Chapter 1

"You're signing this whether you want to or not! Where do you think you can go after the divorce? Who else would want a worn-out old woman like you!"

Sean's roar rattled the living room windows. He slammed a stack of divorce papers down on the coffee table, knocking over a freshly cut watermelon. Red juice spilled across the table, looking uncannily like dried blood.

Vera huddled in the corner of the sofa, her faded housedress hanging loosely on her frame. She twisted her fingers tightly; her knuckles were thick and deformed from years of hard labor, and two cheap bandages were stuck to them.

"Crying! All you know how to do is cry! What a jinx!" Sean loosened his tie in disgust—a Hermès tie worth two months of Vera's living expenses. "For the sake of what we used to be, I'll give you a hundred thousand. Take the money and get out. I need this place cleared out to use as a wedding home."

"A hundred thousand…" Vera finally raised her head, her voice hoarse as if she'd swallowed sand. "Sean, I've been with you for twenty years, slaving away for the Sullivan family, and you're giving me a hundred thousand?"

"A hundred thousand is plenty! Learn to be grateful!" Sean lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into Vera's face. "Don't think that lousy jade pendant from back then buys you a lifetime allowance. I've been supporting you these past few years—that debt's been paid off long ago!"

In the shadows of the entryway, Landon stood quietly. He was holding a cheap toy he'd bought for his nephew, wearing an old jacket that had cost a few bucks online.

He watched the woman who had once sold off a family heirloom overnight to put him through school being ground into the dust; he watched his own brother, once so honest and simple, now reeking of money.

Landon set down the plastic bag in his hand.

"Sean, you don't need to sign this."

Landon stepped out of the shadows, his tone calm, yet it dropped the temperature in the room to freezing.

This was the fifth year since Landon had left his hometown.

Two days before New Year's, the cold wind in this small Midwestern town cut at the face like a knife. Landon didn't have his driver take the Cullinan with the out-of-state plates into the complex; he had it parked in the underground garage of a mall two streets away.

He changed into a set of plain, unremarkable old clothes, dragged out the beat-up suitcase from his college days, and, treading through the blackened snow, walked back to the old apartment building that held his entire childhood.

The stairwell still smelled of rotting cabbage and coal smoke. Fifth floor, no elevator.

Landon stood at the door, took a deep breath, and pushed open the security door with its peeling paint.

The room was dim; to save on electricity, the lights were off even in broad daylight.

"Who is it? Is that you, Sean, back home?"

A voice called out from the kitchen, and then Vera came out wiping her hands. The moment she saw Landon, she froze, and then her weathered face broke into enormous, delighted surprise.

"Oh! Landon! What are you doing back? You didn't even call ahead—I would've come to pick you up!"

Vera flustered, rubbing her hands on her apron, moving to take his luggage, then pulling her hand back halfway, as if afraid the smell of cooking grease would offend the college graduate.

Landon caught her hand instead.

Cold, rough, covered in calluses, with a deep frostbite crack at the base of the thumb.

These hands had once never had to do any rough work.

His parents had died young, and the eldest brother stood in for a father, the eldest brother's wife for a mother. The year Landon got into the Ivy League, on the day the acceptance letter came, the family couldn't even afford a celebratory dish of braised pork. Sean had squatted in the doorway smoking a pipe all night, and finally, eyes red, told Landon to quit school and come haul bricks with him on the construction site.

It was Vera.

This woman, married into the family for barely two years, went back to her parents' home without a word and took out the emerald-green jade Ruyi pendant her grandmother had left her. It was her dowry, and her most precious possession. She pawned it outright for fifty thousand—that was Landon's tuition and living expenses.

"Vera, what happened to your hand?" Landon looked at the crack and felt a pang in his chest.

"Oh, it's nothing. Everybody's hands crack from working in the winter." Vera pulled her hand back and smiled to cover it up. "Come inside, it's cold out there, isn't it? Your brother's been busy with business lately, he might be home late. I made you some pork and scallion dumplings."

Landon looked around the room.

The place was almost unchanged from five years ago. The paint had peeled off the walls, exposing bare cement. The sofa was still the same old fabric one with broken springs, and the television was one of those bulky CRT sets.

That was strange.

Landon knew his brother, Sean, had struck it rich in the building-materials business these past couple of years, boasting an annual revenue in the tens of millions. And though Landon himself never flaunted his wealth in the Capital, he still sent a few hundred thousand home every year to support them.

Where had the money gone?

"Vera, where's the money I sent back? Why didn't you get a better place? The heat isn't even working." Landon touched the cold radiator.

Vera's hands paused as she rolled out the dough, her eyes darting away. "Ah… well, the money—your brother said the business was short on cash flow, so it all went into buying stock. He said business is hard these days, that you have to spend where it counts. We're used to this old place, all the neighbors are here. A new place, and there'd be no one to talk to."

Just then, heavy footsteps sounded outside the door, along with the rattle of keys.

"Damn it, those punks—a few drinks and they forget where they stand!"

Sean pushed the door open and came in, reeking of alcohol. He wore a sharply tailored black wool coat, a Burberry scarf around his neck, and a big gold watch gleaming on his wrist.

That outfit had to be worth well over a hundred thousand.

It made a bitterly ironic contrast with the shabby furnishings in the room and the ragged padded coat Vera wore.

Sean came in, saw Landon, and paused, then burst out laughing, walking over to clap Landon hard on the shoulder. "Well, if it isn't our family's big scholar, back home! What's with the state of you? Couldn't cut it in the Capital?"

He looked Landon up and down in his old jacket, his eyes carrying three parts warmth and seven parts contempt.

"I get by. Enough to eat," Landon said with a faint smile, offering no explanation.

"If you can't make it, just say so! Your brother's doing well now—I can easily set you up as a VP at the company, two hundred grand a year. Isn't that better than getting pushed around in the Capital?" Sean stripped off his coat, tossed it onto the sofa, sat down sprawled out, and crossed his legs.

Vera hurried over, picked up the coat and hung it, then brought a cup of hot tea.

Sean didn't so much as glance at her. He took the tea, sipped it, and spat it out on the floor with a "pfft."

"It's scalding! You trying to burn me alive?"

He slammed the teacup down on the coffee table, and the boiling tea splashed out onto the back of Vera's hand. Vera flinched but didn't dare make a sound, silently taking a rag to wipe the table.

Landon stood off to the side, his fists slowly clenching inside his sleeves.