“Yes,” he signed. “Call him in, and we will toast our eventual union.”
Their engagement meeting hadn’t lasted even five minutes.
Victor knew this because Kuang pointed out that fact with a laugh as soon as he returned to the room. Again much faster than expected. And an attendant trailed behind him with two pails of champagne on ice. Obviously, Kuang had expectations for the outcome of this meeting. Expectations that had been met.
“Your father would very much approve of this,” Kuang said, his eyes shining with affection as the attendant poured bubbly into crystal champagne glasses. “He would be proud of you.”
Victor nodded in complete agreement with the man who’d known his father so well. This was the marriage his father would’ve wanted for him had he lived to see this day.
They toasted their past and future fortunes. Then they set a wedding date for the fall.
“How do you feel?” Han asked when they climbed back into the car about an hour later, slightly buzzed on vintage champagne.
“Like I need to triple down,” Phantom answered, climbing into the fleet Audi’s driver seat. Phantom had abstained from drinking. He didn’t believe in “pussy shit,” like having other people drive him around. So he was always their designated driver. “Betcha 3000 bucks that there’s something wrong with her. That mafia princess was too good to be true.”
“I wasn’t asking you how you felt,” Han pointed out.
“Ya shoulda been. I’m the one who’s out 2K,” Phantom shot back.
“I feel great,” Victor answered Han before he and Phantom could devolve into squabbling.
He spoke the truth. Marriage to another woman would be the best way to finally lay to rest this obsession with Dawn.
“I don’t feel great,” Phantom let them know, pushing the car’s start button and pulling out.
“Why did you make the bet if you were going to be such a bitch about losing?” Han demanded.
“Take my triple bet, and maybe I’ll stop whining,” Phantom shot back.
“Hey, I’m not one of your extortion rackets….”
Victor chuckled and pulled out his phone. Not to check Dawn’s security feed. Simply because he had been out of pocket for quite a while. He wanted to make sure there weren’t any urgent messages he needed to attend to as they set out on the long drive back to Rhode Island.
He furrowed his brow when he saw the message from Wayne above an image notification. “She said he was just thanking her. But thought you should see.”
The smile completely fell off Victor’s face, his good mood disappearing in a flash, when he saw the picture Wayne had sent.
“What’s wrong?” Han asked in the seat beside him.
17
DAWN
Hey Dawn!
Good news and bad news.
Bad news first: I tried with Pirelli, but he shot me down on switching places. Sorry.
Good news: an alum from my Dramatic Writing program just got tapped to do the movie version of Chrysanthemum. She talked about how she and the director had put some animation about the history of slavery into the opening sequence. I told her about LOVE ORIGINS. She made a call, and long story short, one of the animation directors over at Yinz Animation Studios wants to talk with you! All her info is below if you want to get in touch.
Best wishes,
Asher
I nearly fell out of my chair when I read Asher’s email just a few days after our conversation. Then I transcribed it by hand and deleted it from every conceivable folder before Victor or whoever he had monitoring my email could see it.
Chrysanthemum was a mega-popular opera about a woman who goes from slavery to working in Abraham Lincoln’s White House. It had been touring for years, and I saw it three times when it came through the Newport Performing Arts Center. Though sadly, never with Sirena Gale, the opera singer, who would also be playing the title role in the movie.
Even better, Yinz Animations was one of the most cutting-edge animation houses on the East Coast. They’d been behind some of my favorite opening and closing credit sequences, and their commercials consistently won awards that included words like “innovation” and “avant-garde.”
Even the disappointment of not being able to switch thesis presentation spots with Asher couldn’t eclipse the joy of getting an interview for my dream job.
I emailed them right away. And to my shock, Lucy Marr, the person who would be directing the animated sequence for Chrysanthemum, immediately asked to see my reel. Luckily, I’d just put it together as an assignment for our Thesis Production Seminar.
I shot it right off to her, and she called me for what she referred to as a “new hire conversation” right before my Friday Advanced Character Design seminar.
“Pre-production on the project begins in June, so we’d need you to move out to Pittsburgh then. Will that be a problem?”
“No, not a problem at all,” I assured her, happily ditching my plans to get an apartment in Rhode Island.
Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t think of moving out of state sooner. In June, I’d be free. And I relished the thought of starting my dream job in a new city where I wasn’t a prisoner.
“Good, if you do well on this assignment, we’ll probably be able to keep you on full-time for other projects. Clients are always asking about animation with a fresh perspective. And yours is definitely that. I shed legit tears at your depiction of the Middle Passage.”
“Oh wow! Thank you!”
“Any questions for me?” she asked.
