Chapter 5

Natasha Taechamongkalapiwat loved Lorena Schuett before she had the right to.

Before the merger.

Before the contract.

Before the wedding bands.

Before the newspapers called them Thailand’s most powerful young couple and praised the union as if two women’s lives had not been folded neatly into a business strategy.

Miu loved Lena back when they were still university students, when love was not yet a legal document and pain did not yet know her address.

Lena was impossible to miss.

Everyone knew her.

Lorena Lalina Schuett. Heiress to Schuett Holdings, a family empire built on luxury real estate, private aviation, international event management, and high-end lifestyle investments across Asia and Europe. She walked through campus like she owned every building and had only decided not to rename them out of boredom.

She was beautiful in the most dangerous way.

Not soft beautiful.

Not gentle beautiful.

Lena was the kind of beautiful that made people look twice and regret it, because if she caught them staring, she would smile like she already knew their weakness.

She was intelligent, but arrogant.

Charming, but careless.

Frank to the point of cruelty.

She partied until sunrise, attended lectures on two hours of sleep, still answered professors with flawless precision, then disappeared by lunch with a girl laughing against her shoulder. She changed women like outfits. She drove too fast. Drank too much. Fought too easily. Spoke like consequences were for people with smaller bank accounts.

Miu watched her from a distance.

Not because she approved.

She did not.

Not because she thought Lena was kind.

She was not.

But there was something in Lena that made Miu look.

Something alive, burning, reckless, untouchable.

Miu was everything Lena was not.

Quiet. Gentle. Careful. The kind of daughter who went to school, came home, studied, volunteered, and remembered everyone’s birthdays. She had never had a boyfriend. Never had a girlfriend. Never kissed anyone behind a library shelf or woken up beside a stranger whose name she half-remembered.

People called her angelic, and she hated it a little.

Not because it was untrue.

Because angels were expected to endure.

Miu was kind, but not weak. Generous, but not foolish. Intelligent, but never loud about it. She came from Taechamongkalapiwat Group, one of Thailand’s most powerful hospitality, food, and luxury resort companies, but she wore her wealth quietly. Her family owned places where people spent fortunes to escape their lives, yet Miu preferred simple cafés, secondhand bookstores, and handwritten notes.

She knew Lena would never look at someone like her.

Not properly.

Not with interest.

Not with love.

So Miu kept her feelings safely where they belonged.

Silent.

Then years later, their families decided silence did not matter.

The merger was announced first as a strategic partnership.

Taechamongkalapiwat Group had the resorts, hotels, restaurants, and food brands. Schuett Holdings had private aviation, luxury real estate, global event networks, and access to clients who thought islands were casual weekend choices. Together, they could create a new luxury ecosystem: travel, accommodation, dining, events, residences, private transfers, and destination experiences under one integrated empire.

The business logic was elegant.

Too elegant.

Then came the marriage proposal.

Not a question.

A structure.

A marriage between Natasha Taechamongkalapiwat and Lorena Schuett would secure trust, align ownership interests, calm investors, unite two families, and send a message that the merger was not temporary.

Miu should have been horrified.

Instead, she was ashamed of the small, foolish part of her heart that bloomed.

Lena would be hers.

Not in the way she had dreamed, maybe.

Not gently.

Not romantically.

But close.

There.

Bound to her by law, family, contract, and name.

Miu told herself love could grow.

She told herself Lena only needed time. Stability. Care. Someone who would not leave after the music stopped and the alcohol wore off. Someone who would see past the arrogance, past the anger, past the sharp mouth and reckless hands.

She told herself she could be that person.

Lena did not tell herself anything beautiful.

When she heard about the arrangement, she broke a glass against a wall.

“No.”

That was the first word she gave the marriage.

No.

She said it to the lawyers. To the relatives. To the board. To anyone who entered the room believing she could be convinced like a difficult investor.

No.

She had no interest in becoming someone’s wife for the sake of a merger. No interest in being locked inside a respectable home with a respectable woman who looked at her like devotion was a virtue. No interest in pretending loyalty for newspapers and shareholders.

But the families had already decided.

The merger was too important.

The pressure too large.

The consequences too heavy.

So Lena stood at the altar in white, furious enough to shake, and married the woman who looked at her like she was a miracle.

