Note:

Updated earlier than I intended to because THE GIRLS ARE IN PARIS!! CITY OF LOVE! And I wanna savor and be active on all platforms to see their interactions unfold.

I'm so soo proud of them. Can't wait to see all the photos and videos we'll get soon!

Anyway, hope you'll enjoy this one :) *insert evil laugh

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Miu's POV

The air conditioning in the Taechamongkalapiwat executive suite was humming at a steady, clinical 22°C, but it felt like ice against my skin.

I didn't look up from my monitors. My eyes moved with precision across the  blueprints for the new lifestyle hub in Thonglor. Click. Drag. Annotate. I was a machine of productivity, a robot in silk and tailored trousers. If I kept my brain occupied with this and aesthetic finishes, there was no room for the static. 

No room for thinking about her.

The heavy oak door to my office groaned open. I didn't need to look up to know it was Mak. He had a specific way of walking now, soft, hesitant, as if he were constantly afraid of stepping on a landmine.

"Miu," he said quietly.

"The Thonglor reports are on the server, Mak. I'll have the interior schematics finished by 6:00 PM." My voice was flat, a perfect imitation of the woman who had taught me everything I knew about professionalism.

"I'm not here for the reports." He walked closer, stopping just short of my desk. He didn't sit down. "You've been here for twelve hours. Mom is worried. I'm worried. You're working like you're trying to outrun something."

"I'm working because I have a job to do," I countered, my fingers never leaving the mouse. "Is there anything else?"

Mak stayed silent for a long moment. 

Then, he took a breath—the kind of breath someone takes before they do something brave and incredibly stupid.

"Don't," I said. My voice was a serrated blade.

"Miu, I just mean that if you want to talk about it....if you need to say something—"

"I said don't, Mak." I stood up, my chair screeching back against the floor. The sound set my teeth on edge, vibrating through the faint scar on my arm. 

I leaned over the desk until we were eye to eye, the distance between us charged with an intensity he couldn't navigate. "That name is not a topic of conversation in this office. It's not a topic of conversation at dinner. It doesn't exist. It's a dead frequency."

"You can't just delete her like a file!" Mak stepped forward, his face twisting with a mix of frustration and pity. "She's the reason we're standing here, Miu! As much as I hate what happened, she fixed us. You can't just pretend she's a ghost."

"She is a ghost," I hissed. "She made herself one. She decided she was someone that needed to be removed, remember? She performed the surgery. She cut herself out. So as far as I'm concerned, she's dead. And I don't talk to the dead."

The silence that followed was suffocating. I could see the hurt in Mak's eyes, the brother who was trying so hard to be my anchor, only to find out I had turned into an iceberg.

"I'm just trying to help," he whispered, his shoulders slumping.

I looked at him, and for a split second, my cold stance withered. I saw the way his fingers trespassed over his own knuckles, a nervous habit he'd picked up since the hospital. 

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to pour the acid of my frustration onto him. 

He had been a victim too, not long ago, a victim of the collateral damage caused by the love Lena and I had built and then burned.

"I know, Mak," I said, my voice finally losing its serrated edge. I softened my posture, letting out a long, shaky breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped. It's just... hearing that name feels like someone is scraping a wire against my nerves."

He nodded slowly, looking relieved that the ice had cracked, even just a little.

"Go home," I told him, offering a small, tired smile. "I'll finish this up. I promise I'll be home in time for dinner. We can... we can look at those new menu options Mom was talking about."

"Okay," he whispered. "See you at home, Miu."

The door clicked shut, leaving me in the cold four corners of the executive suite.

I stared at the monitor, the lines of the blueprint blurring into a gray haze. My heart was thumping a rhythmic, painful Schuett-Schuett-Schuett against my ribs. 

I hated her. I hated her for making me this cold. 

I hated her for leaving me with a family that loved me but couldn't understand that every perfect moment we shared was a reminder of the price she paid with my heart.

The rage flared back up, sudden and raw. I grabbed a heavy crystal paperweight from my desk and threw it. It didn't hit the wall; it hit the framed photo of our last family dinner, the one where we all looked so impossibly fixed and the glass shattered across the floor.

I didn't blink. I just watched the shards catch the light, mirroring the silver line on my arm.

"Happy now, Lena?" I whispered to the empty, air-conditioned room. 

"I'm exactly what you wanted. I'm functional. I'm safe. And I'm completely, utterly empty."

I stood over the wreckage of the picture frame for a long minute, watching the light dance off the jagged edges. The faces in the photo, my family, smiling and whole, were now sliced by a dozen different cracks.

