The Billionaire I Was Forced to Leave

Chapter 5: The Devil of Chinatown

The ringtone was a fracture in the carefully reconstructed glass house of Jane’s life. When Miranda’s name flashed on the screen, the scent of expensive citrus and leather from Julian’s hotel suite vanished, replaced by the suffocating smell of stale tobacco and cheap incense.

One word from her sister, and the dam broke. Jane was ten years in the past, standing in the shadows of a backroom that the sun never reached.

In the heart of London’s Chinatown, where the neon signs flickered like dying stars, Harold Chow was more than a man. He was a shadow that touched everything. From the high-stakes baccarat tables in hidden basements to the dim sum parlours where protection money was paid in blood and grease, Harold’s name was whispered with a shudder.

He was the “Big Boss” of the Chinese people in London, a spider at the centre of a web that trapped every immigrant family desperate enough to dream. He knew many secrets of Chinese people.

On paper, he sat on the boards of four compliance-rated charitable foundations, his name printed in annual reports alongside judges, MPs, and the heads of city institutions. Beneath that, he was something those reports would never name: the hidden link in London’s Chinese business circles, especially when people needed to deal with a vast sums of money. The quiet mechanism through which fortunes moved across borders without leaving fingerprints in any jurisdiction that mattered. Legitimacy, Harold had always understood, was simply the most expensive kind of cover.

Jane remembered him vividly. He was a portly man, his expensive silk suits struggling to contain a body softened by excess but fuelled by cruelty. He always wore a pair of pitch-black sunglasses, even in the dead of night, hiding eyes that Jane imagined were as cold and reptilian as a snake’s. To the world, he was a pillar of the community; to the Li family, he was the Devil himself.

——

The flashback hit Jane with the force of a physical blow.

She saw Miranda, her beautiful sister, standing in Harold’s private office above the Fire Dragon Casino. The room was thick with the cloying scent of sandalwood and the rhythmic clack-clack of mahjong tiles from the floor below.

Miranda looked like a wilted lily. She had been the pride of their neighbourhood: a girl with skin like porcelain and a mind that could solve complex equations faster than a computer. She should have been at university. She should have been a doctor, an architect, a queen. Instead, she was a waitress at one of Harold’s seediest bars, her education sacrificed to put food on Jane’s plate and pay for their mother’s failing lungs.

“Please, Harold,” Miranda’s voice was a ragged whisper, a sound that tore at Jane’s heart. “My mother… the hospital bills… we just need another month. I’ll work double shifts. I’ll do anything.”

Harold didn’t look up from the gold coin he was flipping between his fat, ring-encrusted fingers. He sat behind a desk of carved rosewood, his black sunglasses reflecting Miranda’s trembling form.

“Anything, Miranda?” Harold’s voice was a wet, oily rasp. “You’ve been saying ‘anything’ for two years. But the debt doesn’t sleep. It grows. It eats. Right now, it’s eating your mother’s life and your sister’s future.”

“I know,” Miranda sobbed, her knees hitting the dirty carpet. “Just… mercy. For the sake of the years I’ve worked for you.”

Harold finally looked up. He leaned forward, his breathing heavy and rhythmic. “I don’t want your shifts, Miranda. I don’t want you serving drinks to gamblers who aren’t fit to wash your feet. You’re a classic beauty. A rare flower in a field of weeds.”

He reached out, his hand—soft and damp—stroking Miranda’s cheek. Jane, watching from the crack in the door, felt a wave of nausea so strong she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming.

“The debt is fifty thousand pounds,” Harold murmured, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly intimate level. “You could work a hundred years in my bars and never pay the interest. Or… you could pay it all tonight.”

Miranda looked up, a spark of desperate hope in her eyes. “How?”

“Marry me.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“Marry me, and the debt vanishes,” Harold continued, his grip on her chin tightening. “Your mother gets the best private room in the city. Your sister stays in school. But if you say no…” He paused, his expression hardening behind the dark lenses. “Tomorrow, there might suddenly be a reason for your mother to be deported. And Jane? I think I have a place for a girl like her in my ‘special’ clubs.”

Miranda didn’t scream or fight against his predatory conquest. She simply went still, the light in her eyes flickering out like a candle in a gale.

Everyone in Chinatown lamented the waste. A tragedy, they whispered over tea. Such a kind soul, such a brilliant mind, chained to a monster. Jane remembered the nights before the “wedding.” She remembered Miranda coming home from the bars, her feet blistered, her spirit crushed, yet she would still sit by Jane’s bed and stroke her hair. Miranda had dropped out of school at seventeen, trading her dreams for a tray and a uniform so that Jane could have a chance at a different life. She had been the shield that took every blow intended for their family.

And in the end, she had made the ultimate sacrifice. She had walked into the gilded cage of Harold Chow’s mansion to buy Jane’s freedom with her own soul.

——

“Jane? Are you there?” Miranda’s voice on the phone was thin and fragile, dripping with a fear she couldn’t hide.

Jane clutched the phone so hard her hand began to ache, her knuckles white with rage. She was already feeling the snap of a trap closing.

The image of Harold’s smug, masked face merged with the memory of Julian’s dark brown eyes in the hotel suite. Both men thought they could own her. Both men thought women like her and Miranda were just pieces on a board.

But the Jane of ten years ago was dead. The girl who watched from the shadows, helpless and weeping, had been replaced by a woman who knew how to turn a balance sheet into a death sentence.

“I’m here, Miranda,” Jane said, her voice dropping into a cold, lethal calm.

“Jane… he’s angry,” Miranda whispered. “The Sinclair audit… he thinks you’re involved.”

Jane’s fingers tightened around the phone.

Outside the window, London rain blurred the lights into streaks of silver.

Then Miranda gasped.

A door slammed somewhere in the background.

“Jane…” she breathed, panic flooding her voice.

“He’s coming upstairs.”