Han had frowned at Phantom’s perhaps valid point. “I could try to get a recent picture for you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Victor had told his brother. “No matter what she looks like, the outcome will be the same.”
He would marry Kuang’s daughter if that was what finalizing the partnership between their two triads would take.
For once, they didn’t meet their business partner at his Manhattan apartment. On the day of the meeting, they made their way up to his compound in Connecticut. There was so much security roaming the grounds. They put Victor in mind of a small army. Kuang’s paranoia was never spoken out loud, but it was getting noisier with every passing year.
Two guards in matching leather jackets escorted Victor, Han, and Phantom into a space that looked like an impressive living room, though one of the guards had referred to it as the study. There were no books or shelving, no desk, or any other office paraphernalia. Fine art lined the walls, and the floors were covered in Persian carpets. There were also a few sculptures on display, forged from dark gray metal.
The 24K Dragon met them at the door and escorted them over to the “study’s” one seating area: two maple brown leather couches that sat directly across from each other, with an antique Chinese table standing between them like a referee.
“Sit! Sit!” Kuang said, taking a seat on the couch that faced the door.
Victor hated sitting with his back to the door, but he took a seat nonetheless, as did Phantom and Han.
Besides the seating arrangements, Kuang was much more accommodating here than he was in his city apartment. He asked them what they wanted and had them put in orders with his footman. This was a break from his usual MO. Typically, Kuang’s choice of drinks simply appeared underneath an umbrella of expectation that his guests would drink whatever he served them.
They talked for quite a while. Mostly about business. Not once did the subject of Kuang’s daughter come up. After an hour or so, Victor began to wonder if he hadn’t mistaken the purpose of this meeting.
Perhaps “come meet my daughter” had been some sort of euphemism for come to my house in Connecticut and let me show off all my fine things and my excess of security guards while we talk about what we always talk about.
However, after about two hours, Kuang sighed and said, “I suppose we should get this over with.”
He nodded toward an attendant, who had been hovering near the door since they’d arrived. “Tell my daughter it is time.”
The door opened and closed behind them. But then opened again almost immediately.
The daughter must’ve been waiting nearby. Perhaps even in the hallway that they had walked down to get to the study. Victor recalled there’d been a hard, antique bench that had not looked at all comfortable.
He wondered if Kuang had been stalling because she was late for the meeting or because he had been making her wait.
Either way, Victor fixed a passive look on his face. It wouldn’t do for him to let it show if she truly was as unappealing as Phantom had predicted.
But to his shock, the woman who entered the room was gorgeous. Kuang had married a Chinese actress from the days when Mafia used to run the Chinese studio system. She’d been quite beautiful.
Indeed, there had been no need for Han to secure a photo of Victor’s future bride. They could have simply googled last century movie posters featuring that 90s-era actress. She was her famous mother’s spitting image with long black hair, a heart-shaped face, and small, dainty features. She was exquisite. Simply exquisite.
Victor could almost hear his cousin silently cursing. He had definitely lost the bet.
“I will leave you alone to talk,” Kuang told them.
The daughter nodded deferentially to her father before he departed from the room. After he left, she didn’t take the seat he’d vacated, but one slightly to the right of it on the couch. As if she were concerned about insulting Kuang, even in his absence.
“Would you like anything else to drink?” she asked Victor in perfect CSL.
“You sign?” Victor asked after a moment of hesitation. It had been so long since he had been anything but silent during one of these meetings that it took a moment for him to start signing as well.
“Yes, my father put me in classes as soon as you two struck your first deal. Almost ten years ago. He said he had a good feeling about you. Such a good feeling, I had to beg him to let me finish my education.”
For the first time, it occurred to Victor to ask, “What did you study?”
“Economics at Cambridge,” she answered, spelling out the school’s name. “But then I decided to go further in grad school and earn an MBA. Father told me I was being silly. But I wanted to be of use to my family. I will graduate in June from the Geneva Institute of Finance in Switzerland.”