It was poetic, in a twisted sort of way. A perfect reflection of the miracle Lena had left behind.

I didn't call for a janitor. I didn't reach down to pick up the pieces. I simply turned my back on the mess, grabbed my coat, and walked out.

By the time I reached the estate, the evening sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple and gold. I moved through the halls like a ghost in my own home, heading straight for my room. 

When I finally walked down to the dining room, the atmosphere was a complete 180 from the suffocating silence of my office.

The scent of garlic, ginger, and roasted duck wafted through the air. My mother was laughing at something my father had said, her hand resting lightly on his arm, a gesture of affection that had been extinct in this house for years. 

Mak was already seated, scrolling through his phone, but he looked up the moment I entered, his eyes searching mine for any trace of the woman who had snapped at him earlier.

"There she is," my father said, his voice warm and resonant. He stood up to pull out my chair. "We were beginning to think the Thonglor project had kidnapped our lead designer."

"Just some final schematics, Papa," I said, my voice smooth as glass. I sat down, smoothing the cream-colored edge of my dress. "I promised I'd be here."

"The duck is spectacular tonight, Miu," my mother chimed in, beaming as she began to serve. "And your father and I were discussing the gala next month. We think it's time the Taechamongkalapiwats showed the world how strong we are. Together."

I picked up my chopsticks, the weight of them familiar and grounding. I listened to the chatter, the mindless talk of business, of the weather, of Mak's new car. I smiled at the right times. I laughed when the beat required it. 

I was the perfect daughter, sitting at a perfect table, in a perfect house.

I looked at the empty space at the end of the table. No one sat there. No one mentioned the woman who had vacated it.

I chewed the food that felt like sand in my mouth and swallowed it down with a sip of vintage red wine. Lena had wanted me to have this. She had wanted me to belong within these walls. She had designed this peace, built this harmony, and then removed herself so the structure wouldn't collapse under the weight of a scandal.

"Are you alright, honey?" my mother asked, her eyes full of a soft, genuine concern that used to be a rarity. "You're a bit quiet."

I looked at her, then at my father and Mak. I saw the happiness in their faces, a happiness that was only possible because one person chose to be the villain and disappear.

"I'm fine, Mom," I said, my voice as steady as a structural beam. "Everything is exactly the way it was meant to be."

The heavy oak door of my bedroom clicked shut once dinner was over.

I didn't even make it to the bed. I slid down the back of the door, my dress bunching around my knees, my breath hitching in a way that felt like my lungs were collapsing. The silence of the room was heavy. 

No matter how much I buried myself in with work, no matter how many polished smiles I traded with Mak over roasted duck, the emptiness was still there.

I am angry. I'm so goddamn angry that she had decided for me. That she had played God with my family and then checked out of the game. 

But God, more than the anger, the ache was unbearable. It was a phantom limb that throbbed every time I reached for a space that was now empty.

I missed her. I missed the way her eyes softened when she looked at me. I missed the cold, vanilla scent that used to mean safety.

I grabbed my phone, my vision blurred by hot, stinging tears, and dialed the only person who wouldn't judge the wreckage.

"Ling..." My voice broke into a jagged, pathetic sob the moment she picked up. "I can't... I can't breathe, Ling. I need to get out. The silence is suffocating me. She's everywhere and nowhere."

"Stay right there," Lingling's voice was firm, cutting through my panic like a lighthouse beam. "Ten minutes. Don't think. Just put on something that isn't a blazer and meet me at the gate."

True to her word, Lingling's car was idling at the edge of the estate exactly ten minutes later. I climbed in, my eyes red, my chest still tight. I expected her to drive us to her penthouse, or maybe back to a quiet rooftop.

Instead, the city lights began to blur into the chaos of the Sukhumvit nightlife district. We pulled up in front of a heavy beige curtain and a line of people that stretched around the block. The bass was a physical throb, vibrating through the pavement and into my bones.

"A club, Ling? Seriously?" I wiped a stray tear, looking at the hedonistic crowd.

"You've been living in a mausoleum of perfect behavior for eight months now, Miu," Lingling said, stepping out of the car and tossing her keys to the valet. She looked lethal in a black leather blazer. "You've tried working. You've tried being the good daughter. It's time for a distraction."

She grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the VIP entrance.

"Look at them," she gestured to the dance floor as we entered, a sea of moving bodies, sweat, and flashing strobe lights. "They aren't thinking about blueprints or legacies. They're just sexy, horny people looking for a moment of forgetting. And that's exactly what you need. One night where you aren't thinking about Lena. One night where you're just a girl in a dark room."

