“It’s not that simple.”
“So you do want it.”
Tian’s eyes darkened, but not with the desire or vehemence Adeline had expected to see. It was worry, lifting over Adeline’s shoulder, and only then did Adeline realize that while they were arguing, they had become surrounded.
Neither of them had noticed the white car stop just ahead, nor the four men seemingly appear out of nowhere. They were dressed inconspicuously and showed off no tattoos, but they were undeniably kongsi. “What is this?” Tian said in a low voice. It was too public a place for a fight. Passersby were eyeing them warily, even as they gave them a wide berth.
“The boss just wants to talk to the Siow girl,” said one of the men. “This doesn’t have to be difficult.”
“Nine Horse wouldn’t dare bedifficultnow.” Tian’s lip curled. “How’s Inspector Liow treating you boys?”
Nine Horse. Adeline didn’t know how Tian had recognized them, but they’d signed the Act, retreating to the Turf Club andlegal horse bettings. When people mentioned their name nowadays, it was with that exact tone Tian had just used, like she’d found something squashed in the dirt.
The policeman’s name rang a bell, too. Since hearing about the Act, Adeline had been more attuned to news about it. Inspector Liow Jee Yeoh was one of its masterminds, the spokesperson for the anti-secret society operations. It was real, then. Nine Horse had sold out. Yet that also meant that they wouldn’t dare actually hurt her.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Tian continued.
“I want to hear what he has to say,” Adeline corrected, making Tian’s head snap toward her.
“Why?”
Partly because the idea of it was clearly scaring Tian, and Adeline had no intention of coddling her at the moment. But then partly because Nine Horse had asked for her by name—her mother’s name, admittedly, but also hers nonetheless. She was tired, she realized, of being maneuvered by Tian’s alternating conscience and defiance, just because she was her mother’s daughter, just because she’d been an outsider who’d needed someone to rely on. All this while she’d followed Tian’s plans, but now here was something only for her.
If Tian wouldn’t stand on her own, Adeline might as well show her how to do it.
“Go on, then,” she said. “Don’t wait for me. You don’t need me to tell Pek Mun about her mother.” She nodded to the Horses, who escorted her away without a second word and opened the door to the white car, waiting for her to get in.
She glanced back at Tian, head pounding at the sight of her stricken expression, then ducked inside.
CHAPTER FIFTEENTHE HORSE’S MOUTH
Inside the car, a middle-aged man in a batik shirt reclined by the opposite window. “You know who I am?”
He had a long, smiling face and the shadow of a receding hairline, a pair of spectacles perched on his broad nose. If not for the inked horses that cuffed both his forearms, and the cane with an ornately carved handle that rested against his door, she would have walked past him on the street and not spared a second glance.
“Three-Legged Lee.”
The smile pushed up his cheeks. “Good, you know how to call.”
“Where are you taking me?” Adeline asked, as the car purred to life beneath them.
“Scenic tour of Chinatown.” A terrible lie, even ironic—the rain had started to come, and it was rapidly progressing into a downpour. Tian must have been caught out in it. Lee angled in his seat so he could face Adeline more properly. His gaze trawled over her, but not in that leering way she’d become used to. “You don’t look like your mother.”
She’d expected this, to some measure, when his lackeys had identified her by surname. Yet it was unnerving anyhow to hear this stranger talk as if he had the right to know her mother so closely he could judge her presence in other people. “What do you know about her?”
“We grew up at the same time. Red Butterfly used to be much more powerful in the fifties, you know, when they were less afraid toburn things. Although which of us wasn’t more powerful back then? War makes people desperate to be part of something—or makes them easier to be exploited. Anyway, we all knew about the Butterfly girls. I knew someone sweet on your mother, but he never would have dared to make a move. No one was surprised she became Madam. It was a few more years before I took over Nine Horse.”
“And ran it to the ground,” Adeline muttered.
“Imagine my surprise,” he continued, ignoring her, “when I send my second man to her funeral and he comes back telling me there’s a girl wearing the daughter’s badge. And then imagine more of my surprise when I hear she’s been spotted around with Red Butterfly. Is it true? You have fire and no tattoo?”
He was too keen, all of a sudden. Adeline became very aware that she was locked in this car with him and his driver. Yet she instinctively wanted to keep the truth light. “I have one,” she said.
“Do you?” She wasn’t sure if he believed it, but he didn’t ask for proof. “And your mother—is it true that she had many of hers removed?”
Adeline didn’t respond, letting loyal silence cover the fact that she didn’t actually know. She’d burned away the tattoo that anchored her mother to Lady Butterfly, that much she now understood, but she hadn’t looked for any others. Her mother had never brought her to the swimming pool, or the beach—what Adeline had once assumed was a fear of water must inevitably have been a secrecy for fire instead, but she could not, as a result, have told if her mother’s tattoos had changed over the years. Could she really have gone so far as to have them removed?
Far from becoming impatient, Three-Legged Lee seemed almost smug at provoking her thoughts. “Your mother should have stepped down after Bukit Ho Swee,” he said. “Saved her own face and saved you all this trouble.”
