drew their first breaths.

At the elite academies they attended, their names were invariably uttered in the same reverential whisper - the Wang heir and his intended, Soo-jin of the illustrious Yoon family.

Where she claimed the coveted first rank, he followed in the arduous second, always trailing in her brilliantly blazing wake. And in those fleeting moments when he edged ahead, she nipped at his heels with the ferocious tenacity that had so thoroughly earned her father's pride.

It was her father, after all, who first proposed the idea of solidifying the burgeoning conglomerate through marriage - a masterful stratagem to bind their wealth and influence into an inextricable dynastic knot. Her family's medical empire, a sprawling dominion of gleaming hospitals and cutting-edge facilities, would merge seamlessly with the Wang patriarchy's diversified holdings in everything from technology to real estate.

The magnitude of the venture, the sheer scope of the riches and power it represented, defied comprehension for anyone operating outside their stratospheric social stratum. To them, raised amongst the elite echelons of South Korean high society, it was simply the next logical step in perpetuating generational supremacy.

How could anything possibly go awry when the path had been so obsessively calculated, every contingency planned for? When the alchemy of their union had been sanctified by both paternal bloodlines, distilling two mighty ancestral houses into one apex predator?

And yet, despite the centuries of economic priesthood and social engineering that had contrived to conceive them...despite the immense fortunes and proud legacies riding upon their nuptial-forged dynasty...something deeply essential had gone terribly, irrevocably awry.

Because when the pivotal moment arose for Soo-jin to shed the gilded frivolities of her maiden nomenclature and accept the sobriquet 'Wang' as her new identity, she surprised everyone, including herself, by stumbling through the vows with a sudden sense of unease. An unfamiliar quaver tenses her tone as she told Hyun-woo, the words tumbling out in a breathless rush, that she wanted to call off their immaculately orchestrated engagement.

A foolish idea, her mind insisted - some fleeting whimsy ignited by the naive delusion that at nineteen years old, she was finally ready to be as self-possessed and independent as she outwardly portrayed. What was even more astonishing was that he agreed to let her go.

Instead of the poised, rehearsed mantra she had practiced until her lips were numb...instead of the triumphant inflection she had envisioned claiming her birthright with...all that emerged from Soo-jin was the surprisingly ordinary surname 'Jeong'.

She became Soo-jin Jeong, quickly transitioning into the wife of Jeong Tae-sik - a wealthy man in his own right, but a relative upstart compared to the miles-deep pedigree of the Wang and Yoon dynasties.

Objectively, it wasn't an awful match. Tae-sik's family had rapidly ascended to prominence in recent decades through a sprawling portfolio of ventures and creations.

But it was a far cry from the imperial summit Soo-jin had been groomed for since birth. Her father had made that fact brutally clear with rebukes imprinted with paternal disappointment and not-so-veiled threats of disinheritance.

A stillborn empire decaying on the vine before it ever blossomed into fruition.

And now, seated across from the man who should have been her partner in conquest, the chasm separating them felt as insurmountable as the void between stars.