Phantom: Her Ruthless Villain (Ruthless Triad 5)

“Wait, are you with Olivia?”

“No, Syun zai, I am not with Olivia. She is with me…” his grandma answered.

“What?!” he yelled out when she told him where they were.

21

OLIVIA

When the car pulled up to a large house in Forest Hills Garden, Queens, I became even more confused.

Phantom’s grandmother simply climbed out, leaving me to pay the cab driver.

But when I went for my wallet phone, the cabbie said, “No problem, Miss. They always pay the fare and tip beforehand.”

His refusal to take my money added a new question to the pile.

Who was “they?”

When I got out of the cab, my stomach knotted with my intuitive answer to that question.

“They” was Phantom’s family. The one he hadn’t talked about or wanted me to meet.

Dread turned my feet into blocks of concrete. But the cab pulled away as soon as I got out. And Phantom’s grandma had already made it up the front steps. She pressed the doorbell and flapped her hand at me to come too.

I joined her at the top of the stairs because Black Ugandan Southerner—my DNA and upbringing made it pretty much impossible for me not to obey the orders of little old women.

But perhaps too late, I remembered what I had suspected during her interview with the interpreter—that this particular old lady might need a Psych referral.

Skylar’s words of warning about why Phantom hadn’t introduced me to his family echoed in my head as we waited on the front stoop.

And that echo grew even louder when a dainty Asian woman answered the door.

She smiled broadly at Phantom’s grandmother and seemed to have a happy greeting prepped and ready to go. But then she froze when she saw me standing there, and the welcoming smile fell right off her face.

“Hello,” I said into her shocked silence.

I made a mental note to thank my mother for all of the etiquette classes she made me take before my debut. Gracefully falling back on the rules of basic good manners always came in handy in awkward moments like these.

Hand Offering. Greeting. Introduction. Polite Declaration.

I extended my hand and said, “Hello, we haven’t met. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she said before I could get my name out or lie about how lovely it was to meet her.

Her expression was grave, and she left my hand hanging in the air as she turned to call over her shoulder, “Grandma is here! And Olivia is with her.”

Her announcement brought several pairs of feet running, and three tall guys, just as willowy and thin as her, appeared behind her in the doorway—as if she’d called in reinforcements to exterminate the giant rat she’d found on her stoop.

A guy dressed in khakis and a dark green sweater also approached the door, but a lot slower than the three younger men. He wore glasses, like one of the men standing behind the woman who’d opened the door. But he stood taller and much broader. Another contrast—he had a hard slab face that appeared naturally biased toward frowning.

He was clearly Phantom’s father.

Toward the end of the long hallway, I spotted a couple of women peeking out. One had her hand wrapped around a toddler’s. They hung back as if they were too afraid of the giant rat to come forward.

Indeed, they were all staring at me wide-eyed, but in the end, Phantom’s father moved his wife aside so he could step forward.

“Olivia Glendaver, you have come here to my house?” he asked, his voice harsh and thickly accented.

All my Southern comportment abandoned me, and my answer came out a shaky, “Yes.”

He stared at me for two terrible beats.

Then he grabbed my hand in both of his and yelled out, “You are here! You are here! I never thought I’d get the chance to meet you!”

A few minutes later, I found myself in a formal dining room surrounded by his parents, three brothers, and two sisters-in-law for what turned out to be a Lunar New Year’s Eve potluck. His mother insisted I take her seat at the end of the table closest to the arched entrance, and she encouraged me to eat all the Japanese and Chinese food being passed around on plates.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for Phantom’s family.

First of all, everybody, save for Phantom’s father and his nieces and nephews who’d been regulated to the kitchen to eat, was a doctor. His oldest brother, Jake, a cardiologist turned Chief of Staff at Chelsea Sinai, peppered me with questions about all the insurance and paperwork involved working at and running an accessible clinic.

The middle brother, Ryan, was a Park Avenue plastic surgeon and introduced himself as Phantom’s twin even though they looked nothing alike. Clearly, Ryan had inherited both his small mother’s dainty good looks and also her stature. He was the shortest of the brothers by far.