"I will consider what you say." Lily smiled pleasantly, even as she stacked the documents neatly and left them on the table. "But I hope you'll let me decide who I get to marry?"
"Of course, of course." Leon nodded, delighted. "This is your husband we're talking about. You should be the one who chooses in the end."
"Do you already have somebody in mind?" Wendy asked eagerly. She had picked up from her daughter and was pushing in on that. Lily tried not to reveal her disgust. Like mother, like daughter. The two of them were always scheming against her.
She did find it strange that Wendy and Linda were not always on the same page. From what she could tell, Linda hadn't told her mother about the young man she had met in the hotel that night.
"You should introduce him to Dad and Mom!" Linda said. Charles nodded supportively.
"Why don't we arrange a date? Maybe next weekend? Bring him home."
Lily raised an eyebrow at Charles's suggestion. The scheming couple were really trying to push Trevor Shen onto her. She wasn't sure why. After that night, she had instructed Madeline Ma to run several investigations on the affable young man, but his information wasn't very impressive. The CEO of Shen Industries, he was on the verge of bankruptcy because one of the banks was demanding an immediate repayment of their loan. Trevor Shen graduated from university with a Bachelor, Masters and PhD, but decided to start his own business shortly after he received his PhD. But his degrees were not in business, but instead in robotics.
Other than that, there wasn't much else. Shen Industries was just newly started up this year, and had a grand total of two personnel. The CEO and his secretary. They seemed to be working on robotics for the military, but had nothing to show for after spending all of their loans. From what she heard, none of what they were trying to do sounded promising. In fact, it even sounded impractical, especially when compared to Han Industries' Mech Marine program.
She glanced at Justin Han's document, which was stacked with the other CEOs' documents. And then she suddenly understood.
Linda and Charles were trying to embarrass her. They wanted Leon and Wendy to see that Lily was interested in a poor failure of a businessman on the verge of bankruptcy. They didn't want her to marry a wealthy, successful CEO. They wanted her to marry a failure of a loser, one who was one step away from poverty. He wasn't ugly, but he wasn't handsome either. Compared to the other CEOs like Justin, he was pretty plain and…nerdy.
No wonder Linda and Charles waned to push her toward him. They thought he was nothing but a joke and would use this as a reason to kick her off the board in Ling Conglomerate. Of course, that made no sense. Having a "useless" husband was not a justification for removing her as heiress or removing her from the board, but she was sure Linda and Charles would find some way to twist that to their advantage.
Lily Ling smiled. All right then. She would play along with them, see what cards they had up their sleeves. But eventually, they were going to lose because they underestimated her.
Also…this Trevor Shen…even though he didn't seem all that impressive, Lily felt as if she could trust him. He hadn't taken advantage of her when she was vulnerable and even spoke up for her when she confronted her sister and brother-in-law the next morning. Perhaps she was being cynical, but a lesser man would have snapped some pictures of her when she was compromised and blackmail her, but Trevor Shen didn't ask for money or anything. Just checked if she was all right and even offered her some breakfast.
She glanced at the pile of documents on the table. She had met most of the CEOs before and didn't have a good impression of them. Justin Han, in particular, was arrogant and stuck up. Isaac Bing had treated her coldly, looking down upon her because she was a woman. Tyler Tan had spoken to her in a condescending manner and attempted to take advantage of his power to bully her Ling Conglomerate when she was trying to strike a deal with the Tan Corporation.
Compared to all of them, she felt as if she could trust Trevor Shen.
"Linda and Charles may have a point. I will ask him if he can visit next week, and both Dad and Mom can judge for themselves what kind of person he is."
"Oh?" Leon was pleasantly surprised. He grinned broadly and raised his cup of tea. "Excellent! This calls for celebration!"
"Hmm?" Wendy was caught off guard, but she masked her surprise. She glanced at Linda and Charles, and a look passed through them before she turned back to Lily. "I look forward to meeting him."
"Yes, I'm sure you will be surprised." Lily hid a smile. She didn't know if Wendy knew what Linda was scheming, but it didn't matter. She would deal with it when it came.
"Good! Very good!" Leon chuckled. He waved toward his servants. "Tell the chef to prepare a feast. We'll celebrate tonight!"
*
Every weekend, I would call my parents online, through a video call. Today was no different. Early in the morning, I logged into my computer and waited for my parents' call.
"Ah, you're here! Trevor! Can you hear me?"