Miu’s hands trembled when she slid the ring on Lena’s finger.

Lena’s hands were steady.

That hurt more.

At the reception, people clapped.

Cameras flashed.

Headlines were written.

A union of legacy and luxury.

The beginning of a new empire.

A love match between two powerful families.

Lena drank champagne like poison and whispered into Miu’s ear during their first dance.

“Do not mistake this for a marriage.”

Miu’s smile did not falter for the cameras.

But something inside her flinched.

Lena continued, her voice low and beautiful and cruel.

“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

Miu looked up at her.

“I wanted us to try.”

Lena laughed softly.

“Then you wanted wrong.”

Their house was enormous.

A wedding gift, though gift was the wrong word for something chosen by committee and decorated by people who knew more about design than happiness. It had marble floors, glass walls, a garden, a pool, a private study for Lena, a smaller reading room Miu loved immediately, and a dining table long enough for two people to feel like strangers at opposite ends.

Lena moved in like a prisoner.

Miu moved in like a wife.

The first week, Miu tried.

She prepared breakfast. Lena did not come down.

She waited for dinner. Lena came home past midnight smelling like whiskey and someone else’s perfume.

She left a note on the kitchen counter.

I made soup in case you’re hungry.

In the morning, the soup remained untouched.

The note was gone.

Miu found it in the trash.

Not torn.

Just thrown away whole.

That was kinder than what came later.

Lena discovered cruelty had many forms, and for seven years, she used all of them.

She ignored Miu when silence hurt most.

She spoke when words could cut deeper.

She brought women to events and let them touch her arm in front of everyone, smiling when cameras did not catch the way Miu’s face turned pale.

She disappeared for nights.

Came home drunk.

Came home angry.

Came home with lipstick on her collar that was not Miu’s shade, though Miu had never once had the chance to leave lipstick there herself.

Once, Miu waited in the living room until three in the morning because Lena had not answered her phone and rain had flooded parts of the city.

When Lena finally walked in, soaked, drunk, and laughing with a woman whose hand was inside her coat sleeve, Miu stood.

“Lena,” she whispered.

The woman glanced between them and smiled awkwardly.

Lena looked at Miu like she was furniture placed in the wrong room.

“Still awake?”

“I was worried.”

“How touching.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“I wasn’t aware I had a curfew.”

The woman stepped back. “Maybe I should go.”

Lena did not look at her. “Yes. You should.”

The door closed.

Miu stood barefoot on the marble floor.

Lena walked past her.

“Did you eat?” Miu asked quietly.

Lena stopped.

Slowly, she turned.

“You really think this is what I want to come home to?”

Miu’s lips parted.

“Food? Questions? That face?”

Miu looked down.

Lena stepped closer, voice low.

“Do you know what the worst part is? You stand there like a saint, and everyone thinks I’m the monster because I won’t worship at your feet.”

“I don’t want worship.”

“No. You want gratitude.” Lena laughed bitterly. “You want me to thank you for being patient while you wear my name like you earned it.”

Miu’s eyes filled.

“I am your wife.”

Lena’s face hardened.

“You are a contract.”

That night, Miu cried in the bathroom with the shower running so Lena would not hear.

In the morning, she made Lena coffee.

Lena did not drink it.

There were worse nights.

There was the night Lena came home with a bruised cheek and split knuckles after fighting someone outside a club. Miu rushed to her with a first-aid kit, hands shaking.

“Sit down. Please.”

Lena laughed, blood at the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t play nurse.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’ve bled before.”

“Lena, please.”

Miu reached for her hand.

Lena jerked away.

“Don’t touch me.”

The words hit harder than any slap.

Miu froze.

Lena saw it.

For one second, something like regret flickered in her eyes.

Then she buried it under cruelty.

“If you wanted a wife who comes home clean and obedient, you should have married someone else.”

“I wanted you,” Miu said.

Lena’s mouth twisted.

“That’s your tragedy.”

Still, when Lena passed out on the sofa an hour later, Miu cleaned the blood from her face. She disinfected her knuckles. She placed a blanket over her. She sat on the floor beside her until morning, waking every time Lena shifted, making sure she did not choke, making sure she stayed warm.

