Chapter 29
Penelope
The next day, I arrived at Arabella’s home in one of the poshest subdivisions in Singapore. She and her husband, James, lived
a few houses down from Silas. The expansive lawn was punctuated with elaborate gardens and rare flowers that filled each breeze
with a warm floral scent.
Even though my brain told me to be aware, I was overcome with nostalgia for the atmosphere I didn’t know I missed.
After three hard knocks, the staff let me into Arabella’s house. Straight through the hallway and into the salon where Olivia
said Arabella had tea every afternoon.
“What are you doing here?” Arabella placed the cup on the table and stood. “Olivia said she was coming to apologize.” Her
eyes moved slowly down my body, assessing me.
“May I come in?” I shuffled my weight between my legs beneath the archway at the end of the hall.
She crossed her arms. “Why?”
I took a step forward into the room. Then a few more until I was on the opposite side of her coffee table. “Bella, you’re
my baby sister. I wanted to see you.”
Her shoulders dropped with a heavy sigh and eye roll. “Well, here I am; you see me.”
I took a seat on the tufted tuxedo couch across from her. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited.”
“Me, too,” she whispered to herself and a silence blanketed us.
“The house is lovely.” I looked around and tried to figure out how exactly to have this conversation. I missed her. I missed
home. But she was a different person. I was sure she had her own life, and I simply wanted to be a part of it again. “You
always had a talent for design.”
Arabella smiled briefly and looked around the room. Her sterner expression softened, maybe in pity, either way the anger felt
less pronounced.
“I missed you,” she admitted quietly. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“I didn’t stay away because I didn’t want to see you,” I rushed to say before reminding myself not to dump every thought I’d
had over the past few years on her at once. “Being here hurt. It stung,” I explained. But then, I’d spent a day with Olivia
and went to the gardens with Xander. It felt nice. “But I realize now how much I’ve missed it, too. How much I’ve missed you.”
It wasn’t home but nowhere was home. This was close, though.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” Arabella added after another extended pause. “At the party. You were being civil, and I was
being rude.”
“It’s alright.”
“I do understand...” she offered. Her eyes flickered around the room again, like she was trying to find the words. “You
had opportunities and I sort of...” She twisted her fingers. “Well, I never really had anything but this.”
“Bella...” My heart sank hearing it. She was perfect. She’d gotten everything she’d wanted. Right?
“I understand why you left, that’s all,” she explained. “I sort of resented you for it, but if I was smart enough to have a career, I think...” She took a deep breath and ran her hands over her skirt. “Well, it makes sense. It would’ve been silly to waste all your talent.”
I wanted to fill the air with all the ways I wanted us to get back on some solid footing. Make up for years of being strangers
to each other. It would take time. But finally, it didn’t seem impossible. That was too much for one day. Too much for a single
visit. This was the long game.
Another silence fell in the room. A little less awkward this time, more of a comfortable one, with Arabella and me deep in
thought.
“It was rather badass that you missed grandfather’s funeral.” She smiled as she picked up her tea again. “Father spun himself
into a tizzy.”
My grandfather was a cruel man and the only nice thing my father ever did for me was keep me away from him. And after the
divorce, my grandfather took his anger out on Eleanor. In turn, Eleanor took it out on me. And then I ran away from it.
In an attempt to break the cycle, I might have inadvertently allowed it to continue by leaving Arabella behind. I was always
jealous that she was loved, but I hadn’t been here for years and all that venom had to go somewhere. She was different , that much was certain.
“Grandfather dying while yelling at a member of his staff seems fitting, doesn’t it?” I mused.
“The demons finally dragged that man back to hell.” Arabella giggled lightly and raised her teacup. “Hear! Hear!”
And with that, the tension was gone. Even though there were decades of unresolved conflicts. Resentment and abandonment to
discuss. In that moment, we were sisters again. The ones who ran through our childhood home, making a mess, and trying our
best to clean it up before Eleanor punished me for it.
“I know I missed a lot.” I sighed. “I thought maybe I could explain it away. Chinese filial piety seemed to have skipped me.”
Going to the States and pushing my marriage back sealed it in everyone’s mind that I was the problem even though I spent my
entire life up to that point trying to constantly find solutions.
“Either way,” I went on, “I’m happy to finally see you now.”
She didn’t smile but a hopeful glint in her eye made me feel better. The anxiety wore down.
“At least you avoided the Chen-arranged marriage,” Arabella murmured, pulling her sleeve down a little further, odd choice
in clothing for a muggy Singapore late-summer day. Although, the air-conditioning was blaring.
“What did you mean?” The change in Arabella’s demeanor made me curious again. She was always happy in her marriage or so I
thought. It was convenient for the family, but she was happy about it. Right? “When you said that my choices would affect the family?”
