by Kevin Kwan
“You don’t have to continue,” Fiona said softly, putting her hand on Kitty’s shoulder.
“No, no I must,” Kitty said, shaking her head and swallowing back her tears.
“Lady Poon, I want you to understand why I was so overcome that night when your husband started talking. My nainai contracted tuberculosis, and I had to stop going to school to nurse her. For three months I did this…until she died. This is why I was so touched by your husband’s efforts to combat TB in Africa. This is why I jumped onstage and wanted to write my twenty-million-dollar check right there and then! I just felt so lucky that a girl like me, who grew up in a hut by the river, could now be in the position to help others with TB. I really had no idea what I was doing…I wasn’t thinking…I never imagined how disrespectful it was. That was the last thing I wanted to do to your husband…your husband is such a hero to me. And you, if you only knew how much I admire you. Everything you do for the people of Hong Kong, your work on behalf of breast cancer awareness…it’s made me become aware of my breasts in a whole new way, and when I realized what I had done to offend you and offend all the Poons, my God, I just…I just wanted to bury myself in shame,” Kitty said sadly, as she cast her eyes downward and shook violently with sobs.
My God, she’s better than Cate Blanchett! Corinna thought, transfixed at the sight of Kitty with tears streaming down her face and snot running from her nose.
Ada, who had been sitting stone-faced through Kitty’s entire performance, suddenly broke out a tight smile. “I understand now. Please say no more. It is all in the past.”
Fiona’s eyes were moist as she reached across the table and grasped Kitty’s hands tightly. “You have been through so much in your life. I never knew! And now with Bernard as ill as he is—you poor girl…”
Kitty gave her a look. What the hell is she talking about?
“I want you to know that I have been praying for Bernard. I don’t know him very well, but he and my husband go way back. I know Eddie looks at him like another brother.”
“Really? I never knew they were that close.”
“The two of them did stints at P. J. Whitney in New York early in their careers, and they used to frequent some sporting club called Scores. Whenever I called Eddie, he was always having a match there with Bernard—he would sound so out of breath. Anyway, I will pray even harder now for Bernard, that he makes a full recovery. Jesus can work miracles.”
“Yes, I hope so,” Kitty said softly. It’ll take a miracle to help Bernard.
“If I might ask,” Ada said as she leaned in closer, “what is the prognosis like? And is it really as contagious as they say?”
Kitty stared at them blankly. “Um, we really don’t know…”
• • •
After Ada and Fiona had departed, Corinna summoned for a bottle of champagne. “Here’s to you, Kitty! That was a brilliant success,” she said as she clinked glasses with her protégée.
“No, no. You did all the work! Where in the world did you come up with that whole story about the grandma and the shack by the river?” Kitty asked.
“Oh, I got all of that from some documentary film I saw last year. But my goodness, you really brought my writing to life—even I was feeling a lump in my throat.”
“So you knew all along this would work with Ada? Just making that heartfelt apology and flattering her was enough?”
“I’ve known Ada for many years now. I don’t think she really gave a damn about the apology, quite honestly. All she needed to hear was you admitting that you come from some shitty village in China. She needed to feel superior to you, and it didn’t hurt that you groveled so nicely at her feet for a bit. Now she will feel much more comfortable around you. Just you watch—more doors are going to start opening to you now.”
“I can’t believe your cousin Fiona invited me to that charity party next week. Am I allowed to go?”
“The King Yin Lei Mansion fund-raiser? Of course. Fiona will be expecting you to write a big, fat check.”
“She was really so nice to me today. I think she felt sorry for me because of Bernard.”
“Yes, but you know the sympathy for you will only last so long. I think you were almost seen through today. Ada isn’t as gullible as Fiona, you know. Really, Kitty, you need to address all the whisperings going on about Bernard and your daughter.”
Kitty turned toward the ocean and stared at a small island in the distance. “Let them whisper all they want.”
“Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on? Is Bernard really ill? Did he really infect your daughter with some strange genetic disorder?”
Kitty suddenly burst into tears, and Corinna could tell that this time, her tears were all too real. “I can’t explain…I don’t know if I even have the words to explain,” she said softly.
“Then can you show me? If you want me to help you, I need to understand. Because until we can put a full stop to all the rampant rumors about Bernard, things are not going to get much better for you here in Hong Kong,” Corinna said gently.
Dabbing away her tears with an embroidered handkerchief, Kitty nodded. “Okay, I’ll show you. I’ll take you to Bernard.”
“I can go to Macau with you anytime after Thursday.”
“Oh no, we won’t be going to Macau—we haven’t lived there in years. You’ll need to come with me to LA.”
“Los Angeles?” Corinna said in surprise.
“Yes,” Kitty said through clenched teeth.
