Brother Betrayed

Five

Five“I will not hand over the Dragon Seal. Now just cut this rubbish and let me go!”

Oliver Chung stood angrily a table width away from his half-brother, his lean body tensed, intelligent brown eyes flashing. He waved his handcuffed wrists in front of his seated brother’s nose, and Ji Zeng felt the familiar burn of hatred flood his solar plexus. The bitter taste of bile rose in his throat, and he spat on the floor at his brother’s feet to rid himself of the foul taste.

Ji Ming had always assumed he had the right to command, just because he was the eldest. He would always be First Son by accident of birth. Not that he’d ever done anything to earn the status. Ji Zeng always suspected it was because his father valued the foreigner who was his brother’s mother above his own — one of the comprador’s concubines — and that suspicion festered in him. The haughty gweilo who was Ji Ming’s mother hadn’t honored Ting Hon as a dutiful wife should. She fled back to England and took her son with her. He leaned back, arms crossed, and regarded Ji Ming in cold silence.

He pictured the jade chop, sinuous characters finely carved into the circular face, nestled in a golden silk wrap in a leather pouch and locked away in a place known only to the one authorized to use it — the Dragon Seal. Once that person had been his father; now it was the right of the brother in front of him, infuriatingly blind to the jeopardy he faced. Ji Ming thought the old rules still applied — that he could still call on his father as the final arbiter in tough decisions. Zeng had to suppress a triumphant laugh at the thought.

“You’re not going anywhere, dear brother mine, until you hand over the chop. I need it to do the day-to-day business, that’s all.” He threaded his fingers and flexed them back, making his knuckles crack.

Ollie leaned into Zeng’s face. “You need it to milk millions from the accounts for some malodorous personal whim!” They were arguing in furious, guttural street Cantonese. He shrugged and clasped his hands tightly in front of him as he turned towards the huge stone fireplace that took up two thirds of one wall in the underground room. “It’s damn cold in here. Where are we, anyway, and how long are you planning on maintaining this damnable charade?”

“Where we are is none of your concern. You won’t be leaving.”

Ollie looked at him sharply. “You really have gone mad, Ji Zeng. Do you think you can just make me vanish off the face of the earth because you don’t like having me around? Has that old hag you’re selling women to turned your head so far it’s stuck up your backside?”

Zeng jumped to his feet and lashed out across the table with a jabbing fist, snapping his brother’s head sideways and back. Ollie staggered, tipping over the chair he’d been leaning on, his cheekbone patterned with an angry red welt. “You really do not get it, do you?” Zeng dropped his voice to a menacing hiss. “You have been replaced. I got tired of waiting for you to grab the gigantic opportunities we have right under our noses. I’m in charge now, and under me, Black Dragon will be invincible. Unstoppable. And very rich.” Ollie smashed his hands palms-down on the table that separated them. The handcuff chain rattled loudly against the wooden top. “And very dead. You’ll destroy lives, and very likely end up destroying yourself and the Black Dragon. Can’t you see how it will end?”

Zeng sneered. “You can be sure of one thing, our rivals in the Six Companies — the Sam Yups and the Kong Chows and so forth — aren’t holding back. If we don’t move, by the end of the year they’ll control the vice business. There will be no room for anyone else. Black Dragon has to step up now or be left behind.” Hands braced on the table top, he glared into Ollie’s face, nose to nose.

“Then let them.” Ollie edged closer, jaw jutted defiantly.

Zeng could feel Ollie’s breath on his face. “The decision has already been made. And even your fine cousin Sir John Russell agrees. He’s ready to do a deal whenever we want.”

Ollie’s shoulders jerked in shock, and his throat flushed a patchy red. “You’re lying! John would never get involved with something so shady. He might be ruthless in business, but he would never go into trafficking. Apart from anything else, he couldn’t stand to have his reputation sullied.”

Zeng threw back his head and roared with laughter. “No one will know. It’s all ‘mysterious China business’, so who cares? Russell recognizes a good deal when he sees it. No risk to him and a great return on investment.”

His brother stared back at him. “I don’t believe you. I want proof. In fact, I want to ask him myself.”

“That won’t happen. You need to get a grip on your change in status, brother. You are no longer the boss. I am. You can accept that and move over quietly, or not. Choose the ‘or not’ and it will go badly for you. You and your precious daughter.”

Ollie looked up sharply and his wrist irons rattled. “What are you saying? You leave my family out of this. It’s a business dispute. Lily and Selina have nothing to do with it.”

“That’s where you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a fortune at stake and I need that seal. I can’t clear the shipments coming next month without it, so I’m willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get it. Extraordinary. I bet I know more about where Lily goes and what she does than you do. I’ve made it my business to know. Call it my guarantee.”

Zeng sat back in his chair, legs crossed, heels on the table edge, and rocked it on two legs, his arms behind his head, a study in languid arrogance. “I’m sure there’s a rebel general somewhere in our benighted homeland who’d pay big money for an English-Chinese concubine. Quite a commodity when you think of it. It’s not unthinkable she’d fetch $5000 or more. There was a pretty girl — a dancer with a theatrical bent — who went for $3000 last week, and she didn’t have anything like Lily’s fatal charm. For a start, she wasn’t a virgin.”

His brother’s face glistened a sickly white. “You wouldn’t sink that low!”

“You have no idea how far I’m ready to go to build the empire of my imagining,” Zeng replied. “No idea.” He was back in the Gold House bedroom, slicing across Beautiful Jade’s throat. His nose filled with the hot metallic smell of blood, overriding the acrid scent of fear that reached him from the other side of the table, where Ji Ming sweated.

Ollie crumpled onto the floor, his face in his hands. “I don’t have the seal,” he rasped through his fingers. “I couldn’t give it to you even if I wanted to. I have no idea where it is.”