Rei waited until the water ran in the bathroom, washing Sébastien's long nights away in a deluge of hot water.
"Why are you taking him?" Diego said.
Despite the fact that Diego had a broad frame and was probably double her weight, Rei was not intimidated. She was slight and led a career full of run-ins with men who meant her harm. Diego didn't, not really. He wanted the truth, and he would no doubt return it to her. Rei got the distinct impression that he would be honest with her in a way that Sébastien never would.
"Because my brother is in the wrong and I don't know what else to do about it," Rei said. She kept her gaze steady, refusing to shrink under scrutiny.
"That's the best you can do?" Diego said.
Rei pursed her lips. "It'll die down eventually," she insisted, "it doesn't have to be a permanent arrangement."
If the police found Cheng with all the artifacts he'd had Sébastien steal, then there would no longer be a need to find a suspect. Rei could eventually make herself known again, resurface when her responsibilities were taken over by lawyers. They wouldn't be on the run. They would just be on vacation. They would be lying low.
"All I know about you is that you have a lot of money and Baz talks about you like you invented sliced bread," Diego said. "What I know about him is that he'll let almost anyone direct him around if it means he doesn't have to make his own decisions. Whose idea was it? Running off to France?"
Rei's face may have betrayed her. What did she do to deserve to be idolized? In the day they had spent together, the shine had almost certainly worn off. While she convinced so many that she was fearless, strong, unaffected, all of the qualities listed in magazines as her incomparable virtues... beneath it all was a shaky foundation.
Rei leaned forward, her hair threatening to fall into her eyes. "Mine," she admitted. "Is this your 'if you hurt him' speech?"
Diego's expression remained unchanged. That's exactly what it was."All I'm saying is you just convinced Baz to break into your brother's house carrying a bag of stolen shit while you do nothing but buy a couple plane tickets out of here. If anything happens to him, that's on you."
Rei wavered a moment. Was there a person on Earth that would talk about her like that? Had she ever done anything to inspire someone to be so concerned for her wellbeing? Rei's heart said no. Rei Collingwood disappeared and bloody Sébastien Barret was the one who came looking for her. Her own brother just fabricated her kidnapping. It seemed like her parents were happy to leave Cheng to solve the issue.
"I won't let anything bad happen," Rei promised. Her certainty crawled under her own skin. It wouldn't. Like Diego said, it would be on her. If Sébastien decided to put his faith in her, Rei decided wholeheartedly that she would deserve it. It was the least she could do. It was perhaps the only chance she had to build for herself what Sébastien already had: the kind of personality that made people want to defend him.
Diego eased, his posture shifting ever so slightly. "Can you make promises like that?"
She nodded. She could. She could ensure Sébastien's success because if he didn't succeed... well, Rei could manage that too.
She just didn't want to.
"How'd you meet?" Rei asked quietly. Where had Sébastien found this hulking bodyguard? What had Diego done to earn Sébastien's trust? Rei let her certainty fall, her Collingwood training dropping away. Not everything was the competition her father tried to teach her it was. She wasn't trying to win the conversation nor did she intend to interrogate information out of Diego. There was a value to sincerity that she wondered if her brother ever learned.
"Baz was a human wreck that stumbled into my gym looking for a massage therapist," Diego said. "He offered to be my guinea pig for all these classes I took. When he took up parkour and spent more time at that gym, he sent everybody there my way for sports medicine."
There it was. Rei knew what she had to do next, if only to make good on her promise. She had to do what was in her power to ensure Cheng faced the consequences of his desperation.
"You?" Diego asked.
"Art history with my favorite professor. He just wouldn't let me be the smartest person in class," Rei said. She pulled herself up from the chair.
"You already knew each other." It wasn't a question, but it was definitely news to Diego. Rei only nodded in response. They did indeed, in a different lifetime.
Rei took the pencil and notebook still lying on the island where Diego left it as soon as Rei and Sébastien interrupted.
"Should you need to stay good on your word, there's my number," Rei said, penciling it into the corner of the paper. "I've got a few errands to run."
It was best to leave while Sébastien remained preoccupied.
***
For the first and likely last time, Rei witnessed a press conference surrounding her own disappearance.
Her kidnapper remained at large, Cheng informed the small audience of reporters. The police would surely find the perpetrator soon. After all, they now had what they didn't have before: a description of the man responsible. He wore all black, particularly strange shoes and a cowl to hide his face. Caucasian. Athletic. Under six feet tall.
Rei tipped down her sunglasses, eyeing Cheng over the frames. The reporters held all of his attention, his gaze never once flicking to her where she stood across the street.
In the shadow of Sundial Security, Cheng appeared as crisp and mechanical as ever. No amount of corporate improv classes could turn him into a believable performer. Even when discussing the tragic disappearance of his only sister, Cheng gave his account of events as blandly as if he were reporting the weather.
Their legacy towered behind him, blocking out the sun and casting its shadow through the streets. It was theirs, as rightfully Rei's as much as it was Cheng's. Had her father thought the gift would entice Rei back into business? All Sundial did was drive a wedge deeper between siblings. Cheng could never have full control as long as Rei was around.
Did he wish she really was dead?
The police spoke their piece as well, answering the sharp journalists who demanded to know how the perpetrator continued to slip through their fingers. Cheng lamented the loss of ransom money. Reporters asked what their parents had to say about all this.
Rei listened idly behind a newspaper, flicking to the next page every once in awhile, eyes only grazing over headlines.
"What next?" a reporter asked, pen at the ready for Cheng's inevitable premeditated answer.
