BOUND: Together

by Cynthia Dane

  “No, it’s…”

  “Stop, Nat. I’ve found out enough these past two months to write most of my article. I have a few blanks to fill before I hand it in to my editor.”

  “You can’t do this,” I hissed. “You’ll ruin him. Not just his company, but him.”

  He sighed. “Whatever. I know you care about him, but he’s using you like he uses everyone else. Honestly, rip the Band-Aid off and let the truth come out.”

  “What do you mean he’s using me?”

  “Please. All the escorts… I know there are more than Janelle. She’s told me about them. Eric treated himself to a nice birthday treat with half of New York’s escort scene last year.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “He collects women who fascinate him, because he never got to live their lives. Everything, from spoiling them to having sex with them, is about his own psyche. It’s never about them. You should hear some of the stories I’ve heard. I’m sure you have some of your own to add as well.”

  “I would never.”

  “Look, I get it. You’re in love with the freak. He’s right up your alley in terms of overworking himself and doing the whole double-life thing. Bet he’s the most exotic fun you’ve had since you lived in China.”

  I didn’t think. I tossed his drink into his face and got up from the table. Aiden Webb – if that was even his real name – didn’t deserve my words. Although God knew I wanted to drown him in my ire.

  The waitress approaching us gasped. Someone sitting at the bar shook his head and muttered about dates gone bad. I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was what was left of my honor. Of Erica’s honor.

  When Aiden suggested I had my own stories to add, the first thing I thought of was Erica crying in my arms as she relived the pain no amount of money could heal. I loved her like I loved myself. The thought of something as private and emotional as that getting out…

  I stopped at the doorway. A family with two small children inched by me, one of the kids screaming that he didn’t want to eat pizza or spaghetti. They barely fazed me. I was more interested in helping Erica.

  That was the only thing that mattered. Helping Erica was good for me too, wasn’t it? I wanted a happy, well-adjusted girlfriend, and I wanted to help her run her business to the best of my overworking abilities.

  I knew that one of the only ways that could happen was if Erica was allowed to live as herself, both at home and in the world.

  Aiden was still wiping his face when I returned to the table. He scowled at me, grunted a What, and tossed his red and white napkin back down onto the table.

  “I won’t tell,” I announced, “and I fully expect you to keep investigating who the third piece in this shit-puzzle is.” Between him, my aunt’s security force, and whoever poisoned Brooke, I knew I needed more tenuous allies than outright enemies. “But you’re not going to write a fucking exposé painting him as some pervert worth mocking and tearing down as if he’s a circus side-show act.”

  “I’m not, huh?”

  “No, Aiden. You’re going to bring the truth to the world, but you’re not going to do it your way. You’re doing it our way.”

  “Really? Is that so?”

  “It so fucking is so. You’re going to write about the truth surrounding Eric’s death.” I slammed both hands against the table and pressed my nose against his. That foul aftershave attempted to tear down my defenses, but I did not flinch. I pressed forward, ready to bite him if he pushed me enough. “And you’re going to introduce the real Erica to the world.”

  Chapter 51

  NATALIE

  I needed to find Erica. She needed to know my plan, and we both needed to find out what the fuck was really going on in her office.

  Aiden wasn’t the only one ready to take her down. My aunt wasn’t the only one investigating him on behalf of someone else. Someone was pissed enough to hurt Brooke and drag her away.

  As soon as I was back in the office, I stole into the women’s restroom and called my aunt on the burner phone.

  “Do you know who poisoned Brooke Pentecost?”

  My aunt took so long to answer that I worried I had accidentally found the wrong person.

  “Who poisoned her? I have no idea. It’s not at the top of our list of things to be concerned about. Hello to you too, by the way.”

  “I’m asking because I’m really worried. I need to find Erica. Now.”

  When I was a child, my aunt’s dramatic sighs used to annoy me. They usually heralded a lecture my American ass never needed to hear, because whatever she had to say to me absolutely did not apply in my home country. Since learning who she really is, however, I’ve come to identify those sighs as signaling I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Not that I’ve ever minded those warnings. My aunt has long learned that I’ll still do whatever the fuck I please, even if it means expending more resources on her part.

  “What are you going to do when you find Erica?”

  “There’s a lot of shit going on here that she needs to know. I could email her, I guess, but that’s not as secure as I’m sure you’re about to tell me. I also have a feeling she’s not checking her emails.”

  “You’re right. She’s not. Her communications are routed through her personal security team, and I can guarantee they’ll eject you.”

  “So I need to find her in the flesh.”

  “I’m sure you do, but…”

  “Does she know that her other intern is an undercover reporter who knows the truth and will blow it wide open as soon as his ducks are lined up and slaughtered for dinner?”

  My aunt was silent for a few seconds. “I don’t think she knows that, no.”

  “You didn’t even know that.”

  “I was concerned about other things, Natalie. It wouldn’t have been hard for us to find out, but we weren’t focused on people like him, no.”

  “Erica needs to know. She also needs to know that someone else is out there trying to screw her and the company over. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to help her!”