I looked out at the crowd. The air smelled of expensive gin and desperate adrenaline. It was the polar opposite of my world. It was messy, loud, and utterly out of control.

"Distract me, then," I whispered, the anger in my chest finally finding a rhythm to beat against.

The bass was a physical wall, thumping against my ribs until my heartbeat had no choice but to sync with the house track. In the VIP booth, the world was a blur of expensive vodka, amber lighting, and the sharp, clean scent of Lingling's perfume.

"Miu, stop staring at the ice cubes," Lingling shouted over the music, leaning into my ear. She gestured toward a woman standing by the edge of our table, someone who looked like the literal opposite of the the woman haunting my mind and soul.

She was vibrant. Her hair was a wild, chestnut wave, and she wore a camisole that shimmered like oil on water. Her eyes weren't cold or calculating; they were warm, dancing with a playful, unburdened light.

"This is Sloane," Lingling introduced, her hand resting on the woman's shoulder. "An old friend from college. She's an artist, Miu. Real art."

Sloane leaned in, her smile easy and infectious. "I hear you're the one who's been making the Taechamongkalapiwat Group look actually... creative," she said, her voice a low, melodic hum that cut through the noise. "I've seen your latest sketches. They have a lot of soul for someone trapped in a corporate tower."

I felt a genuine spark of interest, a tiny, flickering flame in the damp cellar of my chest. Sloane was charming, effortless, and she didn't look like she had a single structural calculation in her head. For the first time in eight months, I let a stranger buy me a drink. I let myself talk about colors instead of concrete. I let myself laugh at a joke that had nothing to do with my family.

I was beginning to let loose. The tension in my shoulders was finally starting to dissolve into the gin and the rhythm. I looked at Sloane, at the way the strobe light caught the gold of her necklace, and for a fleeting second, I thought: Maybe. Maybe I can just be this version of Miu.

And then, I saw her.

The crowd on the lower dance floor parted for a split second, a gap in the sea of sweaty, moving bodies. Standing by the far pillar, bathed in a cold, blue neon light, was a silhouette that turned my blood to ice.

Tall. Impeccable. A sharp, dark blazer that looked out of place in the heat of the club. The person had their back to me, watching the crowd with a stillness that was utterly haunting. It was a posture I knew in my marrow, the slight tilt of the head, the way the shoulders were held with a terrifying, quiet authority.

It was the Director's silhouette.

My heart didn't just skip; it stopped. The drink in my hand felt like lead. Sloane was still talking, her lips moving, her hand reaching out to touch my arm in a friendly gesture, but I couldn't hear a word.

The silhouette turned slightly, the profile catching a flash of white light.

"Lena?" the name died on my lips, a silent prayer to a ghost that shouldn't be here.

I didn't offer an excuse. I didn't even put my glass down. I simply bolted.

"Miu? Where are you—" Lingling's voice was swallowed by a sudden drop in the bass as the DJ transitioned, but I was already gone. I pushed past Sloane, my shoulder clipping her silk-clad arm, and dove into the heat of the dance floor.

The descent from the cool, elevated VIP section to the main floor was like falling into a furnace. I shoved through a wall of bodies, ignoring the annoyed grunts and the spill of someone's drink on my cream-colored dress. My eyes were locked on that pillar, on that blue neon shadow that shouldn't exist in this city.

It can't be her. She's in Germany. She's gone.

The crowd was a chaotic, rhythmic pulse, a sea of arms and hair that seemed to conspire to keep me back. I fought through them, my heart hammering a frantic, uneven beat against my ribs. The silver scar on my arm felt hot, as if the metal of the car was back, searing into my skin.

"Lena!" I screamed, but the word was a pebble thrown into a hurricane.

I reached the pillar. The spot where she had been standing was empty, occupied only by the lingering scent of expensive cigar and the cold vibration of the speaker. I spun around, my breath coming in jagged, desperate gasps.

"Looking for someone?"

A hand caught my shoulder. I spun, my hands up, ready to strike or grab, but it was just a stranger, a man with glazed eyes and a lopsided grin. I pushed him away with a force that surprised even me and looked toward the exit.

There. A flash of a dark blazer disappearing through the heavy velvet curtains that led to the back alley.

I didn't think. I didn't wait for Lingling. I sprinted toward the curtains, bursting through them into the sudden, jarring silence of the Bangkok night. The air in the alley was thick and smelled of rain and something dangerous.

A black sedan was idling at the far end of the narrow street. A figure was just stepping into the back seat, the same sharp lines, the same effortless, terrifying grace.