“Actually, yes,” I answered, beyond excited about the prospect of working with Yinz Animation into the foreseeable future. “Do you think after I prove myself, I’ll be able to pitch a few more things on my own? The more I work on Love Origins, the more I think it could actually be worth produc—”
“Listen, I’m going to be truthful with you; we don’t do much pitching in-house,” Lucy answered, her tone brisk and sharp. “It’s more like the client comes to us because of our stellar reputation, and we give them what they want. We’re not Studio Ghibli or Pixar. We’re the people productions call when they’ve got a great script, and they want a final film that could compete with Studio Ghibli or Pixar for an Oscar.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
“But a lot of animators work on their own thing in between projects,” Lucy told me, and her tone became a little more encouraging. “That’s what I do, and it’s way more fun if you ask me. Less pressure and no deadlines. Although, the boss on those side projects can be a bitch. She’s kind of neurotic too. Never know what you’re going to get with her.”
I laughed, appreciating her self-deprecating sense of humor. And she had a point. I’d chosen Love Origins as my thesis production. But before that, I’d only been able to work on it during breaks and in between class assignments. This wouldn’t be any different.
“Plus, you’d be surprised how the stars align in some cases. Like, your Love Origins project? A lot of times, the client will come through looking for something that sounds really specific. But it will turn out that one of our animators had a personal project just sitting around that exactly matches their needs. Serendipity like that happens shockingly often in this business.”
“Wow, that sounds great. And I hear Pittsburgh’s a great place to live and raise a family.”
“It is,” she confirmed, her voice becoming a bit more careful. “But I’ll be frank with you, woman to woman. A few of the guys here have families. But if you’re serious about climbing the animation ranks, it’s pretty hard to have both. Especially for women. The long hours we keep and raising kids don’t exactly mix. Would that be a dealbreaker for you?”
“Um…” It was strange, but I had never thought seriously about whether I wanted to have children and raise a family before.
I’d been so busy keeping my head down as I served out the rest of my sentence, it had seemed dangerous to dream about the future. Much
less make practical decisions in the firm Yes and No columns of milestones.
I mean, I wouldn’t mind being a mom. The idea of having children with a loving husband didn’t upset me. And, I was thirty-two. It wasn’t too late yet, but it might be soon…
“So, it is a dealbreaker?” Lucy asked, making me realize that I had left her hanging on umm.
I shook my head. What was I thinking? They were offering me a job right out of grad school. My program mates had been applying to places all year. They’d kill for this kind of career opportunity.
Yinz Animation was finally my chance to live my life on my terms. There was no way I would give that up.
“No, I’m totally in,” I assured her. “I was just thinking about logistics for the move up to Pittsburgh.”
“Oh, good.” Lucy let out an audible sigh of relief. “Once we saw your stuff, we really had our hearts set on you.”
Okay, well, that filled me with all sorts of warm fuzzies. Yinz liked me. They really like me!
But then she said, “Just make sure to keep up all of your grades. We pride ourselves on only hiring animators with MFAs. And I would hate to rescind a job offer, especially for someone as talented as you. But, ironically, the working-class founder of Yinz is kind of snobby that way. Luckily, you’re graduating from RhIDS. He won’t even let us interview candidates from the no-name schools.”
She laughed, and I weakly laughed with her.
Working with the elite of the elites sounded like a dream come true. But if I didn’t do my thesis presentation, it wouldn’t happen.
I had to figure out how to change my thesis presentation date since asking Victor to give me a reprieve wouldn’t work. Just the opposite. He probably relished the thought of ruining everything I’d worked for as much as I relished the idea of finally getting out from under his thumb.
I could barely pay attention in my Advanced Character Design seminar after that. Maybe I should ditch the rest of today’s classes, I thought as I walked out of the classroom. I could pick up an order of Chicken Gang Jeong and Seoul Beef Soup from my favorite Korean restaurant and maybe catch up on all those watching assignments for my World Animation History elective.
The buzz of my secret phone interrupted those thoughts. I fished it out of my Aggretsuko tote and found it lit up with Byron’s number.
I frowned. Byron never called me. I was always the one who called him.
“Hey Ronny, is everything okay?” I asked as soon as I picked up.
In my heart dropped when he answered, “No, everything’s not okay. It’s mom.”
18
VICTOR
In his study, Victor was sitting behind his desk when one of his men knocked on the door and walked in with an announcement. “Excuse me, Boss. There’s a woman here to see you. She said her name is Nora Kuang.”
Victor never used sign language with anyone in their triad, save for Han and Phantom. But neither of them were here now. Phantom was handling some “personal business, don’t ask” in New York. And Han had returned to Hawaii for a second time to finish cleaning up a mess the 24K had made. Han hadn’t been happy about the assignment when Kuang first sent him down to Oahu the previous summer. It involved the fallout from a sex trafficking ring bust, the one place where Han drew the line.
