“No,” he signed immediately. Then he refused to consider if that answer was a lie or not.
If it wasn’t true, it should be. And that was all that mattered, especially for this particular conversation.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Nora answered to his surprise. Her inquisitive expression deflated. “I was hoping we might come to an understanding. You see, there is someone I must explain this arrangement to…someone else that I love.
Victor continued to keep his expression impassive, but it became a little harder as he raised his hands to point out, “You said that you never bothered with boyfriends.”
She lowered her eyes in that demure way that he’d so appreciated at their first meeting. “Yes, that’s what I said. And that’s what I told my father. It is true I’ve never had a real boyfriend. But it is also true that you are not the only reason I didn’t bother with them. You see, I didn’t want a boyfriend. I preferred girlfriends.”
Victor stared at her. All the pennies dropping. He could almost hear Phantom’s yelling triumphantly, See! Told you she was too good to be true.
“Does your father know?” he asked her, his signs slow and deliberate as his brain worked to catch up.
Bitterness twisted across her face. “Yes, he knows. We have had many tearful fights about it. But he doesn’t care. There is a path he has set out for me. And he wants me to walk it. He does not believe I have a choice in the matter.”
Her answer did not surprise Victor in the least. He couldn’t imagine any dragon in Kuang’s position simply allowing his daughter to “live her truth,” as the Americans sometimes termed it. The global Chinese mafia was becoming more and more modern every day, but daughters were still what his dad used to refer to as “the chips you don’t play until you’re ready to win big.”
“Your secret puts you in an interesting situation,” Victor signed, careful to keep his feelings about any of this off his face.
She nodded in rueful agreement. “I’ve been in an interesting position since I first realized I liked girls and only girls. I am in love with another. And I don’t want this marriage. But I will endure it. I’m sure you’ll tire of me eventually, especially after I become pregnant. I hope you will allow me my love, as long as I play the part of the dutiful wife. And of course, I would be happy for you to keep a mistress.”
Victor now understood why she had opened with such sound advice for his baijiu company. She had simply been warming him up for the actual request. It was as his father once told him: everything in this life is a negotiation. Everything except death.
However, this was not something he was willing to negotiate.
“I cannot allow that,” he answered without the slightest pause of consideration. “If you are caught, I am the one who will lose face, no matter how dutifully you act. You are free to do as you please now, but you should wrap up whatever outside business you have before the marriage ceremony. After that, I cannot guarantee the safety of your love.”
He put extra emphasis on “your love” so that there would be no misunderstanding about what would happen if Nora attempted to continue this relationship of hers.
Nora’s eyes filled with bitter tears. “I thought that would be your answer. None of you dragons care about your wives or daughters. We’re only pawns for you to move around your chess boards. But I had to try. There was no way I could face her if I didn’t at least try.”
Victor still did not love disappointing women. Even the ones who preferred other women to him.
“I wish I had a better answer for you,” he confessed. “But we all must play our part in these games. Not just the wives and daughters. All of us.”
Nora eyed him curiously. “So you do have someone you love. Just like me. Someone you will have to disappoint.”
As bad as Victor felt for Nora, revealing his pathetic situation would not make either of them feel any better about their upcoming nuptials. Instead of answering her, he escorted her out of their mansion himself.
“I’ll be back in town this summer. I’ll see you then?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered. “I look forward to it.”
Then they exchanged a cool kiss on the cheek before he put her in her car, a cute little Porsche 911 that seemed perfect for a mafia princess.
Nora seemed resigned to her fate by the time she drove away. And Victor found himself grateful that she had shown her true colors much earlier than Dawn did.
Dawn…
The image of her hugging that man once again floated through his mind, for what must have been the thousandth time since Wayne had sent him the picture a few weeks ago.
Asher Peretz. A visiting grad student from Pittsburgh.
He’d checked her school account directly after the incident and looked over all of their exchanges. But nothing inappropriate had been said. Mostly it was boring back and forth about school assignments.
There was no reason to be jealous. Dawn was aware of her invisible chains even if this Asher was not. Also, she’d had little to no opportunity to hook up with boys. Wayne dropped her off every morning and picked her up when she was done at school. If something was going on with the visiting grad student who had hugged her, it most likely wasn’t physical.
But then Victor recalled how hard he himself had fallen for Dawn before the first time they had sex. Really, before they even kissed. Did Asher feel the same way about her? Did she return his feelings?
An itch to check the security cameras came on even stronger than before. He even brought his phone out. But no…
Victor couldn’t destroy his progress. He hadn’t checked the feeds since his engagement meeting with Nora. And he needed to ensure he was wholly broken of that terrible habit before the wedding.
It was only four more months now. He could make it until then.
However, the phone erupted with a FaceTime call just as he was about to re-pocket it. Victor frowned when he saw the name on the caller ID.
It was from Wayne.
What could he want? And why would he be calling him on FaceTime?
The answer to that question was, he wouldn’t.
Dawn appeared on the screen when he answered the call, not Wayne.
And she looked like she had been crying.
Victor’s heart stopped. Had someone hurt her? That old protectiveness, which he still couldn’t control, surged inside of him.
As if in answer to his unspoken question, she said, “I stole the day guard’s phone. I wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t important—and if his password wasn’t 123456—but mostly, it was important. It’s my mom, Victor. They found something on this liver biopsy she didn’t tell Byron she had to get until today. Something cancerous. And now they have to do surgery to cut it out.”
Dawn let out a shaky breath. “But she can’t get in touch with my dad, and Byron has some important thing this weekend. That leaves just me. I have to go to her. So I’m calling to ask permission…I need permission to fly down to Texas to be with my mom.”
19
DAWN
He said no. I begged him. I pleaded with Victor to let me fly to Texas so that I could at least be there for my mom during her surgery on Sunday. But after only a moment of pause, he signed over FaceTime, “You cannot leave Rhode Island without permission from me.”