Chapter 8
Orion was waiting for me outside. The boy didn't know when to leave. Standing there, in his well-tailored, expensive menswear, in my grandmother's hallway with the peeling manure-colored wallpaper and crumbling asbestos-laced walls, he reminded me of a male fashion model trying to make an artistic statement about the decay of society.
I strolled right past him and mashed the elevator's down button.
"Have you ever had a servant steal from you?" I muttered, still shaking with disbelief at what I found inside that briefcase.
"What are you missing? Anything valuable?"
"I don't know," I crossed my arms over my modest chest and rethought my words before I spoke again. How much of my predicament did I want to share with Orion Oslen? He wasn't my friend or my confidant. He was the son of the man who had once operated my father's rival company. They even tried to open a distribution facility outside of Beijing once, to say nothing about their plans to expand all over the world. Now, their family business had fallen to the wayside. As I understood it, he was living on their generational wealth. No one has even heard of Tercel for years.
He wasn't competition. Perhaps his family was two decades ago but certainly not anymore.
Yet, all the same, I didn't trust him. I wondered if he was trying to trap me in a moment of weakness.
Get a hold of yourself, Angela! The world wants to kill me for the actions of my father's company. Since Orion's family operated in the same business of refining Black Waters, he and I were in the same boat on these rocky seas. I could trust him, for now.
"I found something peculiar and unexpected in my luggage."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing," I muttered as the elevator arrived. It creaked with age as I stepped across the rusted doorway. Yes, nothing, indeed. No money, no jewels, no documents containing real estate holdings. My father wasn't a prankster. What did this weird gift mean?
I couldn't even bring myself to confess what I found inside that luggage. Being laughed at by the likes of Orion Oslen would truly be hitting rock bottom.
Orion leaped into the elevator beside me. I wished he hadn't. The ancient device shook under us dangerously. If the elevator groaned with displeasure at having to transport a 120 lb girl, it was furious at the muscle-bound he-man standing beside me.
The machine slowly lowered us back to the lobby as though it was voicing its displeasure by taking an extra long time.
"Where are you headed?" Orion demanded as the seconds ticked by and the awkward silence settled between us again.
"I'm going shopping." Once again, I struggled to control my tone. I couldn't help it. Everything about my posture and voice said — why do you care?
"You can't just wander around alone."
"Angela Liang is dead, remember? I'm safe. No one is looking for me."
"Where's your purse?"
I stopped dead in my tracks. Orion noticed what I hadn't thought twice about.
Yes, I left my purse back at my grandmother's apartment. What did it need it for? It was empty anyway. I knew that, but until now, he didn't. Perhaps he assumed I was carrying my weight in cash and diamonds inside that purse. It would have been the wise thing to do when fleeing to a foreign country.
Lao Tian Ye, what else could go wrong? If only I had remembered my purse, I could pretend I had everything I needed and he would let me be. I immediately dug around my jacket pocket and flashed my cell phone at him. It was all I had on me other than clothes on my back and the Louboutins on my feet.
"I don't require a purse. I have everything I need right here."
"There's nothing on that phone," Orion growled. His jaw clenched as though he was struggling to hold himself back. Finally, he drew in a deep breath and approached me again. "Why do you have to be so difficult? My father promised Charlie that we would keep you safe. That means I am going to look after you. Wherever you go in Manna City, I'm coming with you whether you like it or not."
His words echoed in my mind. Whether I liked it or not. Orion Oslen is not the type of boy who hears the word "no" frequently. I wasn't short, which was why I despised him for towering over me. He even seemed to crane his neck, just the slightest bit, to show me how minuscule I was compared to him.
Well, what I lacked in height, I made up for in the strength of my family. I was the heir of Yagerin, and we both knew, as we had known when we first met in Hong Kong, that my position was stronger. Orion's father failed in all the ways my father succeeded. I knew bringing up this painful fact would push Orion off the edge. I could see by the way his nostrils flared when he spoke that he wanted to explode. It took every fiber of his being to maintain a pretense of being civil.
I didn't care.
Even now, I had the upper hand.
I smiled at him. No, I smirked. There was nothing he could do to me. If he let me go, he would have failed the order his father gave him. If he had stopped me by force or said a single word that wasn't the epitome of a good-mannered chaperone, he would have failed his task even more.
He was here to protect me, but even more so, he was here to make me like him.
And it was killing him that he might as well have been told to move the sun to another galaxy.
"I'm going shopping," I repeated and sidestepped around him. I headed to the main entrance. "You have my gratitude, Mr. Oslen, but I have to leave now."
"Wait," Orion snapped.
I stopped but only for a second. As I continued to walk, my heels clicking with unnecessary loudly against the floor with the mud-brown tiles.
"Are you planning to walk? Let me bring you where you need to go."
"You won't come inside?"
"No."
"I'm going to Chastel on Safire Avenue."
"The clothing store?" Orion sputtered in disbelief.
"Yes, I don't have anything to wear. Your chauffeur must know to get there."
"Yes, yes, he knows how to get there!" Orion shooed me out the door to his waiting car. All the same, he wrinkled his nose at the request. "Don't you want to go somewhere . . . somewhere less common?"
Orion choked suddenly and pretended to cough. He didn't mean to say that. The heat of the argument had broken his suave demeanor. He was letting his true thoughts slip through. I chuckle at his mistake. It didn't take a genius to see that he regretted those words as soon as they left his mouth.
He just called the heir of Yagerin common.
"Not that there is anything wrong with it, of course." Orion quickly corrected. "Nothing made by man can compare to your beauty."
True, Chastel wasn't the classiest fashion house on this side of the ocean. Unlike the timeless luxury brands most upper-class girls loved, my heart raced for the wildest, gaudiest, most fleeting fashions. I didn't always wear them, preferring my plain silver jewelry and black pantsuits while photographed. But, whenever I was sad or afraid, it was inside my lavish closet that I found the most comfort.
My mother had been a nightclub singer on Yuyuan Road before my father "discovered" her. Whenever we came to Manna City in the past to visit my grandmother, we would head to Chastel afterward so that my mother could spend the afternoon trying on all the latest fashions.
My mother always told me that she married too young. She never had a chance to find herself. It was only in the racks at Chastel that she could explore those lost possibilities. A cape here, a boa there, and suddenly she was someone other than Kaili Liang.
It was during those trips when I felt the closest to her. In Chastel was where she was happiest. I loved those memories. Looking back now, I realize that she was already imagining life without me when we last came here.
Like any child, now that my life was in danger, I wanted my parents. It was in that old clothing store where my memories seemed the most present and where I felt the safest.
"I like what I like, Orion Oslen."
"I understand," Orion gave me a curt nod in assent. He shooed his chauffeur away and personally held open the lobby door for me. "As do I."
There it was, once again—the flirting. Goosebumps appeared on my arms. They say that goosebumps evolved because our ancestors erected their body hair to scare predators away. That just about sums up how I felt as Orion Oslen.
Even my lizard brain knew that his intentions weren't the least bit magnanimous.
This isn't going to work out, Mr. Blue-Eyed Lothario. Not the way either you or my father thinks it will.
Once again, I struggled to hold back my disgust as we entered the backseat of his town car together. It wasn't simply the romantic implications of us spending time together that revolted me. It was the notion of owing him a favor.
My father always said it was better to restrain one's appetite than acquire debts. What will Orion want in payment for these small favors he was performing for me?
I had a feeling it was more than I was prepared to pay.