Chapter 26 Ares
Ares
The receptionist doesn’t even try to welcome him when he limps into the office.
Fair enough. He knows he doesn’t belong here. He’s too young, his hair is too long, his skin too tattooed and bruised. Meanwhile,
the receptionist looks like a walking résumé, with her no-nonsense bun and Yale-issued tote bag and the shiny company badge
pinned to the front of her wrinkle-free button-down shirt.
“Could I please see Long Ge?” he asks.
She makes a sound that he’s pretty sure is a scoff, though she’s professional enough to keep it quiet. “Do you have an appointment
with him?”
“Yes, I do, actually,” he says.
She regards him with open skepticism. He doesn’t blame her. He can barely believe he’s here. All his searching, all the fighting,
just for a chance to track Long Ge down—only to be invited over by the man himself.
“He’s in a meeting right now, but I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.” The receptionist nods to the seats by the water cooler. “Feel free to wait there.”
He does, though the seats are horribly uncomfortable, shaped in a way that sends a judder of pain through the roughly stitched
cut in his side. Not like he’d be able to get comfortable anyway.
Despite being owned by the same person, everything about this place is the opposite of the Cave—neat, orderly, sterile. Safe.
His eyes pass over the complimentary tea bags offered at the entrance, the two pots of mandarin trees with shiny red packets
hanging from the branches for good fortune. One of the office walls is made entirely of glass, so that when the sun sweeps
in through the windows, it floods the entire level, burnishing all the glass panes and glossy posters promoting this year’s
annual gala dinner.
It’s exactly what he expected after scrolling through images on the company website at three in the morning to verify if the
company truly did belong to Long Ge. He hadn’t stopped until he’d come across Long Ge’s photo in the About Us section.
He waits a whole hour before the man appears. A faint rustling accompanies his movements as he walks through the headquarters—people
standing up behind their desks, stopping halfway in the corridor, setting down their papers.
“Morning, sir.”
“Would you like some tea, sir?”
“Sir, we just need you to sign. . . .”
Long Ge stops before Ares. He looks like a harmless, ordinary middle-aged man, except for that scar on his cheek, and the sharp, inquisitive look in his eyes, behind the thick glasses. “Oh, good. You’re here.” He extends a hand. “I’m Long Ge. Nice to meet you in person.”
Ares stands up, feeling wrong-footed, somehow. Cautiously, he takes the man’s hand and shakes it once. It’s all too civil
and normal, these polite greetings and handshakes. But what can he do? Lunge across the space, scream at him, “Give me my
brother back!” while around them white-collar workers fill out tax forms and make phone calls about preparations for the gala? “Yes, hi,
I know,” he says, trying to match the man’s businesslike tone.
Long Ge smiles. “Follow me.”
He leads Ares into his office, an impressive space that leaves no room to question Long Ge’s position in the company. The
city unfolds beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the skyscrapers peeking out over the autumn-brushed trees. Ares can see
the CCTV tower from here, the seemingly gravity-defying glass structure shaped like a giant pair of pants, all the cars racing
each other around the ring roads. Beijing moves at such a restless, breathless pace, forever marching doggedly on and on into
the future; you either try to keep up with it, or you get left behind.
“I’ve heard a few interesting things about you,” Long Ge says, sitting back in the white swivel chair. He gestures for Ares
to do the same across the desk. Ares notices his own chair is much shorter. Either the person who’d sat here before him has
uncommonly short legs, or it’s a power thing.
“You have?” Ares says.
“Caused a bit of a commotion at the Cave the other week, didn’t you? But a good fighter, Sangui tells me. Many of my men were betting on you to go all the way.”
Disoriented, Ares finds himself unable to muster a response. Like his brain has forgotten the conventions of the English language,
grammar abandoned, logic gone. “I . . . It wasn’t—”
“But that’s not even the most interesting part about you,” Long Ge says. He leans back, still smiling wide, his eyes twinkling.
“Why don’t you tell me more about your friend Chanel Cao?”
His chest seizes. A sick sensation, spreading fast through him. “Chanel Cao?”
“You’re very close, aren’t you?” Long Ge says.
He doesn’t know where Long Ge is going with this, but he thinks back to Chanel’s expression last night by the lake, those
large, frightened eyes in her lovely face. Frightened, because of Long Ge.
“No, not very,” he tells Long Ge, feeling a desperate, almost dangerous urge to protect her, the same feeling that had overtaken
him when he saw her cornered at the Cave. “She’s just a classmate.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Long Ge says pleasantly, picking up a ballpoint pen on his desk, pressing it twice with a quick, light
clicking noise, then setting it down again. “Would ‘just a classmate’ accompany you to get that new tattoo? You were acting
like quite the couple, Zaizai told me. And I saw a photo of you on Chanel’s phone with my very own eyes.”
The tattoo parlor. Ares’s breathing grows shallow. He hadn’t understood why the scene had even featured in the vision, but now it makes sense. The tattoo artist must have recognized Chanel and told Long Ge. Eyes and ears all over the city. Always watching, listening.
“She’s also the girl you were risking your life to defend at the Cave, weren’t you?” Long Ge says, with the leisure of a kidnapper
circling his hostage. Nowhere for Ares to run, they both know it. Pinned down by fear, his ties to Chanel, ties to his brother.
Might as well have his hands bound to this chair. “I should’ve made the connection sooner. Fancy playing the part of the hero,
hmm?”
Ares stays silent.
Yet Long Ge keeps talking, unbothered by the task of carrying the conversation alone. “Though I can see how a girl like that
would inspire heroic feelings in anyone. Very beautiful, isn’t she? I met her just yesterday, and she looks so much like her
mother it’s shocking. Almost identical to her mother at her age. Her behavior, though—now, that was very disappointing. Kept interfering with my business for some reason. Seems to be under the impression
I’m going to harm her mother, the silly girl.”
A chill creeps down Ares’s spine. “What do you want?”
“It’s very simple. Coco Cao hasn’t signed my contract yet,” Long Ge says. “I have reason to believe that her hesitation stems
from Chanel. But since you and Chanel are so obviously in love with each other, why don’t you put in a good word for me? Assure
her I have her mother’s best interests at heart? I don’t care how you go about it—propose to her, if you must. I just want
the contract finalized.”
“He’s obsessed with my mother,” Chanel had said.
Ares starts to protest, but Long Ge lifts a finger to silence him.
“Bring the contract,” he says, “and I’ll have your brother come pick it up. How’s that sound? It’s been a while since you last saw him, hasn’t it? It’ll be a nice family reunion.”
Ares freezes in his chair, trapped by some force infinitely greater than he is.
It all comes back to power, or the lack of it. It’s his fault his brother is gone in the first place, but also his fault that
his brother is still missing. It wouldn’t be like this if he were stronger, braver, wiser, richer, smarter, faster, better.
He swallows, silently hating Long Ge, hating all the men who flounder around and waste away their fortunes on luxury watches
and boring mansions and private jets and overpriced booze. If he could command their resources, he would bring his brother
back home in an instant. Power, he’s realized, is the closest thing to magic in real life. It can open up entire worlds, create
options that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. If he were more powerful, he wouldn’t have to choose between two futures. Wouldn’t
have to bleed for clues. Wouldn’t have to fight against Chanel when all he really wants is to drop the weapons and draw her
to his chest.
Wouldn’t have to make an impossible decision now.
“I’ll send you the time and address,” Long Ge says cheerily. “And forgive me for not seeing you out—I do have a rather full
schedule today.”