A Love Left Behind

Chapter 29 - Later

Eleven months after I left the Philippines, I remembered Rose.

That's the sentence I hated most.

Because it wasn't true.

I hadn't forgotten her.

I'd thought about her while driving Chloe to appointments. I'd seen something she'd like and almost sent her a picture. I'd woken up some mornings expecting her name on my phone.

But thinking about someone wasn't the same as being there.

And I hadn't been there.

For eleven months, Rose had existed somewhere behind everything else.

Chloe.

Mum.

Hospitals.

Doctors.

Dad.

Rea.

Guilt.

There had always been something more urgent.

Until suddenly there wasn't.

And Rose was gone.

I called again.

Nothing.

I tried Kaelob.

His number didn't work.

Alice.

Nothing.

I searched online.

Rose's accounts had disappeared.

Kaelob's too.

I found the company.

There were articles.

Financial irregularities.

An investigation.

Missing funds.

I read faster.

Then slower.

One name stopped me.

Kaelob Tan.

Fraud.

Embezzlement.

Criminal investigation.

“What the f**k?”

I opened another article.

Then another.

The dates made me feel sick.

Four months after I'd come home.

I opened my messages with Rose.

Please call me. It's Kaelob.

Same week.

Another article.

Tan family business facing financial crisis.

I remembered her message.

Something is happening with the company.

I'd answered:

What happened?

Then disappeared.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

For the first time, I read everything.

Every message.

Not only the ones I'd answered.

The ones I'd opened while sitting in hospitals.

The ones I'd told myself I'd return to.

Damian, can you call?

Mum is scared.

Kaelob found something.

I don't know what's happening.

Please.

Then:

They took him.

I stopped.

I'd never read that one.

Or maybe I had.

I couldn't remember.

That was worse.

A few days later:

I really need you.

Then nothing for almost a week.

Then:

I hope Chloe is getting better.

After that, Rose never asked me to call again.

I pressed my hands against my face.

I'd spent months believing the world had demanded everything from me.

Apparently, it had demanded everything from Rose too.

And I hadn't even noticed.

I booked a flight.

I didn't tell anyone.

Not Mum.

Not Dad.

Not Chloe.

For once, I wasn't asking what anybody needed from me.

I was going to find Rose.

I never took that flight.

Something happened before I could.

Something that changed the question from Where is Rose?

to something much worse.

But that came later.

---

Twelve years later, a man sitting across from me told me something couldn't be done.

He had been speaking for nine minutes.

I let him finish.

That was something I'd learned with age.

At eighteen, I interrupted people.

At thirty, I let them explain exactly why they were incapable before replacing them.

“The acquisition simply isn't realistic on the current timeline,” he concluded.

I looked at the documents in front of me.

“How long do you need?”

“Six months.”

“You have six weeks.”

He laughed.

Nobody else at the table did.

His smile disappeared.

“Mr. Dado, with respect—”

“I don't pay you for respect.”

Silence.

“I pay you for solutions.”

“The regulatory process alone—”

“Then find a way through it.”

“There isn't one.”

I leaned back.

“Then I'll find someone who can.”

He stared at me.

My CFO didn't.

She already knew how this ended.

The man gathered his papers twenty minutes later.

He was no longer leading the acquisition.

By lunchtime, someone else was.

By evening, I had the revised plan.

Six weeks.

People liked to call me difficult.

Some preferred ruthless.

A magazine once called me obsessive.

They were all correct.

I didn't care.

You didn't build what I'd built by caring whether people enjoyed working with you.

You built it by winning.

My first company had almost destroyed me.

I was twenty-two and arrogant enough to believe a good idea was the same thing as a good business.

It wasn't.

I lost money.

Then more.

An investor pulled out forty-eight hours before we needed him.

I remember standing outside a bank with less money in my account than I'd had as a student.

Dad told me to stop.

Mum told me failure wasn't the end of the world.

Chloe told me to sleep.

I did none of those things.

I started again.

At twenty-four, I sold my first company.

Not for enough money to make me rich.

Enough to make people return my calls.

That was more valuable.

At twenty-five, I invested in a company everyone else thought was dying.

It wasn't.

It needed someone willing to remove half the management team and rebuild it.

I was.

