Without saying a word, she yanked me down and hugged me, strong as a tree despite her age. It was a hug I hadn’t realized I truly needed until tears stung my eyes.
She drew back and cupped my face to babble a bunch of words I didn’t understand.
Which immediately cut short the Rocky theme song playing inside my head. I’d been so determined to find her and get my answers, I’d forgotten about the total language barrier.
But Phantom’s grandmother didn’t seem to care about that nearly as much as me. She pulled me down a first-floor hallway into her apartment, which didn’t look anything like I’d expected.
There was a lot of furniture stuffed in here for such a small space—like anti-feng shui.
I spotted another room through an open door. Not a bedroom. From what I could see, it only held a table with two chairs. On top of the table sat a leather cylinder with several pieces of wood stuffed inside of it.
It kind of reminded me of those incense stick holders that you turn over every week or so to release more scent into the air. But these sticks weren’t tubular. They were more like slices of some light wood.
I walked toward those sticks with the urge to examine them more closely for some reason. Did they…did they have Chinese characters etched into their surfaces?
Phantom’s grandmother shut the door to the room before I could reach it.
“Hak-kan fortune. Not you!” she told me in broken English.
At least, I thought “fortune” was the word she used. But what did that even mean?
“Excuse me?” I asked, hoping she’d clarify.
She just babbled something else in Cantonese before disappearing into another room and closing the door behind her.
Which left me to look around the front room some more while I waited for her to return. I soon realized why the space struck me as strange and overcrowded earlier.
There were two couches but no TV, and what appeared to be decades worth of Chinese tabloid magazines fanned out across two coffee tables. This wasn’t a living room. It was some kind of waiting room.
Was Phantom’s 200-year-old grandma still working?
And if so, as what?
His grandma returned before I could posit too many guesses. She had a purse strung over her arm, and she smiled with a gleaming new set of dentures as she motioned at me to follow her out of the door with a downward flap of her hand.
I trailed behind her, not sure what else to do. And to my surprise, I found a yellow cab idling right in front of the building—a cab she tugged me toward with a vice grip around my wrist.
Phantom’s grandmother was asking me to follow her to another location.
Where? Who knew? But wherever it was, I might find some answers.
Instead of asking her another question she wouldn’t be able to reply to because of our language barrier, I swallowed down my doubts.
And followed her into the cab
20
PHANTOM
Where was she?
Phantom had shown up at her work, just as he’d been doing every night since he got back from Hawaii, and made the hardest decision of his life. It didn’t matter how much he’d wanted to keep her, make her his for real. He couldn’t be with her. Not after what happened to Jazz and Dawn.
So that evening, he stood in his usual hiding spot in the alley of the Italian restaurant that sat across the narrow no outlet street from the clinic and watched the usual suspects emerge from the building. A few doctors and nurses who’d finished with seeing patients for the day. Bernice, leaving fifteen minutes early like she always did to go pick up her kid from the daycare center at the Manhattan Mercy hospital complex, which sat right next door.
But no Olivia. Where was she? Was she working late again?
His phone vibrated in his inside suit pocket, and Phantom pulled it out. It was yet another text from Victor about whether Phantom’s terse Maybe had become a Yes to spending Lunar New Year’s Eve in Rhode Island with him, Han, and their women.
VICTOR: I respect and understand what you are doing in New York for VIP Bai3. But we haven’t seen you since you returned from Hawaii. Joi misses her other uncle.
The three Dragons weren’t talkers. But if he told Victor the truth—that he couldn’t fucking bear to see him and Han happy after giving Olivia up, then it would become a whole thing.
And Phantom’s head was already a mess after everything that had happened in December when their 24K enemies had come close to ending both Dawn’s and Jazz’s lives in two separate states—even though both women had guards with them at the time of their kidnappings.
So no, he couldn’t be with Olivia. But he also couldn’t not watch over her.
He re-pocketed the phone without answering his cousin’s text. Just then, a tall guy in a navy blue peacoat approached the clinic doors.
Someone who Phantom recognized—Byron, that brother of Dawn’s who he and Victor had saved from a bully ex-secret boyfriend back when he’d been attending high school in Japan.
And Eric seemed just as surprised to see Byron as Phantom was when he came out of the clinic to meet him at the front door.
“What are you doing here?” the voice of Olivia’s best friend came floating back to Phantom on the winter wind. “I thought we were meeting at my place!”
“I got in town earlier than I thought I would, so I figured, why not come down here and meet you—you know, maybe get in that tour you and Livvy promised me at your Faux New Year’s Eve party.”
“Aw,” Eric said, reaching out to wrap his arms around Byron’s waist. “Livvy’s going to be so sad she missed you. But that’s what she gets for cutting out of here early and leaving me with all her patients.”
She’d left early? Before he’d gotten here even? Every protective muscle in Phantom’s body tightened, demanding to know why and get eyes on her to make sure she was alright.
“Is everything alright with her?” Byron asked, echoing Phantom’s own #1 question as he followed Eric back into the clinic.