Rei's head shot up, needing the answer more than any reporter did. Let it be something out of town. Let it be spending the entire day describing a kidnapper who didn't exist. Let it be anything that kept him far, far away from home.
Cheng emulated their father so well, mimicking Giles Collingwood's wide stance, shoulders back as he spoke. Perfect posture made the most of every last inch of his modest height. Cheng could copy their father, maintaining eye contact and declaring in his body language how capable and powerful he was, but he did not inherit stature. Their mother was to blame for that.
Neither parent was present at the press conference. As far as Rei had heard, neither made the trip from England to fret over her. She suspected she knew why, a reason that she didn't very much care to consider. Rei had decided to make the transition from London to Temperance first. Her father made Temperance his center of operations afterward. While Cheng was left to oversee Sundial, he was also left to oversee Rei. She was Cheng's to lose. Her disappearance was his failure and her parents readily let him wade in the consequences of letting her slip out of his grasp.
"My lawyers and I will be meeting tomorrow to discuss what further actions are within my power to take. We are presently discussing a reward for any information regarding the whereabouts of my sister or her kidnapper," Cheng said.
"Do you think he'll give me the reward?"
Rei started, the newspaper crumpling in her balled fists as she twisted to the voice. She didn't need to turn to know who had come to lurk over her shoulder.
She gritted her teeth as he drew off his sunglasses to clean the lenses.
"Are you planning on coming forward for kidnapping me?" Rei asked, purposefully leaving her sunglasses on. She dared not let her eyes betray her, despite the fact that the only emotion she could possibly convey in the moment was hatred.
Jasper smiled a thin smile, replacing his sunglasses over his eyes. "I don't plan on it," he said.
"Here's a question, Jasper. What is stopping me from waltzing into that media circus and clearing up this whole misunderstanding?" Rei said. She could do it. It would derail her plan to disappear, but a spiteful desire to make Cheng's life difficult beckoned her. Perhaps that was the truest sign they were siblings, never quite outgrowing their childhood refusal to share.
"I'm so glad you asked," Jasper said. "Without Ferrero or Sundial, who would donate to your museum, Rei? Who would sponsor your fundraisers?"
Rei scoffed. "Without Sundial? Jasper, I'm about to hold majority share. I won't need to suck up to him."
Jasper's thin smile stretched and a chill shuddered up Rei's spine. She'd said something wrong. He baited her and she took it, a hungry fish on the line.
"So it's true, then? Angelo intends to leave his shares to you," Jasper said. He suspected, she confirmed.
Jasper went so far as to hire someone to steal the will, and Rei had just told him what he wanted to know.
"That's all you wanted you to know? That was worth trashing my room, was it?" Rei quipped, swallowing back the fear of whatever conniving plan Jasper may have pitched to Cheng.
"It wasn't me. It wasn't Cheng. Maybe you're just much better at making enemies than you are at making friends," Jasper said.
Rei gritted her teeth. At least that still granted her a step up from Cheng, buying his friends and his influence. Cheng wasn't the only person interested in seeing what Angelo planned to leave her. Rei should've expected that.
"What were you going to do? Shred it?" Rei asked.
"That would've been easiest, but I can get creative," Jasper said. "I'm sure we can work out an arrangement that works for everyone."
Rei rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses, a look her mother would've told her was unladylike and childish.
"You don't have anything I want, Jasper," she said. Money and majority share were things Cheng desperately wanted. Always more. Always something to prove that he was better, the best. Anything to show their parents, like they might put Sundial's third-quarter report up on the fridge like crayon drawings.
Rei had given up chasing approval. It would always be Cheng's weakness that he still sought it. Until a tower taller than the Compass bore the Collingwood name, they wouldn't afford their children a second glance.
"Don't I?" Jasper said, "Sundial needs capital to invest into research and development. You have the money, we'll see a return, Sundial invests it into your museum programs. Everyone wins."
There was a catch. In all her long years working toward her masters, Faraday had never taught her the art of manipulation and negotiation the way business school might have. Rei knew relics. She knew how to restore the ancient into something identifiable and whole. She knew pottery, arrowheads, art, and rock.
Jasper knew how to exploit people.
"I think when I'm in charge, I'll have you fired," Rei said dryly.
She glanced up at the press conference, the reporters and their cameramen packing up their equipment. Cheng was gone, vanishing back into his business. For all their pressing questions, the accusatory tone of their demands, not a single journalist glanced over their shoulder to spot the subject of the chaos across the street.
"Rei, I've convinced a whole city that you've been kidnapped. What makes you think I couldn't create a scandal surrounding the Temperance Museum of History?" Jasper said.
Rei stiffened. Now, why on earth would anyone ever fire Jasper? He was completely wholesome and full of the utmost integrity.
"Your mistake is always thinking you have the upper hand, Jasper," Rei said, standing up and lowering her sunglasses. "Cockiness is not a good look on you." Neither was the cut of that suit, but Rei held her tongue long enough to avoid stooping to that level of pettiness.
Fear rippled through her like a chill up her spine, despite her indignance. She couldn't leave soon enough. She would pack immediately, ready to leave at the drop of a hat, before she could make more mistakes.
"Your mistake is assuming I don't," he said. His hand closed around his wrist.
Rei whipped around, striking him hard in the throat with her free hand. As much as she relished the idea of a swift kick to the ribs, cracking a few, there were still police across the street, preoccupied, but present.
Jasper's grip loosened and Rei broke free.
She ran.