The Last Heiress

Chapter 3 - The Mafia And Me

Chapter 3

"Stupid girl. Have you heard of the White Phoenix Brotherhood?" Ming made conversation as he dragged me toward the west garden. As we approached the far wall, I saw the downed shrubs concealed a motorcycle. My mind was reeling. White Phoenix Brotherhood didn't sound like a rival company. Could he be a gang member? Could some lowly criminal really have coordinated this attack on my father's family?

"No," I scuffed and dug the heels of my bare feet into the ground, kicking up mounds of dirt and grass. Where were my men? Why hadn't they arrived? The fire alone should have drawn every mercenary my father hired from miles around. Could we have been taken down by a bunch of backstreet bandits who scratched out a living selling fake designer bags, copying DVDs, and dealing with heroin?

Where did they acquire these guns, anyway? There weren't many shootings around here. Did they smuggle these all the way up from Hong Kong? Or did they raid some farmer's stockpile which hadn't been used since the NRA armed the People's Militias?

"Why don't you go back to contaminating roadside tofu with bleach? Or selling hamster meat in your fast food burger chains? What do you want with me? Let me go. I'm not interested in buying any fake Apple Airpods."

Good, I could see pretending to be a stupid rich girl was working. Ming was letting his guard down. The trope of the spoiled bratty princess was replayed over and over again in the TV Shows here. I wasn't as pretty as the movie stars here with their milky white skin, and definitely no match for all the lovely young singers with their one-size-fits-all surgery-corrected faces.

My nose was too long, my skin too tanned from vacations in Saint Tropez, and my chin too masculine and square. (Never change it. You look like that famous American actress, Angelina Jolie, my friends have reassured me in the past. Who knows if it was the truth or sweet lies they spun so that I wouldn't throw them off my father's yacht). Growing up, I never felt pressured to change myself to be beautiful. When one has enough money, no matter one's outward appearance, beauty radiates from the inside — the beauty inside one's father's bank account, that is.

But, I could tell the act of a pretty, stupid girl was working on my captor. Ming let go of my upper arm and threw his hands at me.

"Tā mā de," Ming cursed in exasperation. "We do much more than, little Liang princess. We deal with the art of transfiguring reality, and we could use a girl with gifts like yours."

Gifts such as mine? I wanted to snort. What gifts would that be? The ability to set my father's credit cards a fire in a single stroll down Nanjing Road?

"The world is ending," Ming continued. "The market for elixirs giving ordinary people the ability to enter the gates of heaven is as vast as the big blue ocean."

Funny, he compared the market to the sea, as I knew the sea had grown substantially in the past year. There were reports from overseas that a poisonous rain was falling from the skies. Imagine that! The rain itself was laced with poison. Perhaps, the advancing ocean would be next to drag us down into the netherworld. Maybe, Ming's fantasy market was vast as the sea because all of us would be living on the ocean floor soon.

"No one has ever entered the gates of heaven through Yagerin," I sneered. "Don't you know? The effects don't last? I suppose being a gangster; you don't care about dealing in the business of selling snake oil."

"I'm more than just an ordinary gangster. I'm Ming Hua. I'm the eldest son of Dragon Head Hua, the Master of the Nanling Mountains."

"Dragon Head Hua? The infamous Master Hua? The mass murderer?" I gasped, forcing my lips to quiver. I lied. Ming brought my act. I could see him puffing up his muscular chest under that stupid Anta t-shirt with its obnoxiously large logo. I had never heard of any Master Hua. So many gangs had intercepted our delivery trucks and raided our factory that it would have been impossible for me to remember all their names.