  I braced myself against the sink. Tears stung behind my eyes, and not necessarily because I was in emotional pain. More like under a thousand tons of stress that threatened to fuck me over.

  Yes, I wanted to be with Erica because I loved and missed her. Yes, I wanted to be with her to tell her what was going on and what crackpot plan I had. But most of all? I wanted this to be over. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Erica, and I wanted it to be a relaxing, fulfilled life where we could exercise our freedom to be whoever we wanted.

  That couldn’t happen until we put all of this behind us. All of this.

  “Please,” I begged like a little girl who wanted more cookies. “Tell me where she is. Otherwise I’m hopping the next plane to Singapore and finding her myself.”

  “You’ll never find her. That’s part of the point. She has the funds to keep herself so well hidden that…”

  “I don’t care. I’ll find her, somehow.”

  “What’s sad is that you’re so much a Chen I’m sure that you are determined enough to do it. Unfortunately, your stubbornness will only mean your end. You’ll be dead at worst, deported at best before you ever see a bit of her face in that country.” She mumbled to herself in crass Mandarin. “Fine. I’ll arrange something. I have a loose connection in her Singaporean team that I can take advantage of. Don’t go making your own arrangements, though. Leave it to me. When arrangements have been made, someone you know will give you the details.”

  “Thank you so much. Seriously.”

  “You don’t have to tell me you’re serious, dahlin’,” that last bit was in her heavily accented English that I used to hear when I was a kid and still rusty in my Mandarin, “because you’re never anything but. It’ll be your downfall one day. Ah, well. My job will be mine.”

  When we hung up, I squared my shoulders and returned to the office. I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between my assigned busy work and
using Brooke’s shorthand to come up with a list of possible suspects.

  Aiden never came back to work. Nobody cared.

  ***

  My ability to incessantly work on one task came in handy when I returned home and continued my research. For the first time in many days, I enjoyed parts of my old routine, such as taking a long, hot bath and brushing my hair for exactly 100 strokes. I spent anytime I wasn’t drying myself off or testing the bathwater’s temperature typing terms into my phone and handwriting lists of people I thought might be connected to Brooke and have something against her, if not both her and Eric.

  Unfortunately, my list basically consisted of Brooke’s fiancé Adam and… well, that was it, really.

  I was half tempted to go to Brooke’s house and have a chat with Adam, but even I knew that was a ridiculous idea. If Adam were the perpetrator, well, say goodbye to me. If he wasn’t above poisoning his fiancée’s coffee, then I was done for!

  Shit.

  “Natalie?” my mother called up the stairs. “There’s someone here to see you. She says she’s from work.”

  I dropped my brush at the count of fifty-six strokes.

  Jimmy Cho stood in our humble entrance, her plaid skirt and leather jacket drenched in the mid-autumn rain. A manila folder was clenched between blue nails.

  “Hey,” she said, blowing bubblegum out of her mouth. “You forgot this at work. Was doing some Ubering in the area and thought I’d drop it off.” She shoved the folder into my hands. “Gotta go. Someone on the other side of town wants a ride.”

  “Who was that?” my mother asked after I shut the door. “She looks… unique.”

  I was half tempted to tell my mother that was my father’s employee, but simply said, “She’s the receptionist at the office. Just dropping off something I forgot.”

  “Oh.” My mother shrugged and went back to watching Real Housewives. Her dog was, for once, quietly napping on the couch.

  I stole back up to my room and dumped the contents of the envelope onto my bed. Some Taiwanese company so nicely informed me that my name had come up in a drawing and I had won one free ticket to Singapore. It left in a few hours – right when Jimmy finished her Uber shift and would swing by to take me to the airport.

  I had three hours to pack. Since I had no idea how long I would be there, I packed three days’ worth of clothing, each piece versatile for whatever weather and easy to wash. Even so, I made sure I would meet my aunt’s car in Singapore wearing my nicest cotton dress – in case I saw Erica soon after.

  My heart fluttered at the thought of seeing her so soon. I didn’t care how long the flight across the Pacific took. I wanted to be with her.

  I needed to be with her.

  Now.

  Chapter 52

  NATALIE

  Singapore was completely foreign to me, even though I had been to Taiwan more than once. From a business student’s point of view, I should have been enamored with everything the Lion City had to offer someone like me. At the time, it was the third richest country in the world. If you were wealthy and Asian, you came to Singapore for the highest standard of living anyone could afford. The best schools (if you weren’t sending your kids overseas, anyway,) the best medical care, the most luxurious homes with all the modern amenities blended with traditional Chinese and Malay sensibilities. Don’t get me started on some of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Even with Erica and my father to my name, there are some restaurants in Singapore I still cannot get into!

  I had always dreamed of going there. Instead, I was oblivious to the living city around me as I got in the car at the airport and was driven to my aunt’s prearranged destination.

  The driver wasn’t anyone like Clyde, whom I hadn’t seen in weeks. This man belonged to my aunt and spoke in a clipped Taiwanese Mandarin accent. He wasn’t going to converse with me. He only knew me as my aunt’s niece – and to that extent, his employer’s daughter – and wasn’t going to risk offending anyone. It was also possible he didn’t know how to talk to a young American woman in her twenties, and I was fine with that. My brain was so full of shit that I worried I would embarrass myself.

