Crazy Rich Asians

“Doesn’t matter. You need to pick out ten things. Actually, make that twenty. As my father always says, the only way to get these ang mor gau sai to respect you is to smack them in the face with your dua lan chiao^* money until they get on their knees.”

For the next seven days, Charlie led Astrid on a shopping spree to end all shopping sprees. He bought her a suite of luggage from Hermès, dozens of dresses from all the top designers that season, sixteen pairs of shoes and four pairs of boots, a diamond-encrusted Patek Philippe watch (that she never once wore), and a restored art nouveau lamp from Didier Aaron. In between the marathon shopping, there were lunches at Mariage Frères and Davé, dinners at Le Grand Véfour and Les Ambassadeurs, and dancing the night away in their new finery at Le Palace and Le Queen. That week in Paris, Astrid not only discovered her taste for haute couture; she discovered a new passion. She had lived the first eighteen years of her life surrounded by people who had money but claimed not to, people who preferred to hand things down rather than buy them new, people who simply didn’t know how to enjoy their good fortune. Spending money the Charlie Wu way was absolutely exhilarating—honestly, it was better than sex.

* Hokkien for “big cock.”

10

Tyersall Park

SINGAPORE, 3:30 A.M.

Rachel was quiet all the way home from the wedding ball. She graciously returned the sapphire necklace to Fiona in the foyer and bounded up the stairs. In the bedroom, she grabbed her suitcase from the built-in cupboard and began shoving in her clothes as fast as she could. She noticed that the laundry maids had placed thin sheets of scented blotting paper between each folded piece of clothing, and she began tearing them out frustratedly—she didn’t want to take a single thing from this place.

“What are you doing?” Nick said in bafflement as he entered the bedroom.

“What does it look like? I’m getting out of here!”

“What? Why?” Nick frowned.

“I’ve had enough of this shit! I refuse to be a sitting duck for all these crazy women in your life!”

“What on earth are you talking about, Rachel?” Nick stared at her in confusion. He had never seen her this angry before.

“I’m talking about Mandy and Francesca. And God only knows who else,” Rachel cried, continuing to grab her things from the armoire.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, Rachel, but—”

“Oh, so you deny it? You deny that you had a threesome with them?”

Nick’s eyes flared in shock. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t deny it, but—”

“You asshole!”

Nick threw his hands up in despair. “Rachel, I’m thirty-two, and as far as I know I’ve never mentioned joining the priesthood. I do have a sexual history, but I’ve never tried to conceal any of it from you.”

“It’s not that you concealed it. It’s more that you never told me in the first place! You should have said something. You should have told me that Francesca and you had a past, so I didn’t have to sit there tonight and get totally blindsided. I felt like a total fucking idiot.”

Nick sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge, burying his face in his hands. Rachel had every right to be angry—it just never occurred to him to mention something that happened half a lifetime ago. “I’m so sorry—” he began.

“A threesome? With Mandy and Francesca? Really? Of all the women in the world,” Rachel said contemptuously as she struggled with the zipper on her suitcase.

Nick sighed deeply. He wanted to explain that Francesca had been a very different girl back then, before her grandfather’s stroke and all that money, but he realized that this was not the time to defend her. He approached Rachel slowly and put his arms around her. She tried to break away from him, but he locked his arms around her tightly.

“Look at me, Rachel. Look at me,” he said calmly. “Francesca and I just had a brief fling that summer in Capri. That’s all it was. We were stupid sixteen-year-olds, all raging hormones. That was almost two decades ago. I was single for four years before I met you, and I think you know precisely how the last two years have gone—you are the center of my life, Rachel. The absolute center. What happened tonight? Who told you all these things?”