I started to cross the large chamber, where a black T-shirt (designer) was draped over one of the brocade chairs, when she held up a hand, then stepped closer and pointed at my bare chest. I felt my face flush—but she wasn’t looking at my face.

“Is that real?”

It was the tattoo I had gotten in memory of my mom—a single calla lily—on the left side of my chest, above my heart. It had been her favorite flower. She’d take me to the calla lily festival every spring on Yangmingshan, to admire the sea of white flowers surrounded by dark green leaves. That tradition, and the farmlands harvesting the blooms, were lost after the earthquake and fires on the mountain.

Something else that could not stay.

I had gotten the tattoo a few months ago, in a rare drunken haze, after finding out that Daiyu would be my target to befriend. Arun had accompanied me to the best tattoo parlor in Taipei at two a.m. and was drunk enough himself that he never protested my subject of choice. He hadn’t even asked why.

I touched the tattoo with my fingers, still tinged in white powder from the climb. “It’s real.” This tattoo, at least, would live as long as I did. However long that might be. “It’s . . . my mom’s favorite flower.”

She nodded, then met my eyes. My blush had already faded, thank gods.

“I don’t know anyone with a real tattoo,” she said. “None of my friends would commit to an alteration that was permanent.”

“Well, I was drunk.” I crossed the room and grabbed the shirt, pulling it over my head before running a hand through my short hair. I had paid for the tattoo with my cut from the kidnapping. Her kidnapping. “It’s my first and probably my last.”

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. “I think it’s sweet how close you are to your mom. Is she in Taiwan?”

I went to the kitchen just as the espresso machine beeped three times. The mocha was waiting inside the glass vestibule, with shaved chocolate on top of the whipped cream. The rich aroma of espresso and chocolate filled my senses for a moment as I drew the large ceramic cup out. “No. She’s still back in California. It’s only me here in Taipei.” The lie came easily enough. I hated lying.

And all of this was a lie.

“I don’t see my mom often—she lives in Hong Kong,” Daiyu said. “She hates my father.”

“That’s too bad,” I said from the kitchen. “Do you miss her?”

“I miss the idea of her. We’re not close.”

But her mother had been the one to accept Daiyu’s call during the kidnapping while her father was unreachable. How close was she to her dad, then?