He remembers the staff house is backed onto the hills of the region, and what he’s hearing is the hill behind him collapsing as the earth slides down around them, and on top of them, too. The bottle of brandy he’d drunk from earlier crashes to the ground, not far away from his face. He curls his body tightly into himself, tries to protect his head and his face.

Somewhere above his head a woman screams. Dao thinks it’s the little maid, Riya. He can’t see much, but it doesn’t seem like she’s in here with him. So she’s upstairs, then. Or what passes for upstairs now that the whole structure has crumbled.

The bed breaks, and Dao is pinned there underneath, gasping for breath.

It feels like the end of times. The end of him.

It feels like—

24

I can’t believe what I’m feeling. I think it’s attraction, but that can’t be right. I’m trying not to like Peter Vidal, but it’s hard because, up close, there’s something undeniably magnetic about him.

We’re sitting at Café Villaggio, just steps from the harbor, and he’s stirring honey into his tea. He gives it a sip, braces, and then drinks again. Lam is late, and Vidal is unsure of why I’m here. He’s too polite to ask me to leave outright, but I can tell he wants me to. He’s dressed in a pair of dark trousers and a black turtleneck sweater that looks so soft I wonder what it would feel like on my skin. Maybe it’s all the talk of getting into bed with people that has me thinking like this, or maybe I just want to be warm and cozy, too.

“How long will he be?” Vidal asks, in dulcet tones. Which I also find pleasing. I’m having a hard time reconciling the man in front of me with the man Joe Nolan had pointed out on the yacht. Though it must be him, and our meeting in this café in Coal Harbour is a nod to his tastes, because of its proximity to his pretty boat.

“Who knows?” I say. “You know how unpredictable billionaires can be.”

This isn’t the conversation starter I’d hoped it to be. Vidal frowns into his sweet tea. He takes a delicate sip.

The door opens, and Lam comes striding in, in a different three-piece suit today. After shaking hands with Vidal, he throws his overcoat over a chair and tells me he’d like an Americano. I stare at him until he goes to get it himself. When he returns, I can see Vidal hiding a smile. I may be growing on him. At least that’s what I think until Vidal says to Lam, “Your associate here refused to tell me who she is. She says you’ll explain everything.”