Chapter 17
17
Renee woke on Tuesday to seven emails from Su Khoon’s PA in her inbox, providing the promised information about the Freshview pitch. An eighth email came in while she was reading them—a calendar invite for the meeting at which Su Khoon was to present Chahaya’s pitch to Freshview, in two weeks’ time.
Then the other calendar invites started coming in.
Renee had picked up her phone to check her emails the moment she’d opened her eyes, a bad habit and one she was deeply regretting. It was only seven a.m. She could’ve had another hour of sleep if she’d done the sensible thing and rolled over. That wasn’t happening now.
She’d thought she might have to fight Su Khoon to gain meaningful access to the Freshview deal, notwithstanding his agreement to work with her the night before. But it looked like he was adopting the opposite strategy—drowning her in detail.
She had to admire it. Taking her at her word meant there was no way she could complain to Dad.
She put down her phone and went and got dressed. COS black jersey dress with an asymmetric draped neckline; hammered gold wrist cuff from an indie designer; BB cream, mascara, tinted lip balm; black coffee; laptop.
Suitably armoured, she took a deep breath and rang her brother on her old phone. She’d transferred her old SIM card—the one she texted her actual friends on—to the new phone.
Su Khoon picked up straight away. “What is it?”
“Your PA’s trying to book out the next two weeks to prep for the Freshview pitch,” said Renee. “I appreciate the thought, but I’ve still got a business to run. Can we work out a compromise?”
Su Khoon snorted. “Thought you wanted to be involved? If you’re thinking you can just fly in at the end and take credit for the deal…”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” said Renee. “I’ll put in the work. But come on, Er Ge. I don’t need to be in your office eight hours a day, five days a week, to get a slide deck sorted.”
She heard him draw his breath. Before he could launch into a rant, Renee said:
“You don’t want to see that much of me, do you? I thought the whole point was to try to avoid killing each other.”
This elicited a reluctant huff of amusement. “What are you proposing, then?”
Renee glanced at her calendar on her laptop screen. She was going to have to get Louise to move meetings around, cancel some stuff. And—this hurt—she was going to have to push back the launch of Virtu at Home. She’d been hoping to get the line out in time for Christmas orders, but that had been optimistic even before Chahaya had resurfaced in her life. It was wholly unrealistic now.
She tried not to think about what her team would look like when she told them. She’d cross that bridge when she got to it. You had to be flexible in business, go where opportunity led.
“Give me a day to get through the materials you’ve sent me,” she said. “Then why don’t we have a meeting tomorrow and make a plan?”
“I’m seeing some of the Freshview people tomorrow,” said Su Khoon. He paused to yawn. “You should have the invite. There’s a lawyer there, Lin, she’s Jessie’s old JC friend. She said she’d introduce me to some of their team who’re leading on the London development.”
“OK,” said Renee, without missing a beat. If Su Khoon was so relaxed he was yawning over the phone at her, she could act like everything was normal and cool, too, as startling as he was being. “Let’s meet this evening. Do you have profiles of the people we’re meeting tomorrow?”
His lawyer connection hadn’t mentioned any names, said Su Khoon. It was an informal get-together. No need to read up.
“You think this is school or what?” he said. “Relax.” He yawned again. “Are you done? I’m going to try to get more sleep. Woke up at four a.m.”
Renee let her brother go.
What was going on with him? There had to be more to the meeting tomorrow than he’d said. That must be it—she’d show up and it would turn out Freshview were expecting a presentation with slides, data, the lot, and she’d be humiliated.
The alternative was that Su Khoon was being upfront with her and letting her in on the action. Even though it was what she’d been gunning for and what they had agreed, it was hard to believe he was really doing it.
Maybe he still thought she was going to tell on him to Jessie and the family. Or maybe he believed her promise to be discreet, and appreciated it.
Renee couldn’t afford to get tangled up in speculations about what her brother thought of her. That was too close to caring. There was nothing she could do about tomorrow’s meeting except prepare as much as she could and turn up ready for anything.
Focus on the work. That she could do. She picked up her phone to tell Louise to clear her diary.