"Lena! Stop!"

She froze, her hand still resting on the door handle of the sedan. My heart was a frantic, trapped bird, battering itself against my ribs so hard it hurt. The world seemed to slow to a crawl, the humid air of the alley thick enough to choke on.

Finally. The word was a silent, desperate prayer. Finally, the ghost has come back to the grave.

"Lena," I whispered, the name a jagged piece of glass in my throat.

Slowly, the figure turned.

The movement was fluid, but as the yellow glow of the streetlamp hit her face, the world didn't click back into place, it shattered.

It wasn't her.

The girl was tall, yes. She wore a blazer that was cut with similar precision, and her hair was pulled back into a sharp, professional knot. But her eyes were a soft, startled brown, not the piercing, dark gaze that had colonized my soul. She was just a stranger, a woman leaving a club, looking at me with a mixture of confusion and growing alarm.

"I... I'm sorry?" the girl said, her voice lacking the low, commanding tone of the Director. "Do I know you?"

I felt the blood drain from my face, a cold wave of nausea washing over me. I took a step back, my legs feeling like they were made of water. The silhouette, the posture, the grace, it had all been a trick of my own desperate, starving mind.

"I... no," I choked out, my hands trembling as I pressed them against my stomach. "I'm sorry. I thought you were... I thought you were someone else."

The girl gave me a wary, pitying look before disappearing into the back of the car. The door shut with a heavy, final thud, and the sedan pulled away, leaving me standing in the middle of the damp alley.

The silence that followed was louder than the music inside.

"Miu!"

Lingling burst through the velvet curtains, her face a mask of worry. She stopped when she saw me standing there, trembling in the middle of the street, looking like a ghost myself.

"She's not here, Ling," I said, my voice hollow, sounding like it was coming from a long way off. I looked down at my hands, realizing I was clutching at the air where I thought Lena's sleeve would be. "She's never going to be here. I'm chasing shadows in a city she already burned down."

I leaned against the brick wall of the alley, the grit of it pressing into my skin. 

"I'm losing my mind," I whispered, a single, bitter tear tracing a path through my makeup. "She really did it. She fixed my life and broke my brain, and now I'm seeing her in every stranger on the street."

I leaned my forehead against the cold, damp brick of the alley, the grit of the city pressing into my skin. The silence of the street was a mocking contrast to the frantic drumming in my ears. I felt Lingling's hand on my shoulder, a steady weight in a world that had just turned into a hall of mirrors.

"Miu, let's go back inside," Lingling whispered, her voice laced with a rare, fragile tenderness. "Sloane is waiting, and the music is loud enough to drown this out. Just one more drink."

"No," I said, my voice cracking before it found a sudden, chilling level of resolve. I pushed off the wall and looked at her. My eyes were no longer wet; they were hard, reflecting the amber glow of the streetlamps. "Take me home, Ling. Now."

The drive back to the estate was silent. Lingling didn't push. She knew that look. It was the look of someone who had stopped grieving and started calculating.

The moment I reached my room, I didn't turn on the lights. I sat in the darkness, the moon casting long, skeletal shadows across my bed. I pulled my phone from my clutch and scrolled past the business contacts, past the family threads, until I reached a name I had kept buried for months.

Vivat.

Vivat was the family's silent shadow, the Taechamongkalapiwats' private investigator. He was the man my father trusted to look into a rival's background, to dig up the dirt that turned a "no" into a "yes" at the negotiation table, and to ensure our enemies stayed exactly where we wanted them. He was a professional ghost, a man who dealt in secrets and lived in the grey areas of the law. 

I had put him on retainer months ago in a moment of whiskey-soaked desperation, only to tell him never to contact me unless I reached out first.

I hit the dial button. He picked up on the third ring, his voice coming through the speaker like gravel grinding together.

"Khun Miu," Vivat said, his tone utterly neutral, as if we were discussing the weather rather than a woman who had been erased from my life. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this late-night call?"

"I don't want a report, Vivat," I said, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound grounded. "I don't want photos. I don't want to know who she's meeting, what she's building, or whose bed she's sleeping in. I don't want to know if she's in Frankfurt, back in Thailand, or the moon."

I paused, closing my eyes so tight I saw stars. The image of the girl in the alley....the fake Lena, burned behind my eyelids.

"I just need you to tell me she's... there. Tell me she's breathing. Tell me she's well. Tell me the world still has Lena Schuett in it, thriving somewhere I can't see."

Vivat didn't breathe. He didn't sigh. He was a professional, and professionals knew that silence was the most expensive commodity.