But Kuang had called it a special favor, and an alliance was an alliance. Kuang knew how they felt about that business. And he wouldn’t have asked Han to do this if it wasn’t important. So Han was now taking care of Kuang’s issue in Hawaii.
That meant Victor could only communicate with his men through text messages and notes, which he wrote out on a notepad app these days as opposed to scratch paper.
Victor pulled out his phone and typed into the notepad app, “Send her in.”
A few moments later, Nora Kuang came through the door. She’d worn a pretty dress when they’d met a few weeks ago. And she was still just as beautiful, but she was dressed much more casually in jeans and a bright graphic T paired with a blazer.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Victor asked, standing to greet her.
“Oh, I was just in the neighborhood visiting one of my friends,” she answered. “An American pop star. Baba told me you lived in the same neighborhood, so I decided to swing by.”
Victor almost asked which pop star. When they first bought a house down here, Westerhaven had been dotted with mostly family estates. But since then, more celebrities had decided to make it their home.
However, he had a feeling Nora hadn’t come here to exchange celebrity gossip.
“Can my man get you anything to drink?” he asked before motioning for her to sit in one of his desk chairs.
“No, thank you,” she answered, taking the seat he’d proffered with a demure smile.
Victor dismissed the man who had escorted her up to his study.
But as soon as the door closed behind him, Nora said, “Actually, I will take something to drink. Perhaps some of that whiskey in the decanter behind you.”
Inwardly, Victor lifted an eyebrow. He inhabited a world filled with power plays. So he had to wonder if she had purposely waited until his man left to ask for a drink. Perhaps she wanted to see if her future husband was willing to serve her.
He wasn’t.
But there was no need to argue that point. At least not before the wedding.
He stood up and poured two fingers of whiskey into crystal tumblers. One for each of them.
He handed it to her then settled behind his desk, waiting for her to talk.
She took the glass but immediately set it aside to excitedly sign, “I had an idea I wanted to share with you. That baijiu company you bought…my American pop star friend was really curious about it as she has been looking for partnership opportunities that will help her increase her fan base in China. I don’t know if you have any interest at all in becoming a legitimate business. But if you did, I believe that brand, if marketed right, could be worth billions—real billions, not washed billions.”
Victor tilted his head. This was not the discussion he thought they would be having when she sat down. But he couldn’t say he disliked the topic. The Rustanovs were rumored to be trillionaires now. And that was because, under the leadership of Alexei Rustanov, they’d become a legitimate operation at just the right moment in history. Could this be their moment?
“Tell me more,” he invited Nora after a few moments of consideration.
“Sure. All you would have to do is…” Nora launched into a concise explanation of how to grow their baijiu business from Asian-only markets to trending ones in America. Then she concluded with, “I honestly think this could be the next big thing.”
Having never attended university, Victor tended to do business as his father had. With his gut. He liked that Kuang was the same.
But Nora had studied these things formally, and her ideas held merit.
“I will talk this over with my Silent Triad partners and perhaps your father as well. It seems like it could be a great way forward into the future. And perhaps he would like to come on as an investor.”
A pleased smile spread across her elegant face. “Truly? You would talk to my father about this?”
“You seem surprised.”
She dipped her head, her expression a bit sheepish. “My father never listens when I share my ideas. He thinks I’m still a little girl. The same spoiled brat who used to only care about shopping and high school.”
So she resented her father. Victor tucked that new piece of information away before signing, “Thank you for showing me that his assessment of you is obviously not true.”
Still, she shook her head. “It would be better for you to claim this idea as your own. He might dismiss it outright if he hears it comes from me.”
“We’ll see,” Victor answered. “I’m good at reading the room. I will decide for myself which way to go the next time I meet with your father. Thank you for your good advice either way.”
A silence settled between them. At
first comfortable and warm. But then slightly awkward.
She picked up the whiskey and finally took a sip before asking Victor out loud, “Is it okay if I don’t use sign language this time? The truth is, I’m only so-so at it. And I want to make sure I’m fully understood.”
Victor disagreed with her assessment of her signing skills. Like him, she took great care to ensure that her signs were crisp and precise.
But he held back his thoughts on the matter. He was more curious about what she’d truly come here to talk about than eager to compliment her.
She took another sip of whiskey. Then a deep breath before saying, “I have been informally engaged to you since I was in secondary school. I never even bothered with boyfriends. I told Baba, ‘What’s the point? You’ve already picked my husband.’ I wonder, though, if perhaps it hasn’t been the same for you.”
Victor stilled, his chest chilling over with the feeling of having been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “What do you mean?”
“Is there someone that you must explain our engagement to?” she asked. “Someone that you love?”
“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: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad) Page 12