MT: Not sure what yr prob is. He always sleeps fine @ my house.
AL: Because you let him go to bed whenever! His schedule is all messed up when he comes back. You have no idea—I have to deal with him all week.
MT: U wanted it this way. He should be at Gordonstoun.
AL: Boarding school in Scotland is not the answer. Not going to argue with you over this again. I just don’t understand why you bother having him when you don’t even want to spend time with him.
MT: To get him away from your corrupting influence.
Astrid sighed in frustration. She knew Michael was trying to bait her again, and she wasn’t going to fall for it. He was just getting back at her for how he perceived he had been treated at her grandmother’s funeral. She was about to switch off her phone when his next message popped up:
MT: Anyway, this will be over soon. I’m getting full custody of Cassian.
AL: You’re delusional.
MT: No, yur a lying cheating whore.
Astrid’s text message app froze for a moment, and then a high-resolution file came through. It was a photograph of Astrid and Charlie lounging together on pillows on the deck of a vintage Chinese junk that had been cruising the South China Sea. Astrid’s head was resting intimately against Charlie’s chest. Astrid recognized the photo from five years ago, when Charlie had attempted to cheer her up after Michael had dropped a bombshell on her in Hong Kong, begging to end their marriage. Michael’s follow-up text read:
MT: No judge is going to give u custody now.
AL: This photo proves nothing. Charlie was only consoling me after you left.
MT: “Consoling.” Did this include blow jobs?
AL: Why do you need to be so crass? You know I never cheated on you. You were the one who fake cheated, wanting out of our marriage at that time, and I was so destroyed. Charlie was just being a good friend.
MT: Friends with benefits. I got tons more pics. U have no idea.
AL: I don’t know what else you could possibly have. I’ve done nothing wrong.
MT: Yes, jury will really believe you. Wait till they see what I’ve got.
Astrid stared at his words, her face going hot with fury. She immediately speed-dialed him, but it went straight to voice mail. Hi, you’ve reached Michael Teo. This is my private line, so you must be damn important. Leave a message and I will get back to you if it’s important enough. Heh Heh Heh.
At the sound of the beep, Astrid spoke: “Michael, this isn’t funny anymore. I don’t know what sort of advice that lawyer of yours has been giving you, but these tactics are only going to end up harming you. Please just stop, and let’s try to come to a reasonable agreement. For the good of Cassian.”
Astrid hung up the phone, placed it on the side table, and turned off her bedside lamp. She lay in bed in the darkness, furious at Michael, but even more furious with herself because she knew she’d played right into his trap. She should never have texted him in the first place. Michael just wanted to agitate her. That’s all he wanted to do in every interaction they had these days. Her phone beeped again, and she knew it would be another incendiary text from Michael. She was determined not to look at any more of his texts. She needed to get some sleep, because tomorrow was going to be another big day—the reading of her grandmother’s will was taking place at 10:00 a.m. sharp.
Her phone buzzed again with another text message notice. And then another. Astrid turned to face away from her phone, clenching her eyes closed. Suddenly it occurred to her…What if it wasn’t Michael? What if it was Charlie, who had just returned to Hong Kong? Sighing, she reached for her phone and turned it on.
There were three text messages, and surprise, surprise, they were from Michael. The first one simply read:
For the good of Cassian.
The second t
ext was a file that was still in the process of downloading, but the third text read:
$5 billion or you lose him forever.
A few seconds later, the download was complete, and Astrid tapped on the icon before she could stop herself. It was a thirty-second video clip, a grainy, night-vision shot, and as Astrid squinted at the glowing screen in the dark, she could make out the figure of a naked girl with her back to the camera, straddling a man lying on a bed. The couple was unmistakably in the midst of sex, and as the woman’s body thrust and swayed, her head shifted for a moment, and Astrid could clearly recognize that the man on the bed was Charlie. It was only at that moment that she realized, in absolute horror, that she was the girl in the video.
Astrid gasped out loud and dropped her phone as if it had burned her hands. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!” she whispered to herself before picking up the phone and attempting to dial Charlie’s number. Her trembling fingers somehow couldn’t swipe to the correct menu on her phone, and instead made the video play again. Finally, she got to her contacts screen and hit CW1, his private mobile.
After several rings, Charlie picked up. “Baby, I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh God Charlie—”