They met the Freshview lawyer and her colleagues at the bar at the Savoy. It wouldn’t have been Renee’s choice of venue: it was her favourite place to go with Nathalie for a gossip over cocktails, though admittedly they’d only managed to go once since Nathalie had moved to London.
Besides the cocktail menu, Renee liked the art deco style, plush seats, and impeccably courteous white-jacketed waitstaff. There was no reason having an informal work meeting there with her brother should taint it, she told herself. Su Khoon was being professional, by his standards. And there were outsiders present, which made it even less likely anything unpleasant would happen.
The Freshview team seemed nice enough. Lin turned out to be short for Hazlina, rather than being a Chinese name. She was a curly-haired woman in her early thirties, in an olive trouser suit and nude heels. Besides her, there were two men, around Su Khoon’s age.
They spread out over a sofa and three armchairs below a large mirror reflecting the black-and-white photographs on the opposite wall. In about five minutes, Su Khoon had the men launched on a discussion of luxury watches.
It was strange to watch Su Khoon when he was trying to charm. Turned out he had social skills after all. He’d simply never exerted them on Renee’s behalf. But then, why would he?
Lin smiled at her. She was wearing bold red lipstick. It suited her, and it was an interesting choice for a work do—it hinted at personality. “You’re Su Khoon’s sister? Our other colleague who’s coming knows you. He said you two met at uni?”
It took a moment for this to sink in. Renee hadn’t met many Malaysians while she was at university, and only one of them had had any connection with Freshview Industries that she knew of.
“Ah, he’s here,” said Lin. She half rose, waving. “Mr. Yeoh!”
Renee made the most of the two seconds she had to rearrange her face. By the time she met Andrew Yeoh’s eyes, she was confident it gave nothing away.
She rose, despite Andrew waving at her to sit down. She wasn’t the only one—the Freshview team leapt to their feet in a way that would have made Andrew’s nepo baby status obvious, if she hadn’t already known about it. Not that Renee was in any position to judge him for sliding into a cushy job in the family business.
She was conscious of her brother’s eyes on her. So this was the trap he’d set her. Come to my informal networking drinks with Freshview, Renee, and meet your nightmare ex-boyfriend while you’re at it.
The stratagem was even more effective than he knew. Su Khoon hadn’t been there when Andrew had stormed into her flat, all those years ago. For weeks afterwards, she’d jolted awake every night, her heart pounding—convinced someone was outside the door, in the hallway, shoving his way into her bedroom, coming to get her.
She could be certain Dad would receive a report of how this encounter went. Especially if it went badly.
The thought stiffened her spine.
The last time she’d seen Andrew, he had been about to throw a punch at her. She’d only escaped because the neighbour had knocked on the door. Renee met his eyes and smiled, radiating Fuck you, asshole with every fibre of her being.
“Renee!” said Andrew, without so much as a flicker of an eyelash. “How long has it been? Ten years, right? Crazy. You haven’t changed at all.”
His eyes tracked over her appreciatively. Only the awareness that Su Khoon was monitoring her every microexpression kept the smile on Renee’s face.
“It’s been a long time,” she agreed.
She could have returned the compliment, if she’d felt so inclined. Andrew looked pretty much the same as he had ten years ago. He’d always given off the vibe of a middle-aged investment banker, even in his early twenties. Of all her poor choices of boyfriends, the most baffling, Nathalie said.
Was Andrew suffering from amnesia? Did he really not remember how appallingly he’d behaved at their last meeting? If not for the fact that every last detail of that day was burnt indelibly into Renee’s memory, she would have started wondering if she’d made it all up.
Andrew held her hand for slightly too long, before moving on to exchange pleasantries with Su Khoon. They sat down, Su Khoon calling over a waiter so he could order Andrew a drink.
In his place, Renee might have made a little more effort to disguise the way he’d transferred his attention to Andrew, as Low Teck Wee’s nephew and the most important person in the Freshview party. But the men Su Khoon had been talking to before didn’t seem offended. They addressed Andrew as Mr. Yeoh, too.
Was this the reason Dad had asked Renee to get involved in this deal? She’d never told him about what had happened when Andrew came to her flat. Dad had been annoyed enough when he found out they’d broken up that he’d frozen her out for a while—her calls had been declined; her messages went unanswered. By the time they were back on speaking terms, she hadn’t felt like raising the subject of Andrew again.