Dad showed up on the screen and I nodded. I couldn't help but slide into the dialect that I grew up with. My parents also spoke that dialect, which was a hybrid of many languages mixed together. Like rojak lah.
"Yeah, I can hear you. How's everything?"
"All right. How about you? Is your business going well? Still have difficulties ah?"
"Uh, well…" I didn't want to tell Dad the truth, so I nodded. "You know how it is. Problems here and there, especially since I've only just recently started up the company. It's a lot tougher than I thought it would be. But I'm sure I'll figure something out."
"Yeah, you will. Don't get bluffed by people, okay? Doing business not easy one."
I laughed. "More than business, I'm actually more interested in building giant robots."
"Ai yah, you should be more realistic. Still want to build giant robots? Grow up lah, you're not a kid anymore."
"Ha ha, I'll do my best." I didn't want to argue with my father. "Confirm will have people buy one."
"Really? Who?"
"The army."
"Don't bluff me lah. I saw in the news, the military want to buy those exosuits. Those look a lot more practical than your giant robots."
"Ha ha, I'll see." I nodded vaguely I wasn't very enthusiastic about discussing my work with Dad. It felt awkward, and sometimes it felt as if he was telling me how I should run my own business. "I have a few alternatives in place, so don't worry."
"Okay. Ah, your mother is here. She wants to talk to you."
My dad moved away from the camera and my mom appeared.
"How are you?"
"Fine."
"Got girlfriend or not?"
I groaned at the question and shook my head. My mother sighed.
"Alamak, you���re 33 already, you still don't have girlfriend? You're not young anymore, you know?"
"Ai yah, busy lah. I got so much work to do."
"Busy also must find girlfriend! When you get married, huh? You don't want to give me grandchildren, is it?"
I raised my hands helplessly. "I want to focus on my career first. Now I no money, who wants to be my girlfriend? Must make money first what. Otherwise no one wants to marry me."
"Ai yah, you everything also career first. By the time you make money, you too old to have girlfriend or children."
"Okay what. Then I become a monk."
"What?! I don't allow you to become a monk! Don't anyhow say, can or not? You're scaring your mother."
"Sorry, sorry." I laughed. Honestly, I couldn't care less. I had been somewhat scarred from my days in high school and I had come to accept the reality that I was simply unattractive. That there would be no girl in this world who would fall for a loser like me.
Of course, I couldn't tell my mother that. I wasn't keen on earning a scolding. I was better off just playing along and telling her I got shot down by every girl I approached (not that I ever approached any girl, but Mom didn't have to know about that).
"Please lah. Hurry up and get married, otherwise I get worried."
"See how first."
"Don't see. Do!"
"All right, all right. I will consider what you say."
I rolled my eyes and was relieved when Dad replaced Mom at the camera.
"Don't listen to your mother," he said jokingly. "This kind of thing cannot force one. If you want to focus on your career, then work on that first. You can worry about girlfriend or wife or whatever after you succeed."
"Yeah." Though I doubted I would find anybody willing to date me even if I struck it rich. Well, I would, but I would prefer to avoid those kind of girls. They would be more in love with my money than with me.
Obviously, this was assuming I didn't fail in my business – which was looking increasingly likely with each passing day – and churned out enough profits to impress such gold diggers in the first place. And I had no intention of impressing them, but there was no use worrying about such things when my company was struggling financially right now.
However, I maintained a cheerful expression, determined not to reveal to my parents the extent of how deeply in trouble I was.
"You all grown up already, so I trust you," Dad assured me. "But if got anything, must let your parents know, okay?"
"Okay."
As the video screen flickered off, I watched my monitor dumbly and sighed. Nope. I was going to deal with this on my own. Besides, even if my parents wanted to help, they couldn't. I wasn't from a rich family, after all.
Stepping out of my room and toward the kitchen for a glass of water, I passed by William. He nodded at me.
"Did you just speak to your parents?"
"Yeah." He must have heard me talking in my room. The apartment was pretty small and the walls were thin, so there was no way around it. "They are doing fine."
"That's good." William chuckled as he settled on the couch and switched on the television. As he did so, an advertisement about Han Industries' Astral Crystal Exosuit came on.
"Join the Marine Corps today!" the narrator announced. Pushing my glasses up my nose, I narrowed my eyes and glared at the Han Industries logo at the top corner of the advertisement.
One day, I was going to succeed…and then I would wipe the smug grin off Justin Han's face when I did.