“Did you teach those bullies a lesson?”
“My sifu taught me not to care what they said.”
“You never fought back?” What was the point in going all the way to black belt, then?
“I threw a boy to the ground once, when he tried to start something. His friends were right there, planning to help. Word got around and they stopped bothering me. Then I sold my app and everyone wanted to be my friend.”
“You were twelve? It was a game, wasn’t it?”
“This is why I never bother talking about myself. Anything of note has already been documented online.” He cleaned the meat off the delicate bone in one bite and set it aside.
“I don’t know much more than that, except that you won a national competition for young entrepreneurs and caught the attention of Silicon Valley. They paid you a million dollars?”
“Which caught my grandmother’s attention. She came to warn me not to let my father take control of my money. He cautioned me against trusting her. They had a heated discussion and I didn’t hear from her again until she came to his funeral.”
“She didn’t try to help you? Did she realize your father had a drinking problem?”
“Given how furious she was with my mother, I believe she probably did. I didn’t want her help.”
“Why not?”
“My own version of Stockholm syndrome, I suppose. The devil you know and all that.”
She absorbed that, thinking he was onto something. She had rationalized staying with Mae rather than taking the hard road of striking out on her own. Before that, she had tried relentlessly and earnestly to earn her mother’s regard.
“Did you keep control of your money?” she asked.
“More or less. I hired a certified advisor and talked my father into paying off our mortgage, which had been my grandmother’s advice.”
“Real estate has been very good to her.”
“And me. I invested heavily in property as I sold more apps. It came easily to me. Felt like a license to print money. When I was fifteen, I hired a private tutor so I had more flexibility with my education. I graduated high school early and completed a business degree before I turned twenty. I predicted the financial crash and was one of those select few who came up roses.”
“And your father...?”
“Drank himself to kidney failure, but lived comfortably until then. I supported him, put him in rehab several times. It never took.” He used a jagged corner of shell to stab a pea and ate it with a crunch.
“Did he have other family? Do you have cousins?”
“A handful of people who didn’t want to know him, but who crawl out of the woodwork periodically to ask me for start-up capital. Some ventures succeed, others have gone bust. It’s another reason I’ve kept my distance from my grandmother. It’s hard to say no to family, but it can be foolish to say yes. Do you have family besides your mother and father? Is he still alive?”
“I haven’t seen anything online about him since he went to prison for corruption a couple of years after I left for Singapore. I guess his sons are my half brothers, but I’ve never met them or tried to reach out.” She wrinkled her nose in dismay. “I presume they’re much like him. My mother’s family was very poor. She never spoke of them. I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for them and have no reason to.”
It was odd to talk about herself. No one had asked about her life or seemed interested in it for years.
Their plates were cleared and bowls of warm, scented water brought to rinse their hands.
“We should dance,” Gabriel said when she looked toward the drift of piano notes from the other side of the restaurant.
She shook her head. “I took ballet years ago, but only to help with grace and posture. I’ve never danced for real.”
“With a man, you mean? That’s a good reason to do it, then, isn’t it?” He rose and held out his hand. “Leave that here,” he said of the clutch she would have carried with her. “It’s perfectly safe.”
She nervously left it on the chair as she rose and placed her hand in his. An electric current seemed to run from the weave of their fingers up her arm to start an engine purring in her chest.