Lena woke to a glass of water, pain medicine, and breakfast on the table.

She said nothing.

Miu accepted that as mercy.

Every day, Miu became the wife everyone admired.

At charity galas, she stood beside Lena with quiet grace, wearing the Schuett name as if it did not cut her throat.

At board dinners, she spoke gently, smoothed tension, remembered every executive’s spouse, child, allergy, and preferred wine.

When Lena made a reckless public comment that threatened a negotiation, Miu stayed up all night with communications teams drafting damage control.

When Lena missed a merger review because she was hungover in bed, Miu attended in her place and presented so flawlessly that the directors praised Lena afterward for choosing such an impressive wife.

Miu smiled.

She did not correct them.

When reporters asked about married life, Miu said, “Lena is brilliant. I’m very proud of her.”

When someone asked Lena the same, Lena said, “Miu is good at saying the right things.”

People laughed.

Miu did too.

Later, in the car, she turned her face toward the window so Lena would not see her tears reflected in the glass.

The meals were the worst.

Not the shouting. Not the affairs. Not the insults.

The meals.

Miu cooked when she could. Not because they had no staff, but because making food was the one act of love that did not require permission. She learned Lena’s favorites. Thai omelet crisp at the edges. Spicy basil with less chili when she had early meetings. Chicken soup when she was sick. Pasta when she was too tired to pretend she did not like comfort food.

Most nights, Lena did not come home.

Most mornings, Miu packed the untouched food away.

Sometimes she threw it out with a smile on her face because the staff were watching.

Sometimes she ate it cold alone at midnight.

Sometimes she sat at the long dining table, staring at the chair across from her, and imagined Lena sitting there.

Not happy.

Miu was not greedy.

Just there.

“Why do you keep doing this?” Lena asked once, standing in the doorway.

Miu looked up quickly.

She had thought Lena was out.

Dinner sat between them, still warm.

“You’re home.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

Miu stood. “I made your favorite.”

Lena looked at the table.

Then at Miu.

Something ugly and wounded moved in her face.

“You think if you feed me enough, I’ll love you?”

Miu’s hands curled at her sides.

“No.”

“You do. Every plate, every note, every quiet little sacrifice. You think one day I’ll wake up grateful.”

“That’s not why.”

“Then why?”

Because I love you, Miu wanted to say.

But Lena hated those words most.

They made her cruelest.

So Miu only said, “Because you should eat.”

Lena stared at her.

Then laughed once, sharp and empty.

“You are unbearable.”

She left again.

Miu sat down.

The food cooled.

Seven years was a long time to be unwanted.

Long enough for hope to stop looking like hope and start looking like habit.

Long enough for pain to become part of the house.

Long enough for staff to learn which rooms to avoid when Lena came home drunk. Long enough for friends to stop asking if Miu was happy because they could no longer bear the answer in her eyes. Long enough for the public to create a fairytale out of a marriage that had never once been kissed in private with tenderness.

Miu’s love did not die quickly.

That would have been kinder.

It thinned.

Day by day.

Insult by insult.

Untouched meal by untouched meal.

It became quieter first.

Then tired.

Then fragile.

The final breaking did not happen with shouting.

It happened on an ordinary morning.

That was the cruelest part.

Miu woke before Lena, as always.

Lena had come home at dawn, drunk and stumbling, with a red mark near her jaw and glitter on her sleeve. Miu had helped her upstairs. Lena had leaned heavily against her, mumbling nonsense, smelling of alcohol and smoke and rain.

At the bedroom door, Lena had looked at her with half-open eyes.

For one soft, dangerous second, she rested her forehead against Miu’s shoulder.

“Miu,” she whispered.

Miu froze.

It was the gentlest Lena had said her name in months.

Maybe years.

Then Lena pushed away, as if waking from a mistake.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re waiting.”

Miu did not answer.

Lena laughed bitterly and went inside.

In the morning, Miu stood in the kitchen making porridge because Lena’s stomach would hurt when she woke.

She stirred slowly.

The house was quiet.

The sun came through the windows beautifully.

For no reason at all, Miu looked at the empty chair across the breakfast table and understood.

Enough.

Not because she hated Lena.

That would have been easier.