Dad couldn’t be hoping for a reconciliation now. Andrew was married. Renee had seen the photos on Instagram, shared by acquaintances who went to the wedding: Felicia Handoko glowing in Vera Wang, Andrew looking justifiably smug over netting the Delima Corp heiress. There’d be no point for Dad in orchestrating this encounter.
This had to be a test of Renee’s ability to ingratiate herself, despite her history with Andrew. Or—since it seemed unlikely Dad would risk a deal he wanted by staffing it with someone who’d dumped the chairman’s nephew—possibly Dad simply hadn’t known Andrew was involved.
Renee would happily have let Su Khoon monopolise Andrew, but after a time her brother was drawn back into conversation with the other Freshview people. One of the other men identified a mutual school friend, which sent them off into reminiscences Renee and Andrew, who were some years younger, couldn’t share.
Andrew turned to her. “My uncle said he ran into you recently. You’re based in London now, he said?”
Renee tensed despite herself. She rolled her shoulders under her oversized camel blazer, trying to ease the tightness in them.
It was stuffy in the bar, the heating turned too high for the unusually clement weather. She would have taken her blazer off, but she was wearing a black camisole underneath, tucked loosely into an oyster-coloured satin midi skirt, and she didn’t feel like exposing her shoulders to Andrew’s gaze. It felt like his eyes were leaving trails of slime all over her.
“For the past few years, yes,” she said.
“Asia wasn’t enough,” said Andrew. “You want the UK as well.”
“And tomorrow, the world,” said Renee lightly.
Andrew laughed, but it was a nice laugh. “You were always ambitious.”
“Felicia runs her own business, too, right?” said Renee. “I read the Marie Claire profile of her. The restaurant sounds great.”
“Oh, Indera’s more of a hobby. It doesn’t really make money,” said Andrew. “She’s taken a step back for now. Focusing on the baby.”
Renee blinked. “Oh, I didn’t know. Congratulations!”
The next twenty minutes passed much more pleasantly than she might have expected, Andrew showing her photos of the baby. The baby was not notable for its beauty, but it was easy to be enthusiastic about it, given some of the other paths the conversation could have gone down.
After an hour or so, Andrew said they should be off—he had a dinner engagement—and they all shook hands again. Su Khoon and Renee insisted the Freshview party take the first black cab that came along the Strand. As they watched the cab move off, Su Khoon said to Renee:
“Not too bad.”
Renee didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. She inclined her head.
“I didn’t know Andrew was coming, for the record.” Su Khoon snorted. “Wouldn’t have brought you along if I knew. But at least you can be civil.”
Renee wondered if she could believe him. “It’s business. I’m not going to make things weird so long as he doesn’t.”
“That’s all we need,” said Su Khoon. “But don’t take it too far, OK? You don’t want to piss off his wife’s family. Delima’s a big deal in Indonesia, that’s a growing market for us.”
Renee rolled her eyes. “Please, Er Ge. I broke up with him for a reason.”
“I’m just saying,” said Su Khoon mildly.
It was strange talking to a Su Khoon who was capable of being mild. It reminded Renee of the childhood family holiday when they’d visited the Snake Temple in Penang and she’d had a dozy viper draped over her for photos. The adults promised it had been devenomed, but she could see the creature’s fangs when it yawned, and it had not been possible to trust that she would not be bitten.
“You were talking with Andrew for a long time,” said her brother.
“He was showing me baby pictures ,” said Renee.
Su Khoon curled his lip, as much as to say, Don’t be naive, you and I both know what men are like.
But he spared her the lecture.
“I’m going to the office,” he said. Su Khoon was renting a tony co-working space in Knightsbridge, not far from the family’s townhouse, with a private office for him and desks for his staff. “Are you coming? We should do a debrief.”
“I’ve got an appointment,” said Renee. In fact she’d allocated the rest of the day to Virtu, but she knew better than to say so. “I’ll send you my notes on the meeting. There were a couple of points you could get the team to look into. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Su Khoon gave her a look that suggested he saw right through her excuse. But maybe he really was pleased with how she’d acquitted herself. He said peaceably, “Catch up tomorrow, then. See you.”