2
CHANGI AIRPORT
SINGAPORE
Astrid had just gotten off her flight from Paris, and as she strolled past the Times Travel shop in Terminal 3 toward the exit, a clerk was placing a stack of the latest Pinnacle onto the magazine rack. There was a man hugging a young boy on the cover, and as Astrid walked by, she glanced at the cover from afar and thought, What a cute kid. Then she stopped, turned around, and headed back to the newsstand. It wasn’t often that Pinnacle would publish a cover that didn’t involve some overly photo-shopped woman in a ball gown, and she was intrigued to see who these people were. She went up to the magazine rack and gasped in horror.
Staring back at her on the cover of Pinnacle’s “Special Fathers and Sons Edition” were her husband and son. MICHAEL & CASSIAN TEO SAIL TO CONQUER, it said on the cover. Michael was pictured at the prow of some megayacht, wearing a striped sailor tee with an electric blue cardigan draped fussily over his shoulders, his arm awkwardly positioned on the railing to show off his vintage Rolex “Paul Newman” Daytona to full advantage. Crouched between his knees was Cassian, dressed in a blue checked shirt and a gold-buttoned navy blazer, with what looked like a gallon of gel in his hair and a hint of rouge on his cheeks.
Oh my God, what have they done to my son? Astrid grabbed the magazine and began flipping furiously through the five hundred pages of jewelry and watch ads, desperate to find the article. And there it was. The opening spread featured a completely different photo shoot of Michael and Cassian, this time in matching suede Brunello Cucinelli driving jackets and Persol sunglasses, shot from above as they sat in Michael’s Ferrari 275 GTB convertible. When the hell did they take these pictures? Astrid wondered. In bold white type, the title of the article ran along the bottom of the picture:
FATHER OF THE YEAR: MICHAEL TEO
It’s hard to imagine someone with more of a charmed life than Michael Teo. The founder of one of Singapore’s most visionary companies has a picture-perfect family, a gorgeous house, and a growing collection of classic sports cars. Did we mention that he has the physique of a Calvin Klein underwear model and cheekbones you could cut diamonds on? Olivia Irawidjaya digs a little deeper, and discovers that there’s far more to the man than meets the eye…
“Do you know what this is?” Michael Teo asks as he points to an old yellowing document in a simple titanium frame hanging on the wall of his ultramod
ern dressing room, in between rows of bespoke suits from the likes of Brioni, Caraceni, and Cifonelli. I scrutinize the writing and discover to my astonishment that it’s signed “Abraham Lincoln.” “This is an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. There are only seven copies in existence and I own one of them,” Teo says proudly. “I’ve hung it right across from the mirrored wall in my closet so that I can see it every day while I’m putting on my clothes, and be reminded of who I am.”
It’s only fitting, since Teo is an emancipated man himself—a few years ago, he was a virtual unknown toiling away at his tech start-up in Jurong. This son of schoolteachers grew up “very middle class in Toa Payoh,” he shamelessly admits, but through hard work and perseverance gained a place at St. Andrew’s School, and from there became a standout commando in the Singapore Armed Forces.
“From the very beginning, Teo proved himself to be one of the bravest cadets of his generation,” his former commanding officer Major Dick Teo (no relation) recalls. “His endurance level was almost superhuman, but it was his intelligence that propelled him to the top of military intelligence.” Teo won a government scholarship to study computer engineering at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, and after graduating summa cum laude, he returned to work at the Ministry of Defence.
Another high-ranking official I spoke to, Lt. Col. Naveen Sinha, says, “I can’t tell you exactly what he did, because that’s classified information. But let’s just say that Michael Teo has been instrumental in helping to bolster our intelligence capabilities. We were sorry to see him go.”
What led Teo to leave a promising career with MINDEF to go into the private sector? “Love. I fell for a beautiful woman, got married, and decided that I needed to start acting like a married man—all the constant travel visiting army bases around the world and working through the night was no longer for me. Plus, I needed to build my own empire for the sake of my son and my wife,” Teo says, his piercing hawk-like eyes flickering with emotion.
When I quiz him about his wife, he remains somewhat evasive. “She prefers to stay out of the limelight.” Spying a black-and-white portrait of a stunning woman in his bedroom, I ask, “Is that her?” “Yes, but that was taken quite a few years ago,” he says. I take a closer look and discover that the photograph is signed “To Astrid—who still eludes me, Dick.” “Who’s ‘Dick,’ ” I ask? “It’s actually some photographer named Richard Burton who died awhile back,” Michael says. Wait a minute, was this picture taken by the legendary fashion photographer Richard Avedon? “Oh yeah, that’s his name.”
Intrigued by this astonishing tidbit, I went sleuthing into Astrid Teo’s past. Was she a high-fashion model in New York? As it turns out, Astrid is not just another pretty Methodist Girls School girl who married well and became a pampered housewife. Pinnacle can now reveal that she is the only daughter of Henry and Felicity Leong—names that are quite meaningless to most readers of this magazine, but who are apparently influential in their own right.
An expert on Southeast Asian lineage (who wished to remain unnamed) says, “You won’t ever find the Leongs on any list because they are far too smart and far too discreet to be visible. They are an exceedingly private Straits Chinese family that goes back generations and has diversified holdings all over Asia—raw materials, commodities, real estate, that sort of thing. Their wealth is vast—Astrid’s great-grandfather S. W. Leong used to be called ‘the Palm Oil King of Borneo.’ If Singapore had an aristocracy, Astrid would be considered a princess.”
