Кевин Кван - China Rich Girlfriend

“I’ve known about you and Charlie from the very start.”

“If you’re talking about that weekend road trip we took in California with Alistair, you’re being ridiculous, Michael. You know we’re just old friends.”

“Just old friends? ‘ Oh Charlie, you are the one person who truly understands me,’ ” Michael said in a mocking, girlish voice.

Astrid felt a chill go up her spine. “How long have you been eavesdropping on my phone calls?”

“Since the beginning, Astrid. And your e-mails too. I’ve read every e-mail you’ve ever exchanged with him.”

“How? Why? ”

“My wife spent two weeks in Hong Kong with one of my top competitors back in 2010. You don’t think I’m going to look into that? I was a surveillance specialist for the government — I have all the resources right at my fingertips,” Michael bragged coldly.

For a long moment, Astrid was too shocked and outraged to move. She stared at Michael, wondering who this man was in front of her. She used to think he was the most handsome man on the planet, but now he looked almost demonic. At that moment, Astrid realized she could no longer live under the same roof with him. She bolted out of her seat and walked down the breezeway past the reflecting pool to the staircase that led to Cassian’s bedroom. She ran up the stairs and knocked on Ludivine’s door.

“Yes? Come in.” Astrid opened the door and saw Ludivine lying on her bed FaceTiming with some surfer dude on her laptop.

“Ludivine, please pack an overnight bag for yourself and for Cassian. We are leaving for my mother’s house.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

From there, Astrid ran to her bedroom and grabbed her wallet and car keys. As she came downstairs with Ludivine and Cassian, Michael was standing in the middle of the great hall leering at them. She handed the car keys to Ludivine and whispered, “Get in the car with Cassian. If I’m not out in five minutes, drive straight to Nassim Road.”

“Ludivine, don’t you dare fucking move or I’ll motherfucking break your neck!” Michael shouted. The au pair froze, and Cassian stared at his father wide-eyed.

Astrid glared at him. “Nice language in front of your son, Michael. You know, for the longest time I tried, I really tried. I thought we could save this marriage, for the sake of our son. But the fact that you would invade my privacy in such a fundamental way has shown me how broken our marriage is. You don’t respect me, and more importantly, you don’t trust me. You’ve never trusted me! So why do you want to stop us now? Deep down, you know I’m no longer the wife you want. You just won’t admit it to yourself.”

Michael ran to the front door and blocked it. He grabbed a fifteenth-century Bavarian poleax from the wall and waved it threateningly at Astrid. “You can go to hell for all I care, but you are not taking my son! If you leave this house now, I am going to call the police and tell them you have kidnapped him. Cassian, get over here!”

Cassian started to cry, and Ludivine held on to him tightly, muttering under her breath, “ C’est des putains de conneries !”*

“Stop it! You’re scaring him!” Astrid said angrily.

“I’m going to drag you and your entire family through the mud! You’re going to see yourself on the front page of The Straits Times! I’ll sue you for adultery and desertion — I have all the e-mails and phone recordings to prove it!” Michael snarled.

“If you’ve read all my e-mails, you should know that I haven’t written a single inappropriate thing to Charlie. Not one word! He has been nothing but a good friend to me. He’s been a better friend than you could possibly ever imagine,” Astrid said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Yes, I know you’ve been very careful in covering your tracks. But that home-wrecker Charlie hasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s so obvious, Astrid. The guy is so crazy in love with you it’s fucking sad. All his e-mails read like pathetic love letters.”

In a flash, it occurred to Astrid that what Michael said was true. Every casual e-mail, every text message Charlie had ever written to her was a testament to his love. He had never broken his promise. Not since the day they were at Abelard and Héloïse’s tomb in Paris. Suddenly, Astrid was flooded with a power that made her more courageous than ever. “Michael, if you don’t move away from the front door right now, I swear to God I will call the police myself!”

“Go ahead! We can both be in the fucking papers tomorrow morning!” Michael screamed.

Astrid got out her phone and dialed 999, all the while smiling calmly. “Michael, don’t you know by now that my grandmother and Uncle Alfred are the largest private shareholders of Singapore Press Holdings? We’re not going to be in the papers. We’re never going to be in the papers.”

* “This is fucking bullshit!” (Sounds so civilized in French, doesn’t it?)

16188 TAIYUAN ROAD

SHANGHAI

“Why do I have to find out from Eleanor Young that my own daughter almost died?” Kerry Chu scolded into the phone.

“I didn’t almost die, Mom,” Rachel said, stretched out on a chaise lounge in her bedroom at the Bao residence.

“Hiyah, Eleanor said you were on your deathbed! I’m going to catch the first flight to Shanghai tomorrow!”

“You don’t need to come, Mom. I can assure you I was never in any danger, and I’m perfectly fine now.” Rachel laughed, trying to downplay it.

“Why didn’t Nick call me sooner? Why am I the last to know everything?”

“I was only in the hospital for a few days, and since I got back to normal so quickly I really didn’t see any reason to worry you. And since when have you started believing everything Eleanor tells you? Are you best buddies now?”

“We are nothing of the sort. But she calls me several times a week now, and I have no choice but to take her calls.”

“Wait a minute, why is she calling you several times a week?”

“Hiyah! Ever since she found out at the wedding that I sell houses to all the tech people in Cupertino and Palo Alto, she’s been calling me for hot tips on tech stocks. And then she keeps hassling me for news about you. Every few days she wants to know if there’s any news.”

“News about our trip?”

“No, she couldn’t care less about your trip. She wants to know if you’re pregnant, of course!”

“Oh God! Now it begins,” Rachel muttered under her breath.

“Seriously, wouldn’t it be nice to say you conceived a baby in Shanghai? I hope you and Nick have been trying very hard.”

Rachel made a sound like she was choking. “Ack! Stop, stop! I don’t want to be having this conversation with you, Mom. Please. Boundaries!”

“What do you mean, ‘boundaries’? You came out of my vagina. What kind of boundaries do we have? You are already thirty-two, and if you don’t start having your babies now, when are you going to start?”

“Duly noted, Mom. Duly noted.”

Kerry sighed. “So what happened to the girl who tried to poison you? Are they going to hang her?”

“Oh God, I have no idea. I hope not.”

“What do you mean you hope not? She tried to kill you!”

Rachel sighed. “It’s more complicated than that. I can’t really explain it all over the phone, Mom. It’s a long story, one that could only happen in China.”

“You keep forgetting I’m from China, daughter! I know much more about the country than you do,” Kerry said in annoyance.

“Of course, Mom, I didn’t mean it that way. But you just don’t know the people and the circumstances that I’ve been exposed to since getting here,” Rachel said, feeling a sadness come over her, as she thought about her encounter with Colette earlier that week.