  Signs in English told me where to get the best western medical treatments. Signs in Mandarin directed me to the local acupuncturist and doctor of Chinese medicine. Malay billboards asked me if I had recently visited Kuala Lumpur, and if not, would I be interested in rock-bottom airfare? My Malay has never been great, but even I understood the Malaysian model holding an airplane in one hand and pointing to the Kuala Lumpur skyline next to her head.

  It was sensory overload even before the evening lights kicked in. Between jet lag and my brain attempting to process over three different languages it should have been familiar with, I was liable to fall asleep at any moment.

  No. I needed to stay alert. I could meet Erica at any moment.

  The driver pulled into the automatic parking garage beneath a Chinese club. Upscale, of course, but you must understand that even “upscale” in Chinese means a gratuitous use of lucky golden adornments that local Singaporeans consider tacky and uncouth, a sign of Mainland new money that will run out before the next wind blows. A woman in a crimson qipao and gold dangles in her up-do met us curbside and insisted on taking me inside. The driver didn’t warn me away. If anything, he parked in such a way that I had no choice but to get out on that side and accept the deep bow the club employee afforded me.

  Mandarin and hints of Cantonese peppered the lobby. The locals would be right to say that the club catered to Mainland Chinese either doing business in Singapore or temporarily relocating. But I didn’t think it was tacky. Honestly, it had a familiarity to it that assuaged my jet-lagged nerves. It helped that the woman behind the front desk changed to the Taiwanese dialect once she realized I was that Ms. Chen. She could’ve been my cousin at the family reunion for all I cared.

  “Our apologies, we understand that you just arrived at the airport and must be tired.” The woman in the crimson qipao came up behind the receptionist, the Taiwanese woman in the black and gold qipao. Behind me? The bodyguard my aunt assigned me. He sniffed the tea the crimson-qipao woman offered me and decided it wasn’t poisoned. “Please have some complimentary tea to right your mood while we locate your party. One moment, please.”

  “Th… thank you.” My accent slipped over my tongue and sounded like I was some country rube who had never been to the city before. Nobody flinched.

  “Right this way.” The woman in the crimson qipao directed us to an adjacent salon that smelled of incense and the hyacinths blooming in the corner. The bodyguard stayed by the door while I was served more tea and assured that my party would be by to see me at any moment.

  She was barely out the door when my aunt barged in.

  I still wasn’t used to seeing her in a full suit and brandishing a weapon on her hip. I don’t think open-carry was allowed in Singapore, but my aunt laughed in that law’s face when she revealed a blade on one hip and a pistol on the other. Her stance implied she was used to walking around so everyone in a room had a full view of her weapons. An intimidation tactic. It worked wonderfully on me.

  “Good to see you in Asia for once.” She didn’t offer to hug or kiss me on the cheek. She kept her distance, and I stayed in my seat, tea forever left untouched. “That scared American look on you livens up the place a bit.”

  “I’m not scared,” I was quick to say. “I’m confused. I got off a plane and was brought here…”

  “We can trust this place.”

  “I noticed that the receptionist spoke the Taiwanese dialect.”

  “Because she’s Taiwanese. I told you we could trust this place.”

  Seemed that was the bare minimum for trust in a country with security always on the mind. “You know someone who works here, huh?”

  “I know everyone who works here. Some of them used to be under my command before they retired here.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon. Haven’t you figured it out? You
r father owns this club. It’s full of his men and women.”

  My mouth dropped open. No, it had never occurred to me. Not even after the past few weeks when I discovered my father was apparently rich and powerful enough in Taipei to warrant his own high-class security team. I never knew he had so much money. I mean, I should have guessed… the alimony and child support payments he sent my mother every month must have been large enough for us to live where we did without her working a day in her life. My mother was such a gold digger that she wouldn’t have settled for a husband who made less than half a mil a year.

  I now suspected that my father was worth way more than that.

  “How many people does my father employ, exactly?”

  “No idea. Well into the hundreds.” My aunt helped herself to some of my tea. “Don’t worry about it. You’re here to find your beloved, not your father’s real estate holdings.”

  I hopped to my feet again. “So you really know where she is?”

  “Of course. Do you think I would’ve gone to all the trouble of bringing you to Singapore if I wasn’t sure? My contact reconfirmed the meetup with me. We leave in five minutes.”

  “We’re meeting Erica right now?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I need you to do everything I tell you. That includes heeling if I tell you heel and jumping if I bark at you to jump. Understand?”

  I was a stranger in a foreign land. My Mandarin skills wouldn’t be enough to get me out of trouble around here. I completely relied on my aunt, even if it were my insistence that brought us to meet again.

  “I understand.”

  “Good! Hate to admit that I’m rather looking forward to it, but your auntie has some sense for adventure. Go on! Ask me how many countries I’ve been to before!”

  Didn’t want to play that game. Didn’t even want to consider a number, because I had forgotten how to count.

  “Fifty-seven! Although I was deported from Brunei. My fault. I take full responsibility.”