Another grande dame of Singapore’s old-money crowd who will only talk off the record tells me, “It’s not just her Leong blood that makes her important. Astrid is loaded on both sides. Her mother is Felicity Young, and let me just tell you, the Youngs make everybody else look like paupers, because they intermarried with the T’siens and the Shangs. Alamak, I’ve already told you too much.”
Can this mysteriously powerful family be responsible for Teo’s meteoric success? “Absolutely not!” Teo says angrily. Then, catching himself, he breaks into a laugh. “Originally, I was the one who married up, I’ll admit that. But nowadays I fit in very well with her family specifically because I never asked for their help—I was determined to succeed entirely on my own.”
And succeed he has—by now everyone knows how Teo’s fledgling tech firm was suddenly acquired by a Silicon Valley company in 2010, increasing his net worth by several hundred million dollars. While most men might have been content to spend the rest of their lives staring out at the ocean view from one of Annabel Lee’s luxury resorts, Teo doubled down and started his own tech-focused venture capital firm.
“I had no interest in retiring at thirty-three. I felt like I had been handed this golden opportunity, and I didn’t want to take it for granted. There is so much talent and ingenuity right here in Singapore, and I wanted to find Asia’s next generation of Sergey Brins and provide them with the wings to fly,” Teo says. So far, his bets haven’t just soared like eagles, they’ve rocketed to the moon. His apps Gong Simi? and Ziak Simi? have revolutionised the way Singaporeans communicate and argue about food, and several of the start-ups he has funded have been acquired by behemoths like Google, Alibaba Group, and Tencent. The Heron Wealth Report estimates that Teo is now worth close to a billion dollars—not bad for a thirty-six-year-old who shared a bedroom with two of his brothers until he went to college.
So how does a man like Teo enjoy the spoils of his fortune? For starters, there is the contemporary villa in Bukit Timah that anyone driving past could easily mistake for an Aman Resort. Built around several reflecting pools and Mediterranean-style gardens, the sprawling house is already getting a bit cramped for Teo’s growing collection of war artifacts and sports cars. “We are in the process of building a new home, and have been interviewing prospective architects like Renzo Piano and Jean Nouvel. We really want something revolutionary, a home like nothing Singapore’s ever seen.”
Until then, Teo takes me on a tour of his exclusive booty. On the ground-floor gallery, samurai swords from the Edo period and a massive cannon from the Napoleonic War are displayed alongside his sparklingly restored Porsches, Ferraris, and Aston Martins. “I’m taking my time, but I hope to amass the finest collection of vintage sports cars outside the Western Hemisphere. See this 1963 Ferrari Modena Spyder over here?” Teo says, as he rubs the chrome work lovingly with his index finger. “This is the actual Ferrari that Ferris Bueller drove on his day off.”
And just home from kindergarten is Teo’s adorable son, Cassian, who enters the room doing a series of cartwheels. Teo grabs him by the collar of his shirt and lifts the boy into his arms. “All these things I possess, though, are nothing to me without this little rascal here.” Cassian, a high-spirited boy who has inherited his parents’ extraordinary looks, will turn six later this year, and Teo is determined to pass on the secrets of his success to his son. “I’m a true believer in the adage ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ I think kids need a great deal of discipline, and they need to be trained to function at their highest level. For example, my son is exceedingly smart, and I don’t feel that he’s being challenged at his kindergarten, and this will be very bold of me to say, but I don’t think he’ll be challenged at any primary school in Singapore either.”
So does that mean that the Teos plan to send their child abroad to a boarding school at such an early age? “We haven’t made up our minds yet, but we think we’ll either send him to Gordonstoun in Scotland [the alma mater of both Prince Philip and Prince Charles] or Le Rosey in Switzerland. For my son, nothing is more important than the best education that money can buy—I want him to go to school with future kings and world leaders, people who really shake up the world,” he fervently declares. Michael Teo is undoubtedly one of these people, and with such a dedicated vision and love for his son, it’s no wonder he is Pinnacle’s Father of the Year!
• • •
Rush
ing home from the airport, Astrid entered the front door and saw Michael standing on a ladder, adjusting the spotlight that was shining on his marble bust of the Emperor Nero.
“Jesus, Michael! What have you done?” she said angrily.
“Well hello to you too, honey.”
Astrid held up the magazine. “When did you do this interview?”
“Oh—it’s out already!” Michael said excitedly.
“Damn right it’s out! I can’t believe you let this happen.”
“I didn’t let it happen, I made it happen. We did the photo shoot while you were at Nick’s wedding in California. You know, it was supposed to be Ang Peng Siong and his son on the cover, but they yanked it at the last minute in favor of me. My new publicist, Angelina Chio-Lee at SPG Strategies, engineered that. What do you think of the pictures?”