This Crazy Rich Boy

It takes Gabriel's housekeeping staff a few minutes to clean up Claire's mess, who is inconsolable on the big boss chair. Gabriel is standing in a corner, watching her, trying to make up his mind. How does he tell the entire thing?

"I don't even remember drinking it," she says, her voice still quaking. Claire couldn't wrap her mind around the fact of it, what a close call it had been.

Gabriel says nothing. Who could blame her? Claire is as innocent as they come; she probably has a picture of reality in her head where justice and fairness exist, where people mean well. She never could have imagined that someone like Jake exists, and one so near.

Gabriel also had no idea about Jake's secret persona. There were rumors of what a womanizer he was, but Gabriel had dismissed that as being of a sales executive's reputation. You wouldn't be so successful selling stuff if you couldn't make up sweet lies to seduce people.

And besides, it was largely Gabriel's fault that Claire was left in harm's way—he should have done more effort in protecting her. It took that attempted **** for Gabriel to hire bodyguards to watch her every single day—although Claire, even now, doesn't know it. The bodyguards he hired are expert in subterfuge—they can tail someone by hiding in their blind spot, blend in, hide in plain sight. The proof of their expertise is the fact that Claire has no idea they exist. Gabriel wouldn't tell her about the bodyguards. Not yet. Perhaps there's a right time for such a confession.

But now, he must reveal the sordid details as much as possible, without traumatizing her. But how to do it?

"After you passed out," Gabriel says, "Jake brought you to his car and drove all the way to the city's outskirts. He has a house there, in a community where people never suspected anyone of anything. Perhaps they're the kind of neighbors who see a man dragging an unconscious woman to his house as something 'normal', the result of too much partying."

"He brought me to his house?" Claire exclaims. "Where was that?"

"A few miles outside the city."

Claire tries to imagine it, and the more details Gabriel gives, the more the biggest question in her head grows: How in hell was she saved?

"Are you saying Jake had successfully drugged me and brought me to his place, and somehow he was stopped?"

Gabriel shrugs, as though it was no big deal. But inside, he's desperately trying to make shit up in order for Claire to believe his own version of the story. He couldn't tell her there's a GPS transmitter the size of a grain of rice in her blond wig. He couldn't tell her that he only realized she was out of the city because his smartwatch set off an alarm, that he grew instantly suspicious when her supposed location was in an area she was never known to go. That it took him less than half an hour to race to that location because he had connected the dots—Jake Magno was a womanizer, Jake was seen speaking flirtatiously to Claire that afternoon, both Jake and Claire were unavailable, and an hour later, Claire was in a strange location outside the city. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. And besides, he had the gut feeling that something terrible was up.

"Yes," he begins, "and maybe it was just pure luck that I needed to see Jake that evening for some urgent sales report."

"Really?"

"Yes, of course," he says with a straight face. AND THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST ACTOR GOES TO… "I tried calling him up but he was not answering. I thought I should go straight to his place to better discuss the matter."

"You mean I'm sitting here now, still alive, only because you needed to discuss a sales report with that monster? What if there was no problem with his sales report?"

"I, uhh…" Jesus, more and more, Gabriel seems digging a deeper and deeper hole. "Well, I was also looking for you that night, and… And…"

Claire raises an eyebrow.

"…And because I saw you speaking with Jake, I thought maybe, in the off chance, maybe you were together."

Claire sighs. "But what if he brought me to someplace else?"

I would still know because of the transmitter, Gabriel wants to say. But Claire cannot know that now. Not yet. "I wouldn't have stopped trying to look for you. I would have combed the streets just to find you. And just to let you know, I have sharp instincts about these things. I'm almost like a psychic."

"You can't be serious," Claire says.

"Well, I did find you, didn't I?"

Claire takes a deep breath in exasperation. Gabriel doesn't seem to be getting it. From her perspective, Gabriel was able to save her only by the thinnest thread of chance. If he were late by a few more minutes, she would have been a goner. But more and more, Claire feels that Gabriel isn't telling her everything. "Are you sure that's how it happened?"

Gabriel bites his tongue. He shrugs. It takes him an enormous amount of will not to say what was true. "But the bottom line is I found you in the nick of time. I stopped him. I stopped him with extreme prejudice. You have no idea what I did to him when I saw what he was trying to do to you."

Claire almost doesn't want to hear it, but she feels she must face it. She wants to be shocked down to the core of her being, so that she'll remember this, burn this in her brain, so that hopefully, she would sense someone like Jake Magno from miles away. If that makes sense. "How was it, then?"

Gabriel pauses. He looks out the glass wall. Really, he's just trying to buy time, composing the narrative in his head. "I kicked the living daylights out of him."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Gabriel says, all blasé. "When I first came, he was like, 'why are you here, man?' But even then I knew something was up. He was nervous. And he didn't want me to enter the house. So I shoved him then I began looking for you in the rooms."

Claire is nodding; she's straddling that "should I believe this shit, or not" fence, but Gabriel is in the middle of his narrative, and he's starting to be emotional.

"And then, boom! I saw you in a room, in bed, just lying there and not moving. And in that split-second, I knew what was happening. I knew what he was up to. So I whirled around, and on reflex I ducked—I narrowly dodged his punch! And you know how Jake is, he looks like he could kill a bull. But I also knew it was a matter of life or death—for both of us—so I let out all the rage in me and hit him in the most painful places."

"So you instantly transformed into, like, a martial arts superhero or something?" Claire says, tongue in cheek.

"Yeah, absolutely," Gabriel says, and he's becoming more and more animated in his gestures. "At one point, Jake had a baseball bat, and he was pummeling at me left and right! The walls explode in powder as the bat hits it instead of me, because luckily I still got my moves and I was like a buŧŧerfly, just dancing around and flying, with all the footwork and the moves, you know."

"Oh, I see."

"And then finally, I surgically punched him in all his vital points, and before he knew it, he was down on the floor, paralyzed with pain."

"Poor Jake," she says, not really meaning it. "I didn't know you're such an awesome fighter, Mister Tan." Claire tries hard to stifle her laughter.

Gabriel shrugs, like it's no big deal. "No big deal," he actually says. "By trying to harm you, he just brought out the beast in me. I can never let anyone hurt a single hair on you, Claire."

There's something about that last line that ċȧrėssed Claire's heart. Of all Gabriel's bluster, it's that last line that impresses her. It feels like it's the only true thing in Gabriel's entire story. "Thank you," she mutters, softly. "Now I know. Despite everything, I'm sitting here talking to you, alive, because of what you did. Thank you Gabriel."

Gabriel is taken aback; one moment he was building himself up as this indefatigable white knight, the next moment Claire's nȧkėd gratitude hits him straight in his soft parts. He smiles. "Anything," he says, and hesitates for a moment. "Anything, for my dear pretend fiancée."

"At least you saved my life." She smiles, too, despite the word "pretend." She stands up. "If everything you've said is true, then I think I really need to see Jake."

"What for?"

"I want that jerk to look at me straight in the eye," she says, "before I give him the hardest slap his face has ever tasted."