Crazy Rich Asians (54 page)

“Consuelo!” she shouted. “Tell Ahmad to get the car ready. I need to go to Tyersall
Park in fifteen minutes.”

Wuthering Towers

Astrid awoke to a shaft of sunlight on her face. What time was it? She looked at the
clock on the side table and noticed it was after ten. She stretched into a yawn, crawled
out of bed, and went to splash some water on her face. When she padded into the living
room, she saw Charlie’s elderly Chinese nanny sitting on one of the chrome-and-calfskin
Le Corbusier lounge chairs frantically focused on a game on her iPad. Ah Chee pressed
the screen furiously, muttering in Cantonese, “Cursed birds!” When she noticed Astrid
passing by, she broke into a toothy grin. “Hiyah Astrid, did you sleep well? There’s
breakfast waiting for you,” she said, her eyes never leaving the glowing screen.

A young maid rushed up to Astrid and said, “Ma’am, please, breakfast,” gesturing toward
the dining room. There she found a rather excessive spread laid out for her on the
round glass table: pitchers of coffee, tea, and orange juice were accompanied by poached
eggs and thick-cut bacon on a warming plate, scrambled eggs with Cumberland sausages,
toasted English muffins, French toast, sliced mango with Greek yogurt, three types
of breakfast cereals, silver-dollar pancakes with strawberries and Chantilly cream,
fried crullers with fish congee. Another maid stood at attention behind Astrid, waiting
to pounce forward and serve. Ah Chee came into the dining room and said, “We didn’t
know what you would want for breakfast,
so the cook made a few options. Eat, eat. And then the car is waiting to take you
to Charlieboy’s office down the hill.”

Astrid grabbed the bowl of yogurt and said, “This is all I need,” much to Ah Chee’s
dismay. She went back to the bedroom and put on an ink-blue Rick Owens top over a
pair of white jeans. After brushing her hair quickly, she decided to wear it in a
low ponytail—something she never did—and rummaging through Charlie’s bathroom drawers,
she found a pair of Cutler and Gross horn sunglasses that fit her. This was as incognito
as she was going to get. As she left the bedroom, one of the maids sprinted to the
entrance foyer and summoned the elevator, while another held it open until Astrid
was ready to enter. Astrid was mildly amused by how even an act as simple as exiting
the flat was handled with such military urgency by these skittish girls. It was so
different from the gracious, easygoing servants she had grown up with.

In the lobby, a chauffeur in a crisp black uniform with gold buttons bowed at Astrid.
“Where’s Mr. Wu’s office?” Astrid asked.

“
Wu
thering Towers, on Chater Road.” He gestured toward the forest-green Bentley parked
outside, but Astrid said, “Thanks, but I think I’ll walk,” remembering the building
well. It was the same place Charlie always had to go to pick up envelopes stuffed
with cash from his father’s secretary whenever they came to Hong Kong on weekend shopping
binges. Before the chauffeur could protest, Astrid walked across the plaza to the
Mid-Levels’ escalator, strolling purposefully along the moving platform as it snaked
its way down the hilly urban terrain.

At the base of the escalator on Queen Street, Astrid took a deep breath and plunged
into the fast-moving river of pedestrians. There was something about Hong Kong’s central
district during the day, a special frenetic energy from the hustling and bustling
crowd that always gave Astrid an intoxicating rush. Bankers in smart pinstripes walked
shoulder to shoulder with dusty day laborers and teenagers in school uniforms, while
chicly outfitted corporate women in don’t-mess-with-me heels melded seamlessly with
wizened old amahs and half-clothed street beggars.

Astrid turned left onto Pedder Street and entered the Landmark shopping mall. The
first thing she saw was a long line of people. What was happening? Oh, it was just
the usual queue of Mainland Chinese shoppers outside the Gucci store, anxiously awaiting
their
turn to go inside and get their fix. Astrid expertly negotiated her way through the
network of pedestrian bridges and passageways that connected the Landmark to neighboring
buildings—up the escalator to the mezzanine level of the Mandarin Oriental, through
the shopping arcade at Alexandra House, down the short flight of steps by Cova Caffé,
and here she was in the gleaming lobby of Wuthering Towers.

The reception counter appeared to have been sculpted from one massive block of malachite,
and as Astrid approached, a man with an earpiece in a dark suit intercepted her and
said discreetly, “Mrs. Teo, I’m with Mr. Wu. Please come with me.” He waved her through
the security checkpoint and into an express elevator that zipped straight up to the
fifty-fifth floor. The elevator doors opened onto a serene, windowless room with alabaster-white
walls inlaid with hairline circular patterns and a silvery blue sofa. The man ushered
Astrid wordlessly past the three executive secretaries who sat at adjoining tables
and through a pair of imposing etched-bronze doors.

Astrid found herself in Charlie’s atrium-like office, which had a soaring pyramid-shaped
glass ceiling and a bank of flat-screen televisions along one entire wall that silently
flickered financial news channels from New York, London, Shanghai, and Dubai. A very
tan Chinese man in a black suit and wire-frame glasses was seated on a nearby sofa.

“You almost gave my driver a panic attack,” Charlie said, getting up from his desk.

Astrid smiled. “You need to cut your staff some slack, Charlie. They live in complete
terror of you.”

“Actually, they live in complete terror of
my wife
,” Charlie responded with a grin. He gestured to the man seated on the black sofa.
“This is Mr. Lui, who has already managed to find your husband by using the cell number
you gave me last night.”

