Charlie had proved his father wrong when it came to running the business, but what he’d said was true. He hated being dishonest, and his stomach would feel like it was being put through a vise whenever he was forced to tell an untruth. He knew he was still feeling sick because of the lies he had told Astrid.

“Finish your drink—it’s expensive ginseng I gave you, you know!” the woman admonished.

“Yes, auntie.”

After braving the rest of his medicinal drink and paying the stall owner, Charlie returned to his office and sat down to compose an e-mail:

From: Charlie Wu<[email protected]>

Date: June 10, 2013 at 5:26 PM

To: Astrid Teo<[email protected]>

Subject: confession

Hi Astrid,

I don’t quite know how to begin this, so I’ll just go for it. I haven’t been completely honest with you. Isabel is furious at me. She called me up in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder, and then she had our daughters taken over to her parents’ house. She refused to listen to my explanations, and now she won’t return my calls. Grégoire told me that she’s conveniently sailed away on Pascal Pang’s yacht this morning. I think they are heading for Sicily.

The truth is, Isabel and I were not able to patch things up even after that Maldives second honeymoon. Things between us have been worse than ever, and I’ve been back at my Mid-Levels flat for a while now. The only agreement we’ve had is that I not do anything that would publicly embarrass her, anything that would give her a loss of face. Unfortunately, that happened last night. Her image of being happily married was shattered in front of Pascal Pang, and you know whatever he knows the rest of Hong Kong will soon know. I’m not sure I even care anymore.

You have to understand something, Astrid. My marriage to Isabel was a mistake even before it began. Everyone thinks I was sent to Hong Kong to take over my family’s operations there, but the truth is I fled. I was devastated after our breakup and depressed for months. I was a complete failure at business, and my father ended up shoving me into a role in our R&D department just to get me out of the way, but that’s where I began to thrive. I got lost in developing new product lines rather than just being a copycat contractor that steals from the best Silicon Valley tech firms. As a result, our business grew exponentially. I have you to thank for that.

I met Isabel at a party on a yacht that was thrown, coincidentally, by your cousin Eddie Cheng and his best friend Leo Ming. Eddie was one of the few people who actually took pity on me. I have to confess—I initially stayed far away from Isabel because she reminded me of you. Like you, she was constantly being underestimated because of her looks. Turns out she was an intensely smart lawyer, University of Birmingham Law School grad, and fast becoming one of Hong Kong’s top litigators. And she had a sense of style and breeding that set her apart. Her father was Jeremy Lai, the distinguished barrister. The Lais are an old-money family from Kowloon Tong, and her mother is from a rich Indonesian Chinese family. I did not want to fall for another unattainable princess who was chained to the rules of her family.