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1
Someday, I would see the Big Buddha in person. I lived in Hong Kong, for goodness’ sake. I should visit the parks, take hikes, look at mountains. I should learn the names of the mountains outside that I saw every day.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window.Another bad date with a completely uninteresting guy. Am I even surprised?After several bad dates lately, I lost track of how many men bored me. It sucked, to say the least, but I wondered if I’d created the problem. Was I so completely uninteresting that I caused my dates to become dull by association?
Maybe I should buy a bike. I swallowed and forced my eyes open.My life is interesting. It just happened to be entirely digital, taking place online as I made sense of numbers to increase the investments of already very wealthy people. They paid me a fortune, and all of it to do the job I dreamed of as a kid…
From the moment the paparazzi first snapped a photograph of my sisters and me—rich, unique, bright red-haired triplets made for a striking cover shot, after all—my goal became a life of privacy: alone and left to my own devices.
It had all worked out to plan, so after throwing away all other dreams and desires and pursuits, I managed to earn everything I dreamed of achieving. I leaned against the perfect window of my ideal apartment in Pokfulam—all six-hundred-fifty-seven square feet of it—and felt utterly miserable and lonely.
I sucked in a long, steadying breath, knowing where my thoughts would go next. Inevitably, I’d think ofhim.
I would remember his dark, beautiful eyes, so hopeful as I said the words designed to hurt him. I watched the hope retreat behind his usual mask—the one he used to hide from the world. Everyone always said how no one knew what Michael thought, what he felt. Some even called him robotic, he so hid his expression, but I could always tell.At least I could, until that brief moment, when I blew the whole thing to kingdom come.
My phone dinged with a notification. Hope, my sister, texted to say she was sick and home alone with her twin babies. Her husband wouldn’t be home for another day, so she didn’t know what to do. If she told him, he would rush home, so she wanted to avoid that. It had been forever since she’d slept. I stared at the screen, rereading the words again. A decent sister would be home helping her or my other sister, Layla, who lived in Washington state with her two kids, not that either of my sisters would point it out.
They knew me better than Michael had, in my opinion, since they found me heartless, unhelpful, and a borderline narcissist who cared little for anyone other than herself. Then again, we’d been together since before we were born—triplets.Could they tell how fucked up I was in utero?
The door to my apartment opened and I jolted.What the fuck? Who the fuck is there?It took me a moment to believe my eyes. My brother, Justin, stared at me from the foyer. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since the debacle at Layla’s first wedding yearsago, and I almost didn’t recognize him. If not for the Radford red hair, I might not have known him at all.
I remembered a very handsome Justin. Put together like the heir to the kingdom my father intended him to become, Justin had been born stylish and only grew more so as he aged.
The man in my foyer looked like a person suffering from problematic drug use. I eyed him carefully as he stared back, and I wondered what he was doing in my home or how he’d found me. He lifted an unmanicured hand to wipe at his nose and I noticed his red- rimmed eyes set deep in his gaunt face…and the track marks on his arm.
Since he still didn’t say anything, I spoke. “Justin.” Saying his name wasn’t useful, but it was all I could get out past the lump of emotion clogging my throat. The longer I stared at my big brother—the man who, as a one-year-old, brought us bottles for twenty-four hours after our mother killed herself—so unkempt and unwell, I felt seared inside. My flesh burned, crawling as if my organs couldn’t take the heat of knowing what had happened to him. Of realizing, in that moment, that the boy who used to sneak chocolates to me when the nannies weren’t looking was going to die…
And soon.
“What happened to you?” My voice sounded so low and scratchy, I hardly recognized it.
In response, he lifted a gun and pointed it at me.
I’d never trained to defend or protect myself, which seemed dumb or at least short-sighted in retrospect. Although bodyguards had protected me from a very young age, I’d recently faced an actual threat from the Russian mob. We might have supposedly removed the threat of the mob, but I should have guessed a moment could happen without bodyguards there to protect me.
But mybrotherpointed the gun at me. I swallowed. It almost seemed ridiculous, except it wasn’t. It was real and happening—my brother, clearly not in his right mind, threatened my life yet still hadn’t spoken a word.
My brain rushed through those thoughts the same way it moved through understanding numbers—precisely.
One step at a time.
Until I reached an inevitable conclusion.
My brother intended to kill me.
I am royally fucked.
I held up my hands like people did in movies. “Justin, whatever is wrong, I’m sure we can work it out. Just…put down the gun. I’m glad to see you,” I added, not sure if it would make a difference. His expression remained unchanged, so apparently not.
I swallowed, trying to push down my fear and pretend confidence I didn’t have. “Talk to me. What do you need? Money? I’ll give you all the cash I have and my credit card. I won’t cancel it. You can just have it.”
He’d robbed Layla once, but I wouldn’t even make him work hard for it. He could just have anything he wanted. Family was the most important thing to me.
“You have to come with me, Bridget.” He blinked rapidly as he spoke and his hand shook. I really hoped he didn’t accidentally pull the trigger with some spasm of his finger. “Youhaveto.”
“Come with youwhere? Put that down and we’ll talk. I’ll make us some tea.” I had tea. A lot of it. Almost as much tea as wine.“I have stronger things, too,” I said, offering an addict alcohol, but whatever it took in the moment…
He shook his head. “He said you would try to distract me, but I can’t—and I meancan’t—fail. We’re going to go right now!”
