Chapter One — Reunion
Hong Kong. Tsim Sha Tsui. NovaEon Centre.
Thirty years of sea wind had weathered the granite façade into veins of light and dark, and the tea-coloured curtain wall filtered out the glare off Victoria Harbour. A skeleton left over from the property frenzy of the nineties, it still carried an impersonal sort of majesty.
The door to the thirty-sixth-floor meeting room was heavy. Inside stood a long table of dark vintage walnut, its lacquer worn matte by countless contracts and the rings of coffee cups. Outside, the sun had bleached the harbour white; inside, the air conditioning ran at full tilt, cold seeping up through the carpet. The half-lowered blinds cut the sunlight into strips that fell across the table, alternating light and shade.
Lia Ren stood at the table, the pad of her finger tracing the edge of the document stack over and over. She had already worried a shallow crease into the paper.
Footsteps in the corridor. The CFO. The investment director. The investment manager. The CEO’s assistant. With each person who came in, her spine straightened another notch. She fixed her professional smile in place and, alongside Simon Lee, inclined her body and shook hands. She had been performing this routine since day one of her career; it was muscle memory by now. But today the face felt borrowed.
Last in was the CEO, Howard Kwok. Black Oxfords, navy suit, dark red tie, half a Patek Philippe strap showing at his cuff. “Howard!” Simon went to meet him, and the two of them traded pleasantries in Cantonese, the ease of long friendship in the trailing ends of their voices.
The target of this acquisition was Mertens, a Belgian module manufacturer. She and Simon’s team had been on it for four months — its technology filled precisely the gap in NovaEon’s capabilities. The sell-side mandate was out of their reach; the buy-side was all they could fight for. Simon had sounded Howard out the week before. The interest was real.
Lia should have been pleased. But her fingertips were trembling.
Not because of Howard. She lowered her eyes to the gilt logo on the meeting folder. NovaEon Group. Family-controlled, five years into the second generation’s succession. The old guard conservative, the new one aggressive, willing to grow inorganically. She knew it all by heart, better than her own CV. But whenever her gaze reached the line that read Deputy General Manager, it slid past.
She knew he had come back to the family company a few years ago, as deputy GM. Hong Kong was too small. The corporate and finance circles numbered in the dozens. The endless pitching, the boundless socialising of investment banking — she had steered carefully clear of every occasion where he might appear, like skirting minefields that no map had marked. Eight years. She had never counted the exact days, but she remembered all too clearly.
Howard sat down, and everyone followed. Lia breathed out.
The investment manager got up to close the door.
“Hold on.” Howard raised a hand to stop him and turned to Simon. “Kevin’s joining us. It’s been a while since you’ve seen him, hasn’t it?”
A hum went off in Lia’s ears. Every sound receded like the tide, leaving only a buzzing that circled inside her skull.
Simon’s laugh seemed to come from a long way off. “Yes — two, three years now. Last time was your annual dinner...”
She couldn’t hear the rest. She stared hard at the walnut grain of the table and counted the interlacing rings. One. Two. Three. By the seventh ring her breathing had evened out, a little.
Footsteps at the door. Unhurried. A cadence engraved in her nerves.
“Simon, long time no see. Brought the whole team along today?”
The voice was lower than she remembered. The backs of her knees pulled tight, all at once. So she had never forgotten.
She didn’t look up. But her fingertips were already aching — her right hand was digging hard into the seam of the pages.
“Kevin!” Simon rose to greet him. “Long time no see! What brings you in today?”
“I’m overseeing investments now.” The voice came closer. “Howard said there was an interesting Belgian project. Asked me to sit in and help him judge it.”
“Good.” Simon turned to her. “Our senior VP will present today. Lia — come and say hello. This is Howard’s younger brother, Kevin.”
No way out.
Lia pushed herself up from the table’s edge, her knees faintly stiff beneath her skirt. She turned her face and let her gaze travel upwards from his khaki trousers: navy blazer, no tie, the shirt’s top button undone. Business casual. Shoulders broader than eight years ago. A sharper jawline. Gold-rimmed glasses, new.
Behind the lenses, those eyes were watching her calmly. As though she were a stranger.
“Lia Ren.” She drew her hand from her side, pressed the palm once against the seam of her skirt, and only then held it out. “A pleasure.”
“Kevin Kwok.”
He took her hand. Warm, dry. Textbook pressure. Two seconds. Released.
No smile. No lingering.
She drew her hand back. The dampness on her palm wouldn’t go away. She put it behind her and quietly pressed it against the fabric at her waist.
She chose the seat nearest the projection screen. Kevin sat diagonally opposite, by the door. Far enough.
The screen lit up. Lia slipped into gear.
Her voice was steady, her pace measured, her gaze moving naturally between Howard and the CFO, catching every nod and raised eyebrow. Industry trends. Technological barriers. The sale process. For eight years it had been this near-ruthless precision with which she had rebuilt herself out of the rubble, piece by piece. Now it was all she needed — to let the numbers and the logic stand here in her place.
She did not once look towards the front right of the room. Not until she came to the valuation model.
“One moment.”
The voice wasn’t loud, but it cut the air clean through.
Lia’s fingertip hung over the clicker, frozen.
“Go back to the comps page.”
Something moved faintly in her throat. The screen switched back to the comparable companies analysis.
Kevin sat up. In the corner of her eye she saw him lean forward, right index finger tapping once on the table. Long knuckles. His watch refracting a cold light.
“These comparables,” he said. “What were the selection criteria?”
“Mainly from Rhône’s European industry database,” she heard her own voice say. “We added some Asian companies based on our understanding of the sector.”
“The list is too standardised.” He raised his eyes to her. “Some of these companies have revenue and profit structures very different from Mertens’. Benchmark directly against them and the valuation gets distorted. Have you considered that?”
The meeting room went quiet.
The back of her neck went numb, all at once.
“Thank you, Kevin. A fair point.” She lowered her lashes, pressed the tip of her tongue lightly against her teeth, and kept her voice level. “After the meeting we’ll refine it and strip out the ones whose structures diverge too far.”
He nodded and said nothing more.
She drew a quiet breath, held it down, picked up where he had cut her off, and went on. He didn’t speak again before the end.
Simon took over, discussing with the other side how difficult the acquisition would be and where the funding might come from.
Lia kept her eyes down. Her thumbnail scraped along the side of her index finger, over and over.
Kevin knew perfectly well the conventions of an investment bank pitch. Breaking down every comparable’s revenue and profit structure meant an enormous amount of work. He used to fudge it the same way himself. Why expose her in front of everyone today? She couldn’t tell whether it was revenge or pure professional rigour. She only felt his gaze still nailed to the back of her neck. It hadn’t moved.
The meeting ended. She bent her head and tidied the materials, meticulous in every movement. The edges of the A4 sheets had to align. The pen cap had to click tight. The clicker had to go back in its exact place on the tray. She checked once. Then again.
As though, so long as the pages were aligned, today could end here.
“Lia.” Simon’s voice dragged her back to the present. “Pack up. We’re eating at the club.”