At twenty-six, I made my first million.

I remember the number appearing on a screen.

I stared at it for maybe ten seconds.

Then went back to work.

I'd expected it to feel different.

It didn't.

At twenty-eight, journalists started using the word empire.

I hated the word.

Empires fell.

Companies could be controlled.

So I built companies.

Technology.

Investments.

Real estate.

Acquisitions.

I bought pieces of businesses until eventually people started selling them to me before I asked.

Money stopped being something I counted.

It became leverage.

Access.

Speed.

The difference between waiting six months for something and having it tomorrow.

I'd learned what helplessness felt like at eighteen.

I had no intention of experiencing it again.

My assistant entered the conference room after everyone else had gone.

“You have Munich at three.”

“Move it.”

“To when?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You're in London tomorrow.”

“Then Thursday.”

“Thursday is Madrid.”

I looked at her.

She sighed.

“I'll figure it out.”

“Thank you.”

She placed another folder in front of me.

“Mallorca.”

I opened it.

A property overlooking the sea.

Private access.

Enough land that the neighboring houses barely mattered.

My mother had mentioned wanting somewhere warm.

Chloe liked Spain.

I could afford to buy it without visiting.

That still occasionally struck me as absurd.

“Make the offer.”

“You haven't seen it.”

“I've seen pictures.”

“That's not usually how people buy houses.”

“I'm not buying it for me.”

She nodded.

“For your mother?”

“And Chloe.”

“How generous.”

“It isn't.”

She knew better than to ask.

I looked at the photographs again.

Blue water.

Stone walls.

Terraces.

Sun.

It reminded me of somewhere else.

I closed the folder.

“Anything else?”

She hesitated.

That usually meant yes.

“What?”

“We received the background report on the neighboring properties.”

“Why do I care?”

“You asked for privacy.”

“I asked whether anyone could build close enough to see onto the property.”

“They can't.”

“Then we're done.”

“There is one thing.”

I looked up.

She placed a second sheet in front of me.

Ownership structures.

Companies.

Names.

Most meant nothing.

Then one did.

Tan.

My hand stopped.

It had been twelve years.

Twelve years of deals.

Flights.

Hotels.

Boardrooms.

Women whose names I sometimes forgot before breakfast.

Twelve years of becoming exactly the man I'd told Rose I wanted to become.

Something big.

Big enough that nobody gets to tell me what I can or can't do.

I'd done it.

Nobody told me no anymore.

And still, three letters on a piece of paper could turn me back into an eighteen-year-old boy sitting on the edge of his bed.

T-A-N.

“Damian?”

I looked up.

My assistant rarely used my first name at work.

“What?”

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

She didn't believe me.

Smart woman.

I looked down again.

The company name was unfamiliar.

The ownership structure wasn't directly connected to the old furniture business.

It could mean nothing.

Tan wasn't exactly a rare name.

I closed the folder.

“Make the offer.”

“On the house?”

“Yes.”

“And the background check?”

I should have said no.

It had been twelve years.

Rose had made her choice.

So had I.

Whatever connection that name had to Mallorca was none of my business.

“Find out who owns it.”

My assistant nodded.

She took the folder.

At the door, I stopped her.

“Quietly.”

“Of course.”

The door closed.

I sat alone.

Outside the windows, Frankfurt stretched beneath me.

Somewhere down there were buildings I owned.

Companies that depended on my decisions.

People who waited when I was late and moved when I told them to move.

At eighteen, I'd wanted power because I thought power meant never being helpless again.

I'd been wrong.

There are some things money can't buy back.

Some calls you can't return twelve years later.

Some people don't wait for later.

I reached for my phone.

For one ridiculous second, I almost searched her name.

I didn't.

I hadn't searched Rose Tan in years.

I didn't need to.

I already knew what I would find.

I had found it once before.

The day I was supposed to fly back to the Philippines.

The day I learned that Rose wasn't waiting for me.

I closed my eyes.

White dress.

Her hand in someone else's.

A smile I had once believed belonged to me.

I opened my eyes.

No.

Not yet.

Some memories were better left exactly where you'd buried them.

My phone rang.

London.

I answered.

“Dado.”

And just like that, Rose disappeared again.

At least that's what I told myself.