“I tried to, but I could never get near him,” Wei said starkly. “Everywhere he went, he had an entourage of guards. But I did manage to see Chun one last time at the market. We only had a few minutes, and I wanted to know if she’d ever seen her husband with an Englishman with a tattoo on his arm. She said that about two weeks prior to my family’s murder, Li had had visitors from the British factory. A group of traders who’d delivered a billiards table to him as a gift. She recalled the man with the tattoo specifically because he was one of the workers who’d carried in the table; he’d had his shirtsleeves rolled up, and the marking of vines and flowers caught her attention. She described him as being in his late twenties, with brown hair and ice-blue eyes.”
Glory’s forehead pleated. “If Chun’s husband knew about her adultery, was she safe?”
It was so like Glory to be worried about Chun. Her compassion for others was one of the many traits that made her special and rare.
“I asked her the same thing. Even asked her to leave with me that day,” Wei said tightly. “I felt responsible for her—felt I had to protect her however I could. But she refused to go with me. She didn’t want to leave the life she had. As much as she hated her husband, she found the idea of being with a penniless nobody even less tolerable. I tried to change her mind, but she would not budge. Said she would be fine, that she could manage Li.”
“I am glad you gave her a choice, even if she refused.”
“It wasn’t much of a choice,” he said darkly. “Living a life of luxury under the thumb of a rich, murderous bastard or being on a flit with a poor nobody with only vengeance on his mind.”
“You are not a nobody.” Glory looked so deeply into his eyes that he wondered if she could see his very essence. “And I would go on a flit with you any day.”
Her words made his throat tighten with wonder. Yet he couldn’t let himself be distracted when he had more to tell.
“Let’s hope it never comes to that.” He inhaled deeply. “After what Chun said, I knew without a doubt that Li was behind the murders of my kin. There was as much blood on his hands as those of the villain who’d held the knife to their throats. And I swore on my family’s graves that I would not rest until both men paid for their crimes.”
“Did you, um, get your revenge against Li?”
Her brows knitting, Glory posed the question as if she wasn’t certain she wanted to know the answer. Wei didn’t blame her. At the same time, he was not going to lie.
“Li was the chief authority of the village. He decided how and if justice was served, which meant that I would get no help through official channels. I decided that an eye for an eye was my only recourse,” he stated.
“You killed Li?” she whispered.
“I spent the first year trying to do so,” he replied. “A hotheaded fool, I didn’t consider that I had neither the skill nor the resources to carry out my plan. Unsurprisingly, I failed. On my last attempt, I narrowly escaped getting killed by his guards. I ended up a fugitive and had to flee the village and live under an assumed identity. I survived by finding work in the ports, living amongst the ruffians and pirates. I hated myself for my failure, was angry all the time. I drank, gambled, and whored. I got into brawls, most of which I did not win.”
He slid a look at Glory, seeing the surprise she couldn’t hide. Shame churned his gut at the man he’d once been. And maybe still was. The years of training with his shifu had changed some things, but how different was he at his core? Wasn’t he still a failure, still making selfish choices…which included starting an affair with his lovely, innocent pupil who deserved so much better than him?
“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” she said staunchly.
“That was me.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Eventually, I got into debt with a dockside moneylender, and when I could not pay, he had his brutes beat me nearly to death. In that moment, I didn’t care; I wanted to die.” He released a slow breath, needing to stay in the present, to not get swept up in the tide of despair. “But Shifu Lam came to my aid. He, a frail-looking old man, took on a gang of ruffians and sent them running like curs with their tails between their legs. I couldn’t believe it, begged him to teach me how to fight like him. And he said I would first have to prove myself worthy of being a student of kung fu.”
“What did you have to do?”
“It was more what I had to not do. I had to give up my vices for a year—no drinking, no gambling, no women. No unprovoked fighting.”
“Was it difficult?”
“At first. Slowly, it began to feel good, like I was applying a salve to a wound rather than tearing it open again and again.” A pang hit Wei’s chest as he recalled the start of his journey to recovery. “My shifu helped me to see that I was only hurting myself with my anger. That giving in to it was taking me farther and farther away from my goal of avenging my kin. He taught me different ways of managing my emotions.”
“Like what you teach your students?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “At first, I was impatient. Even resistant. Why did I need to learn to sit and contemplate when I had enemies to kill? Why did I need to spend hours reading books and studying philosophy when what I wanted to do was learn martial arts?”
“I understand completely.”
She spoke with such feeling that his lips quirked.
“Over time, I came to realize that my shifu was right. I wasn’t ready. The studying cleared my mind—helped me to see my mistakes and how much I had to learn. Only when I reached that state of acceptance and humility was I ready to become a student of kung fu. For seven years, I trained day and night, practicing everything my shifu taught me.”
“Your diligence certainly paid off,” she said.
Her unabashed admiration made his face warm. As a shifu, he was used to getting respect from his students. Yet Glory had a way of making him feel good, not only about his skills and ability to teach others. But about…himself.
But will she feel that way when I tell her the rest?
He forced himself to go on.
