Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
He exhales in frustration. “I don’t care about the money. But it isn’t just about me.”
Inside I am restless. I know I won’t like where this is going, but I can’t stop. “You’re sacrificing your happiness to protect the rest of your family? Admirable, yes. But come on, Liam.”
“Let it go, Anna.”
“Charlie will be fine,” I say. “The McKellans are loaded.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated.
“Alex and Jake have enormous salaries. They’re never leaving the company. Even if Jake never marries or never has access to his inheritance, he’s still richer than almost every other person on this planet. And your mom, should she ever wise up and leave her sludge goblin of a husband, will be fine. There’s no way California law would leave her with no alimony. So she goes on one cruise a year instead of owning the yacht. People live with much, much less.”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “You don’t know my father.”
“You’re right, and I mean, what I do know is horrifying, but I also think your worldview is totally broken if you think any of you with your very legitimate careers are better off sacrificing your happiness to that man just to make sure you can still wear Gucci to take the trash out.”
“Anna, I can’t unilaterally decide to alter this huge aspect of their lives,” he says, his voice hoarse with frustration.
“But it’s not you!” I cry. “It’s Ray. Ray has made you think the responsibility lies with you. Ray is the one who’s threatening to challenge the trust so you’ll do what he wants. Ray doesn’t have to take this to the courts. What he’s doing is emotional manipulation, Liam. You don’t have to fall for it.”
“Whether they need the money or not, whether it’s fair or not, whether or not I’m being manipulated, at the end of the day, our marriage is a fraud. We did lie. I’m the reason my siblings are in this situation. Choosing to protect myself in all of this, despite all of that, is exactly what my father would do. I have to make the other choice.”
Oh. Oh, Liam.
“But would your siblings choose you?” I ask, feeling disgusted by all of them. “You know they wouldn’t, Liam. Maybe they love you, but they’re broken.” I take a step closer. “How many of them spoke up to protect Thuy at the restaurant? How many of them blinked about buying a house because Charlie’s rental flooded? They brought who knows how much crap and garbage to a protected island in the middle of the ocean. If you ask them to pick between you and money, they will choose money every time.”
“You don’t know that,” he says quietly.
“Maybe not,” I say, “but I think you do. I’m the only one here offering you unconditional support and love—and I’m not even asking you to choose me. I’m asking you to choose yourself. Because they won’t.”
Liam’s expression shuts down, and I know I’ve gone too far, but I don’t care.
He walks back to the window, looking out over the Singapore skyline. “Well, luckily,” he says, voice barely audible, “I’m not forcing them to choose.”
Thirty-Two
LIAM
Anna and I break up about sixteen hours before a fifteen-hour flight. Which, I’m sure I don’t need to say, is pretty fucking awful. I’ve been seated beside strangers on a plane dozens of times, but never has that stranger been someone I shared a bed with. Never has that stranger been someone who looked at me and saw all of the good things I want to embody. Never has that stranger been someone I thought was on the way to being the most important person in my life.
We land in Los Angeles, and once we’re off the plane, I can tell Anna is dead set on getting the hell away from me, but we still do have some business to wrap up.
“Anna, wait,” I say, catching her wrist just before she manages to get on the escalator down to baggage claim. We step out of the stream of traffic, walking to the side of the no-man’s-land area of LAX customs where she stares up at me with red, blank eyes.
Had she been crying the entire flight?
“We have the issue of the wire transfer to settle.”
She blinks away, and for a beat I fear she’ll tell me she doesn’t want my dirty money after all, that she can’t stomach taking it. But then she inhales a steadying breath, and nods. “What information do you need?”
“Your routing number,” I tell her. “And your account number.”
“I can text it?”
“I think it’s better to write it down.”
Of all of the painful moments in the past twenty-four hours, this is the worst, I think. Both of us awkwardly searching for a pen, for a scrap of paper to write on. Anna shifts her purse onto her knee, digging around. “I got it,” she says, pulling out a pen from the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Changi Airport and a receipt for something she must have bought to eat after she left me alone in the hotel room. I stare helplessly as she swipes her phone awake, opens her banking app. I stare down at the screen, blankness washing through me as I realize her checking account has about twenty dollars in it. She’s already used the ten thousand dollars I sent her to pay her father’s medical bills.