I don’t bother answering JD because getting back at an ex wasn’t even something I would have considered doing as a teenager, let alone as a twenty-eight-year-old adult man.

“Just trying something different,” I muse aloud. “I invited her to your sister’s wedding.”

JD practically drops the barbell, which weighs over a hundred with the weights. “You what?”

“Invited her to Phuket.”

JD stares at me again, then shakes his head. “I hope she doesn’t wear that ugly-ass sweater of hers to the wedding.”

That “ugly-ass sweater” is what got me off on the wrong foot with Bridget. I thought she was working with Ron to pull a joke on me. After approaching her with that assumption, I wound up with Coke splashed in my face.

“I’ll take care of that,” I respond after I set the dumbbells back on the rack and move over to the bench press.

“I guess Amy will be happy her friend gets to tag along.”

Lying down, I settle myself below the barbell. “Things getting serious between you two?”

“Have you ever known me to be serious? I mean, Amy’s as cute as they come, and she’s got this tight little pussy, so she’ll last a month or two longer than others. I don’t have to contend with a mom like yours.”

JD’s mom ran out on his father when JD was five. He grew up close to his father, who’s now retired from the Jing San Triad and lives in Sydney.

“My mom’s more concerned with getting me out of triad business than seeing me settled,” I say before I lift the barbell off the stand and lower it to my chest.

“That’s why I’m glad I don’t have a mom. Has anyone ever talked to her? I mean, I get that she doesn’t want you to end up in jail like your dad, but the chances of that happening are slim. We took care of Stan. We sent a potent message.”

Stanley had turned state’s witness after getting arrested with several hundred kilos of cocaine on him, leading to my dad’s conviction for counterfeiting. Though Stanley’s body remains missing, photos of him naked—missing his fingers, toes, and penis—have circulated among triad members. His defense attorney has also gone missing.

“She doesn’t want me dead,” I say after doing a set of twelve and setting the barbell back.

“That was a fluke. Being knifed by a racist inmate.”

That’s what I believe, though my mother wonders if my father had been killed so that he doesn’t pull a Stanley Locke. I tend to think if that was the case, my father would have been killed a lot sooner, not two years into his sentence.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” JD continued. “You know, Hao Young really would like to see you follow in your dad’s footsteps in counterfeiting.”

I start on my next set. Lee Hao Young, a high-ranking Operations Officer in the Jing San, had approached me already.

“I don’t think I’ll take him up on that.”