A skeptical look passed over Olivia’s face. “She appears to be agitated.”
“She’s like 200,” Phantom answered. “She’s always agitated over something.”
Olivia laughed.
Big mistake making a joke. That laugh, light as summer rain, pierced his chest like a bullet.
But then she said, “Unfortunately, I must hie away. I’ve got this opera gala thing to attend. You’re going to stick around, right? I don’t want your grandmother getting too agitated as 200-year-olds are at great risk for high blood pressure—though hers was shockingly level, even after what happened.”
All he heard was that she had to go. She was going to leave, just leave without saying anything—probably because she had that polite southern shit on lock. So it was on him to say, “I remember you, and I think you remember me.”
She stilled, letting him know she hadn’t forgotten him even before she said, “Yes, of course, I was so worried about your grandmother that I didn’t think to bring it up. You’re Dawn’s friend.”
Dawn’s friend. What a strange thing to be known as, considering what she’d put his cousin through recently.
It had taken Victor months and a threat against their other business partner, Han, to come back out of his break-up misery. In fact, after Phantom got his grandma settled, he would meet up with “Return of the Mack” Victor to kill some enemies currently hanging in chains in The Silent Triad’s warehouse in Queens as a sort of toast to him finally being over that shit with his ex.
So, no, Phantom did not consider himself Dawn’s friend.
But the woman standing before him, her face open and sincere…
She did mean something to him, especially now after she helped his grandma. Also, there was a certain honor code in his world. He couldn’t just let her walk out of here without issuing a proper thank you.
“Listen, you did me a solid. So I’ll do you one, too.” He pulled a business card out of the inside pocket of his suit. It didn’t bear his name or a title, just ten digits where he could always be reached. “You ever need anything, this is the number to call.”
She hesitated. Then took the card from him with a shy smile that turned his dick to stone. “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you to offer me your assistance.”
Fuck, was she always this polite? Even in bed? The things he’d do to her if he ever got the chance to find out…
But she wasn’t his, he reminded himself. She belonged to that pretty douchebag.
That thought turned him into a sour bastard. Someone petty enough to add, “And tell your boyfriend you cleared his debt with The Silent Triad.”
She tilted her head, her smile fading into confusion. “My boyfriend? Do you mean my fiancé, Garrett?”
Ten years ago, she’d known better than to tell the creepy dude who’d shown up in her office that the Ken Doll in the photo was her boyfriend, Phantom noted. But she’d obviously been so surprised by his pronouncement that she’d let his name slip.
Yeah, Garrett. The douchebag who’d come back like herpes six years ago after their first break up.
Phantom had wondered if she knew about the gambling a few times, about all the debts her boyfriend had racked up with the kind of banks that weren’t backed by the FCC, and her response told him the answer to those questions.
“Yeah, Garrett,” he replied. Then he ground his teeth and said, “Better get to your gala.”
“But how…” she started to say.
Only to get interrupted by the arrival of an ER nurse who announced herself in a flurry of Cantonese. “Hi, I’m An. I just came on shift and was told you needed a nurse who could speak Cantonese. I’ll do your final check-up, and then we can get you out of here. I’m sure you’re eager to go home….”
Phantom turned his full attention back to his grandma, letting the doctor know this conversation was done, and he wasn’t down to answer any of her questions.
But he knew exactly when she quietly slipped away because his grandmother pushed away the penlight the nurse was shining in her eyes to tell Phantom, “She’s leaving? Hak-kan, why? Why are you letting her get away? I am ready to die!”
4
OLIVIA
“Finally, you’re here. My mother’s about to have a conniption fit,” Garrett said in lieu of a greeting when I met him on the steps outside of his parent’s 13,000 square foot townhouse in Lenox Hill, where the gala in honor of Chrysanthemum was taking place.
Their abode was maybe a fraction of the size of the Glendaver estate in Kentucky. But this being New York, its size was three times as impressive. Jack Easton Jr., the son of Easton Whiskey’s Virginia-based founder, had bought the townhouse back in the late 40s as a reward to himself for guiding his father’s company through prohibition, The Great Depression, and a World War II ban on the manufacturing of whiskey.