"She is thriving, Khun Miu," he said finally, his voice devoid of pity. "The Director is exactly as you remember her. Formidable. Productive. And very much alive."

I let out a breath I felt I'd been holding since the night the glass shattered. It wasn't relief, it was a tether. She was out there. The sun was rising on her side of the world, and she was existing perfectly fine without me.

"That's all," I whispered. "That's all I needed."

I hung up and threw the phone onto the silk duvet. I walked to the window and looked out at the glittering, uncaring lights of Bangkok.

And as I stood there in the dark, I realized that the only thing more painful than her being dead was knowing she was perfectly capable of living without me.

Another week bled into the calendar. I was back to being a ghost in a designer suit, buried so deep in paperwork that the ink seemed to replace the blood in my veins. My office had become my sanctuary, a place where the only thing that mattered was the precision of a line or the legality of a contract.

Until the door swung open without a knock.

"Miu! You're still at it? You're going to turn into a pillar of salt if you don't take a breath," Mak's voice boomed, bright and energetic. He looked healthier than he had in years, his face full of the life that I felt was slowly draining out of mine.

I didn't look up from the Thonglor site report. "Some of us actually work for a living, Mak. What do you want?"

"To introduce you to the newest addition to our legal team," he said, stepping aside and gesturing toward the hallway. "Since the merger, the paperwork has tripled. We needed someone who could handle the high-level international stuff. Someone sharp."

"I'm busy, Mak—"

"Khun Miu," a voice interrupted.

It was a low, professional hum. Not the Director's cold tone, but something eerily close in its cadence.

I froze. My pen hovered over the paper, a drop of ink staining the white sheet. Slowly, with a dread that felt like a cold hand on my spine, I lifted my head.

Fate didn't just have a sense of humor; it was a sadist.

Standing in my office, dressed in a sharp, charcoal-grey power suit, was the girl from the alley. The same tall silhouette. The same impeccably tied hair. The same effortless, terrifying grace that had sent me sprinting through a dark street like a madwoman just seven days ago.

"This is Ginny," Mak said, beaming, completely oblivious to the way the air had just been sucked out of the room. "She just moved back from London. Top of her class at LSE. She's going to be handling all the corporate legalities from now on."

I didn't move. I couldn't. My heart, which had finally found a steady, mechanical rhythm of work-induced numbness, suddenly spiked.

Standing in my office, framed by the windows of the Taechamongkalapiwat Tower, was the woman from the alley. The charcoal-grey suit was different, but the silhouette.....that haunting, precise geometry of her shoulders was identical.

"Ginny has a reputation for being a shark with international contracts," Mak continued, leaning against my desk with a casualness that made me want to scream. "Since the merger, we've been drowning in labor laws and European compliance. She's the fix we needed."

The fix. The word felt like a slap.

Ginny stepped forward, extending a hand. In the bright, unforgiving LED light of the office, the resemblance was even more of a cruel joke. She wasn't Lena, her jawline was slightly softer, her eyes a warm hazel rather than that piercing, arctic dark brown, but she carried herself with the same effortless, terrifying grace. 

She was a ghost given new skin.

"It's an honor to officially meet you, Khun Miu," Ginny said. Her voice was steady, professional, and entirely devoid of the confusion she'd shown in the alley. "I've been studying your latest project proposals. Your attention to structural integrity is... remarkable."

I stared at her hand. My skin went cold. A week ago, I had chased this woman through a dark street, screaming a name that was now forbidden. I had looked at her with the eyes of a madwoman.

Did she remember?

I forced myself to reach out. My fingers brushed hers, a brief, clinical contact that sent a jolt of static through my arm, right over the silver scar.

"Khun Ginny," I managed, my voice sounding like it was echoing from the bottom of a well. "Welcome to the group."

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted with the current filings," Mak said, clapping a hand on my shoulder before heading for the door. "Be nice, Miu. She's the only thing standing between us and a massive lawsuit from our European partners."

The door clicked shut, and the silence in the office became a living thing.

Ginny didn't look away. She stood there, her leather briefcase at her side, watching me with a gaze that was far too perceptive for a new hire. The warmth in her eyes from a moment ago had shifted, replaced by a quiet, knowing intelligence.

She knew. She knew exactly who I was, and she knew exactly why I had been in that alley.

"The office is much brighter than the street," she said softly, her voice dropping the formal corporate mask just a fraction. "And you look much more... composed today, Khun Miu."

I gripped the edge of my desk until my knuckles turned white. 

Fate wasn't just teasing me; it had moved into the office next door.