She had to mean the wedding and the merger, but I didn’t think things were that dire.
She rolled her eyes. “Everyone used to go on about how smart you were.”
“Bella,” I pleaded.
Her hands curled around a glass of tea. “I don’t know specifics, but finances are strained. Have been for a while.”
“Are you alright?” I asked. Arabella received her inheritance and married well, I assumed she’d be fine as long as the money
wasn’t wasted.
The parallels between Arabella and my mother were striking. In choosing to stay in New York for work, I might have lost relationships,
but I kept my autonomy.
“Yes, but I think you were Silas’s golden ticket.”
I was afraid of that. It meant Silas would probably try to salvage things. Before she could say anything else the sound of
people walking echoed in the hallway.
“Arabella.” A loud warning gritted across the room to my sister. We looked over to see Silas and James walking in. Silas’s trademark scowl juxtaposed brilliantly with the relaxed T-shirt and joggers. Arabella straightened in her seat. “James and I just returned from a round of golf. We were planning to get lunch. Why don’t you join us?”
“Alright,” Arabella agreed, sounding resigned. Her eyes glanced past me with a warm smile. “It was nice to see you, Penelope.”
“Bella...” Worry and a steely protectiveness overcame my senses. But I wasn’t here for years and James was her husband.
It made sense she’d go but it just felt off .
Arabella disappeared down the hallway; I took a few steps to follow after her when Silas’s voice stopped me.
“Finally taking an interest in the family?” he baited when Arabella was well out of earshot. I could hear her front door open
and close.
I was hoping to leave on decent terms with both, maybe the chance at reconciliation with Arabella if I visited more.
I turned to see Silas run his thumb over his knuckles slowly. He took a seat.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” I stated diplomatically.
“No,” he mocked with a sarcastic coo. “Just to pry about the company. I heard that bit you asked Arabella.”
“Well, someone should keep an eye on it,” I ventured. It sounded like he was floundering a bit. How very on-brand for Silas.
“I can only assume you’re not doing a very good job, little brother.”
Technically we were only three months apart since my father never stopped his affair with Eleanor for something silly, like
his marriage.
“You did surprise me, you know.” He skated past my insult. “People-pleasing Penny was defiant. I didn’t expect you to marry
some random American. I was only trying to expedite the merger. I assumed you’d marry Maddox in the desperate hope to finally
have a family.”
A cruel mocking frosted his words. It hurt because it was true.
“What do you want, Silas?” I asked, exasperated. We could go back and forth with insults all day, and all I wanted to do now
was go back to Xander. To not let Silas steal the happiness I felt when talking to Arabella.
“End this farce of a marriage and honor your real commitments. Come home. Beg for the Xus’ forgiveness—they’ll accept, you
know how they live and breathe to have a grandchild with both Eastern and Western titles.”
I scoffed. “Even if I were to agree, which is ridiculous, you realize Maddox may feel differently now?”
He leaned forward with a menacing smile. “Maddox will do anything his parents tell him. Why do you think he was ever interested
in you ?”
I flinched. I knew I was a pawn, but it didn’t hurt any less to hear it.
“For good measure,” Silas added, “I will help you arrive at the right conclusion.”
“If you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d find a way to move forward with the merger without me,” I retorted
patronizingly. “And I’m not afraid of you.”
The Xus weren’t the only other option for a merger, right? This felt cruel. There had to be another reason Silas needed this
with Xu Enterprises.
“Maybe you should be,” he advised calmly. “I don’t think you know your husband as well as you think you do. But I’ve been
watching closely ever since the engagement with Maddox was announced, as an insurance policy of sorts.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but a chill ran through my veins.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I warned.
I hated that Silas knew me so well. That he knew the best way to bring me to my knees was to make me responsible for everyone else’s well-being.
“I think I do, Penny.”
The nickname scraped against my heart for the last time. The one he created. Because he liked to say that like a penny, I
was essentially worthless. I got to have that little gem all throughout childhood. He was always a little jealous to be untitled
amongst the higher echelons of society he liked to pretend he fit with.
“A piece of advice, Silas.” I turned to leave. “If you’re going to take aim at us, don’t miss, because we won’t.”
My entire body trembled as I got into the car that was waiting to take me back to the hotel.
I couldn’t make sense of every emotion that swirled in my head. The chance at that reconciliation with Arabella, with Singapore,
felt further than ever. And now, I’d dragged everyone I knew in Manhattan into it.
And while my mind was a mess with worry and self-imposed guilt because I was the one whose decisions started all of this—some
clarity did ring through.
The circumstances had changed again but this time I didn’t allow that bitter chill to bleed over everything here—Arabella,
Olivia, Singapore. This time, my mind didn’t need to run to a safe place where it tricked me into pinning that feeling on
the place, and that was oddly freeing.