Mr. Lui nodded at Astrid and began speaking in that distinctive, clipped, British-accented
English that was so common in Hong Kong. “Every iPhone has a GPS locator, which makes
it possible for us to track the owner very easily,” Mr. Lui explained. “Your husband
has been at an apartment in Mong Kok since last night.”

Mr. Lui presented Astrid with his thin laptop computer, where a sequence of images
awaited: Michael exiting the flat, Michael exiting the elevator, Michael clutching
a bundle of plastic bags on the street.
The last picture, taken from a high angle, showed a woman opening the door of the
flat to let Michael in. Astrid’s stomach tightened into a knot. Here was the other
woman. She scrutinized the picture for a long while, staring at the barefooted woman
dressed in denim shorts and a skimpy tank top.

“Can we enlarge the picture?” Astrid asked. As Mr. Lui zoomed in on the blurry, pixilated
face, Astrid suddenly sat back on the sofa. “There’s something very familiar about
that woman,” she said, her pulse quickening.

“Who is she?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not sure, but I know I’ve seen her somewhere before,” Astrid said, closing her
eyes and pressing her fingers to her forehead. Then it hit her. Her throat seemed
to close up, and she couldn’t speak.

“Are you okay?” Charlie asked, seeing the look on Astrid’s face.

“I’m okay, I think. I believe this girl was at my wedding. I think there’s a picture
of her in a group photo from one of my albums.”

“Your
wedding
?” Charlie said in shock. Turning to Mr. Lui, he demanded, “What do you have on her?”

“Nothing on her yet. The flat’s registered owner is Mr. Thomas Ng,” the private investigator
replied.

“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Astrid said numbly.

“We’re still assembling a dossier,” Mr. Lui said. An instant message flashed on his
phone, and he reported, “The woman just left the flat with a young boy, approximately
four years old.”

Astrid’s heart sank. “Have you been able to find out anything about the boy?”

“We have not. We did not know there was a boy inside the flat with them until this
moment.”

“So the woman has left with the boy and my husband is alone now?”

“Yes. We don’t think anyone else is in the apartment.”

“You don’t think? Can you be sure there isn’t someone else in there? Can’t you use
some sort of thermal sensor?” Charlie asked.

Mr. Lui gave a little snort. “Hiyah, this isn’t the CIA. Of course, we can always
escalate and bring in specialists if you wish, but for domestics such as these, we
don’t usually—”

“I want to see my husband,” Astrid said matter-of-factly. “Can you take me to him
now?”

“Ms. Teo, in these situations, we really don’t advise—” the man delicately began.

“I don’t care. I need to see him face-to-face,” Astrid insisted.

A few minutes later, Astrid sat quietly in the back of the Mercedes with tinted windows
while Mr. Lui rode in the front passenger seat, frantically barking orders in Cantonese
to the team assembled around 64 Pak Tin Street. Charlie wanted to come along, but
Astrid had insisted on going alone. “Don’t worry, Charlie—nothing’s going to happen.
I’m just going to have a talk with Michael.” Now her mind was reeling, and she was
getting more and more antsy as the car inched through lunchtime traffic in Tsim Sha
Tsui.

She just didn’t know what to think anymore. Who exactly was this girl? It looked like
the affair must have been going on since before their wedding, but then why had Michael
married her? It clearly wasn’t for money—her husband had always been so rabidly insistent
about not wanting to benefit from her family’s wealth. He had readily signed the hundred-and-fifty-page
prenuptial agreement without so much as a blink, as well as the postnuptial her family’s
lawyers had insisted on after Cassian was born. Her money, and Cassian’s money, was
more secure than the Bank of China’s. So what was it that motivated Michael to have
a wife in Singapore, and a mistress in Hong Kong?

Astrid looked out her car window and noticed a Rolls-Royce Phantom next to her. Enthroned
in the backseat was a couple, probably in their early thirties, dressed to the nines.
The woman had short, smartly coiffed hair and was immaculately made up and dressed
in a purple blouse with an enormous diamond-and-emerald floral brooch pinned to her
right shoulder. The man at her side was sporting a florid Versace silk bomber jacket
and Latin dictator–style dark sunglasses. Anywhere else in the world, this couple
would have looked completely absurd—they were at least three decades too young to
be chauffeured around so ostentatiously. But this was Hong Kong, and somehow it worked
here. Astrid wondered where they came from, and where they were going. Probably off
to lunch at the club. What secrets did they keep from each other? Did the husband
have a mistress? Did the wife have a lover? Were there any children? Were they happy?
The woman sat perfectly still, staring dead ahead, while the man slouched slightly
away from her, reading the business section
of the
South China Morning Post
. The traffic began to move again, and suddenly they were in Mong Kok, with its dense,
hulking sixties apartment blocks crowding out the sunlight.

Before she knew it, Astrid was being led out of the car, flanked by four security
men in dark suits. She looked around nervously as they escorted her to an old block
of flats and into a small fluorescent-lit elevator with avocado-green walls. On the
tenth floor, they emerged into an open-air hallway that skirted along an inner courtyard
where lines of laundry hung from every available window. They walked past apartments
with plastic slippers and shoes by the doorways, and soon they were in front of the
metal-grille door of flat 10-07B.

The tallest man rang the doorbell once, and a moment later, Astrid could hear a few
latches being undone. The door opened, and there he was. Her husband, standing right
in front of her.

Michael glanced at the security detail surrounding Astrid and shook his head in disgust.
“Let me guess, your father hired these goons to track me down.”

Cameron Highlands