At that moment, Charlie knew she was out of her mind. Isabel could do some outrageous things, but she was never profane. “I’m not jealous—” he began calmly.

“Well then, stop spoiling all the fun for the rest of us!” Isabel declared, going back to her chair. She straddled her male model this time and began swaying to the music.

It was obvious to Charlie that Isabel was in the midst of a manic high, and sooner or later she was going to come crashing down, and who knows what she would do. It was useless to argue with her like this. He grabbed Chloe and Delphine by their hands and marched them toward the exit. At the front door, he whispered to Jonny Fung, “You don’t let Isabel out of your sight, you hear me? And don’t let her leave the house until I come back tomorrow morning with her doctors.”

“Of course,” the head of security nodded.

—

At 3:00 a.m., Charlie was woken up by a phone call. Seeing it was Isabel, he rolled over onto his back with a sigh and answered.

“Where are my girls?” Isabel said, sounding preternaturally calm.

“They’re here with me. Fast asleep.”

“Why did you drag them off like that?”

“I didn’t drag them off. They were only too happy to leave the freak show and come home with me.”

“You know, you deprived them of seeing Ute’s full performance. She sang three encores. She sang ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.’ And I wanted Chloe to meet Tilda Swinton. When will she ever get a chance like this again?”

“I’m sorry, Isabel. I’m sorry Chloe didn’t get a chance to meet Tilda. But apparently she’s friends with Astrid, so maybe she’ll have another chance—”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about Astrid! Don’t you see that there are people suffering in the world? Do you know we raised two million dollars tonight for the earthquake victims? Think of all the children we are helping!”

Charlie gave an exasperated laugh. He knew it was pointless to argue with her when she was having one of these episodes, but he couldn’t help himself. “You could start with your own children.”

“So you think I’m a bad mother,” Isabel said, suddenly sounding very sad.

“I don’t think that. I think you’re a wonderful mother, but you’re just having a bad night.”

“I am NOT having a bad night! I am having a fantabulous evening! I am a charity fund-raiser par extraordinaire, and I am trying to help our children.” Isabel began to sing in a slow, soulful voice: “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and leeeeeet them lead the way…”

“Izzie, it’s three in the morning. Can we stop with the Whitney Houston?” Charlie said wearily.

“I’ll never stop! Those bastards crushed Whitney’s spirit, but they will never crush mine, do you hear me?”

“Izzie, I’m going to sleep now. I will see you tomorrow morning first thing. I’ll bring the girls home before school so they can change into their uniforms.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me, Charlie Wu!” Isabel demanded. But it was too late. Charlie had hung up. He had hung up on her in the way that he never used to. Isabel’s mind went into a roller-coaster dip as she stared out the window onto the crashing waves of the ocean. Unbeknownst to Charlie, she had been sitting in the bedroom of his new house in Shek O during the entire call. Foiling her security crew, she had swapped outfits with Ute Lemper after her second encore and slipped unnoticed out of her own party in a deep red velvet dress. She had taken the first car in the valet line and driven in a manic rage all the way to Charlie’s house. She had punched in the code she remembered: 110011. And now she was wandering through the empty Tom Kundig–designed house, spiraling into greater and greater rage.

So this is what it’s going to be like now. This is how it is now that you have your new life in this perfect glass house by the sea. This boring bourgeois Architectural Digest fantasy, with all your boring mid-century furniture and that boring little decorative object you wake up next to every morning. Because that’s what she is. That Astrid Leong and her sham aesthetics. Just because she wears Alexis Mabille to lunch she thinks she’s hot shit, she thinks she’s an original. She’s nothing but a perfectly bred decorative doll with no substance and no grit. Everyone thinks she’s soooo exquisite and soooo elegant, but I know the truth. I know what kind of woman she really is.

Isabel leaned against the dining table, took out her cell phone, and swiped around the screen furiously until she found what she was looking for. It was a video clip she had saved in a locked folder. It was the video of Charlie and Astrid making love, and as she played the video, the sound of their moans echoed through the vast, empty house. Look at her. She’s no better than a whore. Look at the way she straddles him, commanding his invading prick like she’s riding one of her Thoroughbreds. This isn’t a woman who will just settle for being “friends” with Chloe and Delphine. This is a woman who wants it all. And because of all her money she thinks she can buy whatever she wants. She bought Charlie and now she wants to buy my children and buy their love and turn them into little carbon copies of herself, with long ballerina necks and perfect couture outfits. She wants to sit in this perfect house and look out at the perfect view of the sea with my daughters and stroke their hair in the golden sunlight and twirl them around the garden like they are all in some goddamn Terrence Malick movie and convince them that this is the only life they should ever want. “You’ll always be welcome here,” she says. Like hell I will. The day after her wedding she’s going to shut me out forever. I just know it. She thinks she’s going to erase me from their lives, but I will never let this happen. Never never never! With trembling fingers, Isabel jammed out a message on the gossip columnist Honey Chai’s WeChat message board:

Astrid Leong has stolen my life. She is a cheating, husband-stealing whore. Just look at her whoring herself in this video. She is nothing but a vapid rich girl, an heiress to an evil fortune that destroys our planet. I curse her! I curse Charlie Wu! I curse this house built on deceit and sin! For the rest of eternity, there will never ever be any peace in this house!

Isabel attached the video clip and hit “post,” as the video streamed out to millions of WeChat users all over the world. Then she climbed up on the wooden Nakashima dining table as if it was a giant surfboard, took off her long velvet gown, rolled it into a tight long rope and threw one end around the Lindsey Adelman chandelier. She fastened the other end taut over the white, tender part of her neck and inched to the edge of the table slowly, step by step, gazing out the window at the moonlit sea. And then she jumped.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TYERSALL PARK, SINGAPORE

“It was an epic fail, a disaster of titanic proportions,” Carlton sighed over the phone to his sister as he recounted his date with Scheherazade.

“I’m so sorry, Carlton—it sounds traumatic,” Rachel said. “So what happened after Colette dropped her bombshell?”

“Well, it basically killed the dinner for everyone. Scheherazade didn’t eat a thing after that, and I bolted right after dessert was served. It became apparent to me that Scheherazade’s parents were going to file a restraining order against me if I stuck around one minute longer.”