But the door closed on any answer Eric might have given him.
Phantom cussed out loud, startling a busboy just as he came out to the alley to dump the trash.
It didn’t matter. The guy was one of the evening shift workers who Phantom had already paid off handsomely in unreported “tips” to pretend like they didn’t see the big Chinese dude out here nearly every night right around six.
But Phantom must have looked as pissed as he felt. The busboy called out to him, “Everything alright?”
Phantom didn’t bother to answer—just switched to cussing inwardly as he made the walk to the subway station, where he usually followed her at a discreet distance. His car was still back at his apartment building, and this was the faster option at rush hour anyway.
However, standing packed in like a sardine with a bunch of other travelers inside a vehicle he had no control over didn’t help improve his mood. And by the time he emerged from the 86th Street subway station, gruesome what-if scenarios were looping around his head.
He tried to calm himself down. Maybe she’d had a good reason for cutting out early. There could have been an unexpected delivery—an emergency of some kind.
But no…the way Eric had made it sound, it had been a deliberate choice to leave.
She could have just been tired, though, Phantom told himself to keep from freaking out. She’d been in beast mode since the beginning of the year—even going into the clinic on weekends. Maybe she’d reached her limit and decided to go home early for once.
He’d probably find her at the brownstone sleeping, he told himself as he bypassed what he privately referred to as his lurking alley. That was the place where he always hung back and watched from afar until she was safely inside.
Then he’d leave for another night of trying to convince himself to stop doing this. To leave her alone and let her live her life without him, just as he’d determined to do after that second call.
But those nights he followed her h
ome always ended the same. Him with his dicked crammed in his fist, humping himself into a pillow that could never stand in for her, no matter how hard he tried.
And so far, he hadn’t missed a single shift of “walking her home.” Not until now.
So that night, he allowed himself to go all the way up to her stoop….
His stomach dropped when he found her brownstone sitting dark and empty. And it wasn’t because she was napping; he was sure of it. The little over door light she always flipped on when she got inside sat dark.
No more reasoning with himself after that. Phantom really started to flip out. Where was she? Where the hell was she?
Not caring about pride or stalker laws, he called his contact at Manhattan Mercy just to make sure she wasn’t there.
“Nope. She has an induction scheduled for two days from now, but other than that, nothing,” the sister of one of their Triad members answered.
Son of a bitch.
All sorts of self-recriminations popped off in his head.
He should have totally gone the stalker route and enabled the Find My app on her phone when he first thought about it. He should have kept men posted at her clinic and house, even if it drew more attention to her than he wanted after what happened with Han’s and Victor’s women.
But all those “should’ves” didn’t come close to drowning out his biggest question. Where was she? Where was—
His phone vibrated with another text, and he pulled it back out of his pocket, desperate with hope.
But it was only Han.
HAN: Just got here. No Phantom. Are you seriously not coming? It’s been weeks since Hawaii.
The phone erupted with a call as Phantom read, and he almost sent it straight to voicemail. But then he saw it wasn’t Han, calling to back up his text.
It was his grandmother.
“Maamaa?” he answered the phone—and got a stream of Cantonese in reply.
Thanks to living the mafia life for almost two decades, his Cantonese was pretty good for an ABC—an American Born Chinese. But he knitted his brow at his grandmother’s words, wondering if he’d misunderstood what she’d meant by tall black wife.
“Wait, are you with Olivia?”
“No, Syun zai, I am not with Olivia. She is with me…” his grandma answered.
“What?!” he yelled out when she told him where they were.
21
OLIVIA
When the car pulled up to a large house in Forest Hills Garden, Queens, I became even more confused.
Phantom’s grandmother simply climbed out, leaving me to pay the cab driver.
But when I went for my wallet phone, the cabbie said, “No problem, Miss. They always pay the fare and tip beforehand.”
His refusal to take my money added a new question to the pile.
Who was “they?”
When I got out of the cab, my stomach knotted with my intuitive answer to that question.
“They” was Phantom’s family. The one he hadn’t talked about or wanted me to meet.
Dread turned my feet into blocks of concrete. But the cab pulled away as soon as I got out. And Phantom’s grandma had already made it up the front steps. She pressed the doorbell and flapped her hand at me to come too.
I joined her at the top of the stairs because Black Ugandan Southerner—my DNA and upbringing made it pretty much impossible for me not to obey the orders of little old women.
But perhaps too late, I remembered what I had suspected during her interview with the interpreter—that this particular old lady might need a Psych referral.
Skylar’s words of warning about why Phantom hadn’t introduced me to his family echoed in my head as we waited on the front stoop.
And that echo grew even louder when a dainty Asian woman answered the door.
She smiled broadly at Phantom’s grandmother and seemed to have a happy greeting prepped and ready to go. But then she froze when she saw me standing there, and the welcoming smile fell right off her face.
“Hello,” I said into her shocked silence.
I made a mental note to thank my mother for all of the etiquette classes she made me take before my debut. Gracefully falling back on the rules of basic good manners always came in handy in awkward moments like these.
