He sat back and regarded her with flinty eyes as he sipped his wine.
“You accused me of neglecting my grandmother—not stepping in to manage things before today. She disowned my mother before I was born. I met Mae for the first time at my mother’s funeral when I was seven. I didn’t see her again until five years had passed. My father warned me about allowing her to influence me, which seemed paranoid, but he knew her better than I did. I saw her again at my father’s funeral and we remained in touch—through you, I now realize, but I never made assumptions about whether I would inherit her fortune. As for assisting in managing her wealth... How would I know she needed help? You’ve done your job so well, I had no cause for concern.”
Was that a compliment or a rebuke?
He set down his stemless glass.
“I, however, have no need for your management services. Chen Enterprises is mine. I’ll chew and swallow it the way I would any other company that falls under my control, restructuring where necessary and allowing my existing legion of executives to do what I pay them to do.”
She kept her expression a stiff mask, not revealing the crumple inside her.
“As to the threats you’ve made, my life is completely impervious to them. I don’t need my grandmother’s money and her misdeeds are not mine. I’m not close enough to her for her loss of good standing to affect my pride. You’re the one who will feel it if you implode her legacy. I’ll walk away unscathed.”
She had known that, deep down. She had known she had no real leverage. She had nothing and was nothing. Her throat tightened and it took all her effort to keep the press of tears from reaching the front of her eyes.
“So I’m to be deported?” Her stomach fell while the flutter of nerves behind her heart became the panicked batter of bird wings against a window.
He wasn’t saying anything.
Through the lashes she dropped to disguise her agony, she saw his lips curl, but it wasn’t a smile. Self-deprecation, perhaps.
She set down her chopsticks, but she couldn’t think beyond that.
“You’re not going to eat? Come with me, then.” He rose abruptly and started into the house.
She half expected to be shown the front door, but he went up the wide staircase and strode into Mae’s bedroom. She trailed him on feet that felt encased in cement, heart dragging as a weight behind her.
She had only been in this bedroom a handful of times. It was the purview of Mae’s personal maid and her nurse, decorated in Mae’s signature classic style without too much fuss or femininity, if a little dated. Mae never spent money unless she had to.
The mirror over the makeup table swung open like a cupboard. Gabriel revealed a safe and punched in the code.
“How did you—?”
“You can open these older safes by setting them back to their factory default. It takes longer to look up the combination online than it does to actually break in.” He removed a leather-bound portfolio. “I was looking for her will and also I found this.” He handed the portfolio to her.
“What is it?” She unzipped it to see a handful of her standard reports on some Chinese businessmen. Head shots, the natures of their businesses, net worth, any red flags that might cause Mae to have concerns about partnering with them.
“I don’t know why she had this in her safe. It’s a very typical—” She flipped past the third profile and found a document that read Marriage Contract.
“Oh, my God!” She threw it all away so the pages and photographs and colored notes with Mae’s spidery handwriting fluttered like a flock of startled birds, then drifted to the silk rug to leave a jagged, broken puzzle upon it.
“Why so surprised? You said she was arranging you a marriage,” he chided.
“I didn’t know she was doing it!”
She hugged herself, staring in morbid horror at the papers. What did they say? What had Mae hoped to get in exchange for her? What was she worth this time?
“The dowry she was offering was quite generous. There’s a decent settlement if you divorce, especially if you stick it out at least five years. Excellent terms if you provide children, especially sons.”
“When? I thought—” She had thought Mae wanted her. That she was doing a good job for her.
She had told him what she was, but it was pure debasement to stand here before him, proven to be nothing but an asset to be bartered in one more business deal. Chattel.
* * *
“The one in textiles is the oldest. Has a heart condition.”
Luli turned her head, expression persecuted.
Gabriel’s conscience twinged, but he was still processing this discovery himself. He had removed the folder with his name on it, curious to see if she would betray a notice of its absence.
She seemed genuinely shocked by the existence of this portfolio at all. The fact it had been stored in the safe told him Mae had wanted to keep it very private. Her notes on each of the candidates revealed explicitly how she saw each of those older men falling short in her estimation, especially as compared to him.
That had been the most disturbing discovery. These other men were fallback positions. Mae had wanted him as Luli’s husband.
Because she did, in fact, seem to view Luli as a daughter. His efforts to find Luli on any payroll list or other household record had turned up nothing. He had personally questioned the butler who had shown him his own system for tracking staff hours and vacation days, but Luli wasn’t on it.
She had her own arrangement, the butler had said with affront. And no, she didn’t leave the house, which was a nuisance. Other staff had to pick up her personal items and the cost went against his household budget—a perk not available to anyone else. In his opinion, if staffing cuts were needed, Gabriel should start with Luli.
Gabriel remembered clearly the feeling of his own money, earned honestly and through great effort, going to support his father. It wasn’t something he should resent. As Luli had said earlier, family supported family, but his father had abandoned any effort to do his part. It had all fallen on Gabriel at a very young age to keep him and his father clothed, sheltered and fed.
Luli had to be suffering a similar impotent anger. She had put in the time, had done what was expected, but that work had gone unacknowledged. Her reward was the opportunity to do the same for a stranger. Him or some other man.
“I won’t do it.” Her voice shook with the rest of her. She lifted her gaze from staring through sheened eyes at the pages she’d thrown across the floor. “You can’t make me.”
“Calm down. I’m only saying that I’ll honor her intentions if you want to go through with it.” He was testing her, was what he was doing.
“Of course I don’t!” She covered her face, visibly trying to take hold of herself.
“You
