This Crazy Rich Boy

Mrs. Gomez had woken up earlier than usual. There's a lot of stuff she must accomplish at the office. For starters, she needs to speak with Manolo, their vice president for legal, to relay Gabriel's short code message last night. Manolo would know exactly what to do.

She's already in the building lobby when her phone again beeps. Her heart jumps when he sees it's from Gabriel. The message contains a pinned geo-location, and her eyes squint as she reads it off the map. "Where in hell are you, Gab?" she mutters, realizing how far off the grid Gabriel seems to be. "And why are you sending me this?"

And as if the answer to her question, another message arrives. "Send care package to geo location."

Mrs. Gomez stops and thinks. Then she laughs loudly, so loud that even the security officer stops what he's reading and looks at her, worried. She waves him off. "Jesus, Gabriel," she mutters as she presses the elevator buŧŧon. "You went over there without bringing any luggage, didn't you? You didn't even have a change of clothes, and…" Mrs. Gomez smiles to herself. "I can't believe you're still wearing yesterday's undėrwėȧr." She laughs. But even so, she's already texting Lopez, Gabriel's butler, forwarding to him Gabriel's geo-location, along with his simple instructions. Lopez would know exactly what to do, too.

The office in the TXCI Tower seems business as usual. And there's no reason it shouldn't be. Nobody knows what happened yesterday. Mrs. Gomez expects to find the usual irritation in the office today—Michelle, for one, and Matilde. And for both, she must always wear her most gracious smile, don the most diplomatic persona. After all, at least for Matilde, she's doing this for Gabriel.

To her surprise, Mrs. Gomez finds Michelle Alcantara waiting for her at the receptionist desk, looking like she'd come straight from the nightclub after an entire night of losing her shit.

"Michelle," Mrs. Gomez says, smiling her best "good morning" smile. "What can I do you for?"

"Where's Gabriel and her little bitch?" Michelle says without a preamble.

Mrs. Gomez sighs. She places her bag on the desk. "Look, Michelle. Look at my little receptionist desk. What do you see?"

Michelle's brows knit in confusion as she actually looks around. Then she shrugs. "Nothing. It's a normal desk. What are you driving at?"

Mrs. Gomez smiles. "Do you see a sign anywhere that says, 'Ex-Fiancé Lost and Found Desk'?"

Michelle gazes at her blankly for a few moments, then gradually, the insult, the meaning of the sarcasm, dawns on her. For a split-second Michelle looks like she would really lose her shit, but at the last moment, she probably remembers who Mrs. Gomez really is—she's not a "normal" receptionist here. All this is a ploy, as she'd known from the years she'd been with Gabriel. Mrs. Gomez is here to help Gab know whom to trust and who talks shit behind his back. And people who were not aware of that are now long fired from the company.

So Michelle back-tracks, then summons her fakest smile. "That's a good one. I have always loved your sense of humor, Mrs. Gomez."

"You do, do you?"

Michelle says nothing. She just stares at Mrs. Gomez as she tidies up her desk and gets ready for another day serving the glorious holdings company of Gabriel Tan.

"Well, I only wanted to speak with Gabriel, you know," Michelle says after a long moment of awkward silence.

"I also wanted to speak with Gabriel," Mrs. Gomez says, knowing fully well that she must not speak of Gabriel's instructions last night. As much as possible, his detractors should not realize Gabriel's not here. If that gets out, then they would have to shift to Plan B, and she feels it's still too early to shift to Plan B. "And I haven't gotten hold of him. He's probably very busy doing very personal things, or maybe he's planning very private matters involving loved ones I would not need to name, which means whatever he does at this moment in time has nothing to do with me and does not need my services. Because otherwise he would have contacted me—and I would have known where Gabriel is right now, then I would have had an answer for you."

Mrs. Gomez smiles sweetly.

Michelle's mouth actually falls open. She's probably high. Mrs. Gomez could see Michelle's mental gears grinding and trying to understand what she just said, then failing miserably to process that simple information.

"I don't know where Gabriel is, Michelle. I also don't know where his little bitch is, right now. I'm just a little person."

"Okay," Michelle nods, and the way she does it gives away her drunkenness. "Okay. Thank you, then."

"One down, one more to go," Mrs. Gomez mutters; maybe in a few hours, just before lunch, it would be Matilde Tan darkening that elevator lobby, looking for his son "and that little bitch." Oh, Claire—why are you so popular and so beloved among these kinds of people?

Meanwhile, having received Mrs. Gomez's forwarded message, Lopez, Gabriel's butler, is so coolly dialing the emergency phone that he has always reserved for these moments. There are many "emergency codes" in his job, and Gabriel Tan makes it a point that the people who work closest to him know these codes by heart. And a single glance at the message, Lopez understood the magnitude of his responsibility.

"Mike, I'm sending you a geo-location pinned by Mr. Tan," Lopez says to the phone. "Please see it and decide if you'd need either a plane or a chopper."

"Is this an emergency package number one?" Mike says; as head of Gabriel's personal security, he already has an inkling of what's needed. "And where do we pick it up?"

"Here, at Mr. Tan's residence," Lopez says. "It should be ready in an hour."

"Got it. We won't fail."

Lopez smiles lightly as he puts down the phone. Yes, you must not fail, he says to himself. Because if you do, Mr. Gabriel Tan, one of the world's leading captains of industry, would not have clean, fresh undėrwėȧr to use in the coming days. If that happens, heads will roll—even if the man's head-over-heels in love.