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Should we be doing the same?
2
January 22, 6:02P.M.HKT
Hong Kong, China
Commander Grayson Pierce knelt across from his two-year-old son and waited for Jack to make the selection that would determine his destiny.
For the moment, the boy’s focus remained on the sulfur-crested cockatoo dancing atop a perch near a balcony door. Outside, the sun sat low on the horizon, illuminating a view that swept across the forested heights of Victoria Peak and down to the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and its harbor.
An exasperated sigh drew back Gray’s attention.
“C’mon, Jack, pick one,” Harriet urged the boy. Clearly the seven-year-old girl’s patience had reached its limit. She knew there was a four-tiered birthday cake in the shape of Snoopy sitting in the kitchen.
“Don’t rush him,” Penny scolded her younger sister, portraying the tolerant older sibling, older by an entire year.
The two girls were the daughters of Gray’s best friends and fellow Sigma colleagues, Monk Kokkalis and Kathryn Bryant, who were presently in the kitchen readying the small party that would follow this ceremony. Gray heard the easy comfort of their conversation, interspersed with quiet laughter and the occasional louder snort of amusement from Monk, which was a fair approximation of a goose’s mating call.
He and the others had come to China from D.C. late last week to celebrate Jack’s second birthday with the boy’s maternal grandmother.Guan-yin circled those sitting on the floor around Jack. Her name meantgoddess of mercy. Though as the dragonhead of theDuàn zhiTriad, such a moniker was likely more ironic than apt. Gray knew that if he and Seichan hadnotcome to Hong Kong with Jack, nomercywould’ve been afforded them. Guan-yin had been furious enough that she had missed Jack’s pivotal first birthday.
Clearly, the boy’s grandmother intended to make up for it.
The slender woman wore a hooded robe, revealing a long cascade of black hair with a single streak of gray along one edge of her face, the same edge that bore the curve of a deep purplish scar. It curled from her cheek to across her left brow, sparing her eye. She hid the disfigurement in public—not out of shame, but because it was a well-known marker of who she was. Her status, as both dragonhead and the Boss of Macau, invited both reverence and enmity. But in her villa atop the Peak, she could let her guard down. Not that she needed any protection—the grounds were heavily patrolled by the elite of her triad. Plus, even in her early sixties, she was wickedly skilled with the knives and daggers hidden in her robes.
Guan-yin settled another stack of money-stuffed red envelopes atop those already resting on a side table. Scores of wrapped presents also crowded there. Clearly, there were few in her organization who were not going to honor her grandson with a gift.
Protecting that pile was Guan-yin’s ever-present shadow. Zhuang stood half a head taller than Gray. The older man’s snow-white hair was pulled back and knotted into a long tail. His face was lineless and smooth. His every move had a silky power to it.
As one envelope slipped from the pile, the man deftly caught it without glancing aside and returned it to its proper place. Across his back, he carried the scabbard of an eighteenth-century Chinese Dao saber. The man never mentioned its history, beyond the weapon’s age. But in the past Gray had watched Zhuang wield the blade and knew the centuries had not dulled its edge.
Guan-yin silently thanked Zhuang for rescuing the envelope with the lightest brush of her fingers across his upper arm. From the way Zhuang’s eyes lingered on her as she crossed back to the gathering,Gray suspected the man served more of a role than just a personal bodyguard.
Gray envied the quietness of their affection for each other.
He glanced to Jack’s left, where the boy’s mother knelt.
I wish the same could be said for our relationship.
Seichan looked seemingly calm, awaiting their son’s decision. She was dressed in black slacks and a matching jacket, embroidered with flowers only a few shades lighter. Her hair fell in a smooth ebony plait past her shoulders. Despite her patient expression, Gray knew her well enough to recognize the tense pinch to her emerald eyes, the slight rise in her shoulders as muscles clenched across her back.
She was a tightly wound spring.
And not about Jack’s future destiny.
Gray still felt the heavy weight in his sportscoat’s breast pocket.
What was I thinking?
Guan-yin leaned down to kiss Seichan on the cheek. “Chúc m?ng sinh nh?t, Con gái,” she said in Vietnamese, her native tongue, wishing her daughter a happy birthday.
Seichan reached to her mother’s hand and wished her the same.“Chúc m?ng sinh nh?t, M?.”
Smoothly, Guan-yin knelt on Jack’s other side, resting a palm atop his head, drawing his attention back from the cockatoo. “Chúc m?ng sinh nh?t, Jack.”
Seichan had already explained the Vietnamese tradition for celebrating birthdays. The actual date of one’s birth was seldom acknowledged. All birthdays were celebrated, no matter the true date, onTet Nguyen Ðan, the Vietnamese New Year. The holiday fell on the first new moon after January 20. The same as the Chinese New Year, the eve of which had been celebrated wildly and raucously last night.
Jack’s true birthdate was in another two days, but Guan-yin had insisted that her grandson be celebrated in the ways of Vietnamese, Chinese, and American traditions. There were still candles to be blown out atop the Snoopy cake—but not until the Chinese ceremony ofZhua Zhouwas performed.
