CHAPTER 20 – Suspicious Minds

NYC.

The Four Seasons.

Valorie Sanders, heiress to the Sanders Estate, the uncrowned princess of LAPA, sat in the bed of her five-star hotel room, hugging her phone.

She had just been abused.

Not physically abused.
Not verbally abused.

Not even admonished, really.

But she was left with no doubt that whatever feeling she was feeling was what “being abused” entailed.

On the way back to the hotel, Sir Woodhouse had spoken to her about his disappointment.

“Val,” he had said in the open space of the limousine. “We have left a poor impression today, and that is not something any amount of donations can cover, because conventional wealth is crass, it is pretentious, conforming, stodgy, and philistine. It is bourgeois. It is the opposite of what is fashionable.”

Her CEO had paused to temper his rising temper. “Do you know the girl?”

“Who? Eppie?”

“Who else? What is she?”

“She is no one.” Valorie had told her employer the truth. “Euphemia Fontaine is a talentless nobody, a ‘poor’ who lived alone and had no friends.”

“You expect me to believe this?” She saw Sir Woodhouse’s brows come alive with questions.

“It’s true,” Valorie protested. “She hasn’t auditioned for anything. She even dropped out last year. God knows why she’s back. Dr Cooper, probably. He loves the ‘poor.’”

The CEO of Universal looked at her with eyes more annoyed than accusatory. Valorie stared back, feeling suddenly oppressed. “Val, don’t look to me for answers. I know nothing. All I know is that your father promised your history wouldn’t be an issue if we chose to invest in your talents.”

“Eppie’s a nobody!” Valorie recalled repeating the phrase like a mantra. It was true, though. Why wouldn’t anyone believe her?

“Val, sweetheart,” Sir Woodhouse spoke with a direct, British dryness. “You do understand that your father and I are not chums. We are partners in a common venture. Universal LLC is trying to advance permits and permissions in California, and your father has a daughter who wants to be a star. This is how we met, and this is why you managed to crawl into the Met. What do you think will happen when one partner hides a crucial fact? Will our collaboration succeed?”

“Sir,” Valorie recalled feeling so sick she may have thrown up in the car. “I… I am telling the truth. I haven’t done anything to this Euphemia. I don’t even interact with her at school. We have nothing in common.”

“Don’t cry. It makes you ugly,” her warden didn’t even look up from his phone when he affirmed her claim. “Keep your upset to yourself next time. Even if you have to kiss Eppie on the lips, you will do it while smiling. There’s no joy in working with amateurs.”

That was where her memory faded.
When she was cognisant again, she was in the hotel shower, ugly crying.

When has she ever been shamed so badly? Not since the day she stood in front of the Quest Board while Mio’s friends danced around her, ridiculing Valorie with their smugness.

As for Euphemia—

Her story to Sir Woodhouse had been true.
She knew of the girl, but they had hardly ever interacted.
It was William who took care of Euphemia, and he had told her that she was taken care of, that the penniless orphan wouldn’t be a problem.

And even though she saw Eppie on the first day of school, William had told her that everything was settled, that unless the girl acted out, it was better to put all the unpleasantness behind them and focus on their Senior projects.

And even though the girl blew up on MySpace, William said that it was good that she was minding her own business, and that their paths would not collide.

But her boyfriend was wrong, just like he was wrong about Mio.

Mio had taken her spot in the Showcase.

And now, Mio’s partner in crime was here to steal her spotlight.

She was going insane.

She wanted to tell Papa her grief.

She wanted to purge the negativity choking her breath.
She wanted to see the girl suffer and revel in the pleasure of knowing she was the better actress.

Like a shivering junkie, without her robe and without even applying her skincare routine, Valorie Sanders hugged her iPhone like a teddy bear and switched it over to text. William hated being disturbed at night, but he would read her messages in the morning, and he would know what to do to make everything better, as he’d done with Mio.

Monday.
San Marino.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

William Chen, son of Lee-Kwon Chen, heir extraordinaire and self-proclaimed future producer of Asian-American cinema, awoke to the buzzing of his phone popping off for the two hundredth time since it began at 10 PM.

He gingerly slid from the silken sheets, careful not to awaken the girl in his bed, because he was a gentleman.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

He shuddered when his iMessage buzzed again. On the flickering screen, he could see the photo headframe of his official girlfriend, the daughter of his father’s business partner.

Valorie Sanders

213 Messages.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Valorie Sanders

214 Messages.

“Fuck me…” William massaged his eye bags. In silence, he stretched out his well-built arms, marvelling at the sight of his own silhouette in the full-length mirror opposite his bed. Outside, behind the block-out curtain, the autumn sun was just about to peek through the hills, turning the valley below mauve and orange—

Bzzt. Bzzt.

He really, really did not want to answer the messages, nor read them.

Valorie… sweet Valorie, beautiful Valorie, fiery Valorie—was a disturbed individual.

Hers were mostly daddy issues, but not the kind William enjoyed. She was more like a toxic, hot, concentrated sriracha pepperoni, which was incredible in small doses, but absolutely exhausting if one had to eat it every day.

Doting on Valorie was the only way to shut her up because her father was a Californian State Senator, formerly a big shot Attorney General. In a decade, Francis Sanders shall retire to become a very influential community leader who moonlights as a consultant for real estate developers in the valley—developers like Lee-Kwon Chen, CEO and founder of Omnia Construction Group, responsible for gentrifying Chinatown and parts of K-Town.

For his father’s sake, he had supported Valorie since their Freshman years.

Was there love between them? Valorie certainly seemed to enjoy William’s doting. Likewise, William felt with some sincerity that they were good partners. He admired her face, her vivacity, the way her waist writhed like a bag of snakes. He liked her prestige, her father’s influence, and the way she took no shit from anyone, not even his father.

He liked that a lot.

So yes, William supposed. It wasn’t the love they taught in Shakespeare, but it was love, in a practical, biological and sociological sense.

Now, only three months after her last Greek tragedy, his princess of Mycenae was once again unhappy.

Valorie Sanders

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218 Messages.

He looked at the messages, some of which were on display. Truth be told, without her warmth beside him, he could not at all be fucked to suffer the mental anguish.

Unlocking his phone, he swiped right for Wang. “Yo.”

“Dai Lo. Zhou san,” a breathy voice replied from the other end in fluent Cantonese. Wang was in the gym. “What can I do for you?”

“You remember that blondie?”

There was a long pause. “The one Jimmu checked out in August?”

“Yeah.” William felt a strange premonition as he affirmed the girl’s visage, but couldn’t place it.

“Is she making trouble?”

“Technically speaking, no,” William kneaded his brow. “But our young miss is disturbed by her.”

“Is she being disturbed, or is Xiao-Jei… disturbed?”