“You need to talk to your brother,” she said.
“Does this have anything to do with Esme—M?? Did you ever find her?”
Cô Nga nodded quickly even though Quân couldn’t see. “Yeah, yeah, she’s here.”
“Oh good, that’s great. I’ll—
” Background voices interrupted him, and there were muffled sounds like he’d covered the phone to speak to someone on his end. “Yeah, I have to go. I’ll call him tonight.”
“Not tonight. Now,” Cô Nga insisted. “And if he doesn’t answer, you need to go see him.”
“I can’t. I’m in New York pitching for the next stage of fund—”
Cô Nga spoke over her son. “Come home. This is important. He’s your only brother and needs your help.”
Quân released a slow breath. “Sometimes, he doesn’t want my help.”
“You have to try. He’s your responsibility. Be better than that stinky father of yours.”
There was a long silence on the phone before Quân said, “I’ll take care of it. I really have to go. Bye, Mom.”
The line went dead, and Cô Nga muttered to herself and stuck her phone back in her apron.
Esme grabbed a handful of sugar packets but hesitated before putting them in the box. “I don’t know what Anh Quân can do, Cô Nga. He sounds busy.” This drama between Esme and Kh?i didn’t seem like it should take priority.
Cô Nga waved Esme’s comment away. “You have to be tough with Quân like this. I know, I’m his mom. But he gets things done when I push him. You’ll see.”
“He seems to do well all by himself. He’s a CEO, isn’t he? That’s an accomplishment.” Esme couldn’t imagine doing anything like that.
“It sounds good, but it’s a small company. Nothing like Kh?i,” Cô Nga said in a dismissive manner.
Again, Esme got the impression they weren’t talking about the same Kh?i. Why did people make it sound like he was mega-successful when he wasn’t? She shook her head and got to work. It didn’t matter.
She had to mind her own business. There were three weeks left before she had to leave, and the clock was ticking.
In this country of empowered people, justice, and fairness, opportunities were there for everyone. Marriage and birth couldn’t be the only ways to belong here. She didn’t believe that.
There had to be something she could do to earn her place here, some way to prove herself. She had to keep looking.
* * *
• • •
Khai sat down in front of his desk in his office, and he honestly didn’t remember driving here, walking into the building, or going up the elevator. He’d done it all on autopilot.
He’d been too busy adjusting to the knowledge that Esme was safe and unharmed. The previous day had passed in a white blur. Even though logic had told him she was most likely fine, horrible scenarios had possessed his mind nonstop, and he’d been a wreck, not sleeping, not eating, watching the news in case she showed up on a gurney in an ambulance.
Now that he knew she was okay, he finally relaxed and let himself contemplate the fact that she was not only refusing to marry him, but moving out early, too. Back there in the restaurant, he’d made the best case for staying with him that he could. And she’d turned him down—as she should have.
Just look at him now. He’d thought he’d go through a terrible withdrawal when Esme left him for good, but he was shocking himself with how fine he was. Everything was perfectly, perversely, anticlimactically fine. He wasn’t sad or mad or depressed. He felt . . . nothing.
As he started his computer and watched the screen come to life, mundane work tasks lined up neatly in his head—emails, projects, important shit. He was like a fucking machine. Back online, ready for production.
When he opened his first email, however, it took him three tries before his cold fingers could type “Hi, Sidd” correctly (that would be Sidd Mathur, the M from DMSoft), and even then, he wasn’t sure he’d spelled “Hi” right. Was it just an H and an i? That didn’t seem like enough letters for such an important concept.
Whatever, he would plow through. People said he was smart. All he had to do was focus. He was good at focusing, too good sometimes. When he finally finished the email, he checked the clock and was floored to see he’d spent two entire hours on one short paragraph of text.
He sighed and lifted a hand toward his forehead to massage it—and accidentally poked himself in the eye. Shit. Now that he was paying attention, his head throbbed, his face hurt, and his limbs felt off, like they’d been taken from someone else and glued onto him. He was probably getting sick. It had been a while since the last time, so he was due something awful. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had a flu shot in years.