Not because she had stopped loving her.

That would have been salvation.

Miu understood that her love had become another wall around Lena.

Lena was hurting herself in every way she could find, and Miu had spent seven years believing she could love her into safety. Instead, maybe she had become the shape of Lena’s cage. The wife she did not choose. The contract she resented. The proof that her life had been taken from her.

Miu thought of all the nights Lena came home bleeding because she picked fights with strangers instead of touching the grief inside herself.

All the women.

All the drinks.

All the cruelty.

All the times Lena looked at her with rage that seemed to say, you are still here, so I will hurt you until you leave.

And Miu, foolish, faithful Miu, had stayed.

Maybe that had been selfish too.

Maybe staying when someone wanted freedom was not love.

Maybe letting go was.

She turned off the stove.

The porridge was not done.

For once, she did not finish it.

The papers were prepared quietly.

Miu hired no dramatic lawyer, made no public move, informed no gossip-hungry relative. She arranged everything with the same care she had once used to organize Lena’s medicine, meals, and meeting notes.

Divorce papers.

Asset division.

No contest.

No demands.

She left the house to Lena.

The cars.

The shared accounts.

The investments placed in both names.

The art Lena liked.

The wine collection Lena never organized but always complained about.

Everything the marriage had placed between them, Miu gave back.

Not because Lena deserved it.

Because Miu had never wanted to win anything from her.

She packed only what belonged to her before the marriage.

A few clothes.

Books.

Her mother’s bracelet.

A photo from university Lena did not know she had kept, taken at a distance, blurred, of Lena laughing under campus lights with a drink in her hand and arrogance in every line of her body.

Miu almost left it behind.

Then she placed it in the box.

Not all love deserved to be thrown away just because it failed to be returned.

She dismissed the staff early on a Friday.

Prepared the dining table herself.

Not dinner.

No more untouched meals.

Only papers.

And a letter.

She wrote it by hand because Lena hated emotional emails and because some wounds deserved ink.

Her hand shook only once.

At the beginning.

Lena,

Then she breathed.

And wrote until there was nothing left to keep.

That night, Lena came home past midnight.

Not drunk.

Not fully sober either.

The house was too quiet.

That was the first thing she noticed.

Usually, quiet in that house had texture. Miu’s presence made it soft even when Lena ignored it. A lamp left on. A glass of water near the stairs. Slippers aligned near the sofa because Miu knew Lena kicked off her heels the moment she entered. Food warming somewhere. A note on the counter. Flowers replaced before they wilted.

That night, the quiet was flat.

Dead.

Lena closed the door behind her.

“Miu?”

No answer.

She stood in the foyer, irritated by the strange feeling moving through her chest.

“Miu.”

Still nothing.

She walked into the living room.

No book on the sofa.

No shawl over the chair.

No tea cup on the side table.

The framed wedding photo that Miu kept on the console was gone.

Lena stared at the empty space.

Something cold entered her.

She moved faster then.

Reading room.

Empty.

Kitchen.

Clean.

Bedroom.

Her clothes remained.

Miu’s side of the closet did not.

At first, Lena did not understand what she was seeing.

The empty hangers.

The missing scent.

The cleared vanity.

The absence of small, gentle things she had spent seven years pretending not to notice.

Miu’s hairbrush.

Gone.

Her soft slippers.

Gone.

The small ceramic dish where she placed her earrings.

Gone.

The little bottle of hand cream she always forgot to close.

Gone.

Lena stood in the bedroom doorway, breathing too fast.

Then she saw the dining room light.

She walked toward it slowly.

The long table was bare except for a neat stack of documents and one envelope.

Her name written across it.

Lena

Not Lorena.

Not Miss Schuett.

Lena.

Her hand felt numb as she picked it up.

The divorce papers were beneath it.

Signed.

Every page already prepared.

No demands.

No fight.

No accusation.

Everything left to her.

Everything.

Lena stared at the documents until the words blurred.

Then she opened the letter.

Lena,

I am sorry.

Lena stopped breathing.

I know you probably hate apologies by now, especially mine. I have said sorry so many times in seven years that the word must feel useless to you. But I need to say it once more, properly, because this will be the last time I ask you to hear me.

I am sorry for marrying you.