Hand Offering. Greeting. Introduction. Polite Declaration.
I extended my hand and said, “Hello, we haven’t met. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” she said before I could get my name out or lie about how lovely it was to meet her.
Her expression was grave, and she left my hand hanging in the air as she turned to call over her shoulder, “Grandma is here! And Olivia is with her.”
Her announcement brought several pairs of feet running, and three tall guys, just as willowy and thin as her, appeared behind her in the doorway—as if she’d called in reinforcements to exterminate the giant rat she’d found on her stoop.
A guy dressed in khakis and a dark green sweater also approached the door, but a lot slower than the three younger men. He wore glasses, like one of the men standing behind the woman who’d opened the door. But he stood taller and much broader. Another contrast—he had a hard slab face that appeared naturally biased toward frowning.
He was clearly Phantom’s father.
Toward the end of the long hallway, I spotted a couple of women peeking out. One had her hand wrapped around a toddler’s. They hung back as if they were too afraid of the giant rat to come forward.
Indeed, they were all staring at me wide-eyed, but in the end, Phantom’s father moved his wife aside so he could step forward.
“Olivia Glendaver, you have come here to my house?” he asked, his voice harsh and thickly accented.
All my Southern comportment abandoned me, and my answer came out a shaky, “Yes.”
He stared at me for two terrible beats.
Then he grabbed my hand in both of his and yelled out, “You are here! You are here! I never thought I’d get the chance to meet you!”
A few minutes later, I found myself in a formal dining room surrounded by his parents, three brothers, and two sisters-in-law for what turned out to be a Lunar New Year’s Eve potluck. His mother insisted I take her seat at the end of the table closest to the arched entrance, and she encouraged me to eat all the Japanese and Chinese food being passed around on plates.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for Phantom’s family.
First of all, everybody, save for Phantom’s father and his nieces and nephews who’d been regulated to the kitchen to eat, was a doctor. His oldest brother, Jake, a cardiologist turned Chief of Staff at Chelsea Sinai, peppered me with questions about all the insurance and paperwork involved working at and running an accessible clinic.
The middle brother, Ryan, was a Park Avenue plastic surgeon and introduced himself as Phantom’s twin even though they looked nothing alike. Clearly, Ryan had inherited both his small mother’s dainty good looks and also her stature. He was the shortest of the brothers by far.
Even more surprising, Phantom’s youngest brother, Mike—the gay one—had joined Manhattan Mercy as a Neonatology fellow last summer.
“I thought so many times about just walking up and introducing myself after you and Phantom got engaged,” he told me. “But he said I wasn’t allowed to say anything to you on Thanksgiving, and I’m not a fan of fratricide.”
“Why would he...?” I started to ask.
Our conversation got cut off by his sisters-in-law’s introductions.
They were also doctors, a family physician, and a psychiatrist—both with their own private practices in mid-town.
“We met our husbands in med school,” they told me in a way that didn’t quite explain who was married to who.
Even the Japanese-American mom, Annie, who’d opened the door was technically a doctor—though her title came courtesy of a Ph.D.
“I taught economics at Queens College up until I retired last year,” she said with a laugh. “A
nd you’re even more impressive than we thought you would be. I am never going to forgive Phantom for not bringing you home to meet us sooner. But I’m so glad you two are back together. After everything that happened in December, I didn’t think he’d ever come to his senses.”
Wait. What happened in December?
Before I could ask, one of the wives pointed out, “PTSD can present in interesting ways. I was apprehensive that Phantom wouldn’t ever be able to process his guilt and fear reaction and find his way forward in a relationship he clearly valued.”
“That is because you are too much big-brain thinking,” Phantom’s father informed his daughter-in-law. “My mother never wrong. Never!”
Then he crooked his head to look at me. “Olivia, why you have this look on your face.”
“I’m sorry, but I am so, so confused,” I answered as politely as I could, given all the questions swirling around my head.
“You all seem like very nice people—I mean, dream in-laws. It hurts my heart to meet you, actually. But…”
I let out a sad sigh. “Phantom and I are not back together. I haven’t seen him since before Christmas. I have no idea what happened in Hawaii. Your mother brought me here, but unfortunately, because of our language barrier, I didn’t understand where we were going or why.”
They all gaped at me, then turned to stare as one at Phantom’s grandma.
“Not cool, Maamaa,” the youngest brother said. “Not cool.”
What followed was a nearly incomprehensible conversation with Phantom’s defensive grandmother—even though a lot of it was in English thanks to Phantom’s brothers not slipping into Cantonese like their father.
“I don’t care if she wants to die,” the oldest brother insisted to their father at one point. “You have to talk some sense into her, Dad. She had no right to bring her here without Phantom’s consent.”
“He’s going to be so pissed when he finds out,” Phantom’s supposed twin, Ryan, said to the rest of them.
Phantom: Her Ruthless Fiancé: 50 Loving States, Kentucky (Ruthless Triad) Page 15