Lena’s hand tightened around the paper.

I know everyone says we had no choice. I know the merger was bigger than us. I know our families had already decided before we stood at the altar. But I also know the truth I have been too ashamed to write until now. Some part of me was happy.

I had wanted you for so long, Lena. Quietly. Foolishly. From a distance. Since university, when you walked through the world like nothing could ever touch you. I thought if life placed me beside you, maybe I could become someone you would choose one day.

That was selfish of me.

Lena’s vision blurred.

You were angry. You were trapped. You were clear from the beginning that this marriage was not what you wanted. I heard you, but I stayed because I thought love could become enough if I made it gentle enough, patient enough, useful enough.

I made meals you did not ask for. I waited up when you did not want to be waited for. I cared for wounds you did not want me to touch. I carried your name proudly when maybe it only made the chain heavier around your neck.

I thought I was loving you.

Maybe I was also keeping you inside something you hated.

Lena pressed the letter against the table, bending over it.

Her chest hurt.

Not metaphorically.

Physically.

So I am letting you go.

Not because I am angry. I tried to be angry, but even now I am not good at it. Not because I want to punish you. I could never punish you more than you punish yourself.

I am letting you go because I love you.

Lena made a sound then.

Small.

Broken.

You deserve a life that does not feel like a locked door. You deserve mornings without my face reminding you of everything taken from you. You deserve to come home without finding proof that someone is waiting for a version of you that you cannot give.

I am sorry I was not the wife you wanted.

I am sorry I could not make this house feel like freedom.

I am sorry my love became another thing you had to survive.

Lena shook her head.

“No.”

The word came out before she knew she was saying it.

No.

Not this.

Not Miu apologizing.

Not Miu blaming herself.

Not Miu turning seven years of Lena’s cruelty into another burden to carry gently.

I left the house to you. Everything in our shared accounts too. Please do not fight me on this. I do not want anything from this marriage except for you to live well after it.

The staff have been paid through the year. The kitchen inventory is updated. Your medication for headaches is in the second drawer beside the stove. There is soup in the freezer, labeled by date. Please eat it when you do not feel well.

That broke her worse than the divorce papers.

The soup.

The labels.

The care.

Even leaving, Miu had thought about whether Lena would eat.

Lena covered her mouth with one hand.

I know you may not believe me, but being your wife was still the honor of my life. Even when it hurt. Even when it was lonely. Even when I understood that I was loving someone who might never love me back.

I do not regret loving you.

I only regret the years you felt trapped because of it.

Please be happy, Lena.

Not the kind of happy people photograph. Not the kind you wear at parties. Real happy. Quiet happy. The kind where you wake up and do not need to run from yourself.

Find someone you can choose freely. Someone who does not come with contracts, obligations, or family expectations. Someone whose touch does not feel like a closed door. Someone you can come home to without anger.

If that happens, I hope you let yourself stay.

The letter trembled in Lena’s hands.

Thank you for the years I was allowed to love you closely, even if only from my side of the room.

I will not bother you again.

Miu

That was all.

No address.

No phone number.

No dramatic goodbye.

No final plea.

No where to find her.

Lena stood in the dining room of the house she had spent seven years trying not to call home and realized, too late, that it had only ever felt warm because Miu had been in it.

She looked around.

The table where untouched meals had cooled.

The kitchen where Miu had waited.

The stairs Miu had helped her climb when she was too drunk to stand.

The sofa where Miu had cleaned blood from her face.

The doorway where Miu had asked, again and again, if she had eaten.

All of it remained.

And Miu was gone.

For seven years, Lena had believed Miu would always be there.

Patient.

Gentle.

Unbreakable.

Waiting.

Loving.

Forgiving.

She had built her cruelty on the certainty of Miu’s return.

She had mistaken endurance for permanence.

And now the house was empty.

No footsteps.

No soft voice.

No light left on.

No wife.

Lena tried to breathe.

Could not.

The letter slipped from her fingers.

She took one step back, then another, and her knees gave out.

She dropped to the floor beside the dining table, one hand pressed to her chest, the other reaching blindly for the letter as if paper could become a person if she held it tightly enough.

“Miu,” she whispered.

The house did not answer.

For the first time in seven years, no one came running.