Prologue
The Early Years
Laurette had just put her six-month-old twins down to sleep. She was tired but couldn’t contain her excitement. She was finally going to be able to spend some quality time with Chang. He’d been gone for two weeks on business and came home this afternoon. It was a little disappointing though that he’d been holed up in his office for most of the evening. Still, she tried to understand given the massive size of his empire.
The hour was late, but Laurette was going to break one of his golden rules and interrupt. Hopefully, he would welcome the reprieve, and they could end the night making love. How did the saying go? One could always ask for forgiveness later.
As she walked down the long dark corridor, she couldn’t help but smile inwardly. Her life had changed so dramatically over the past year and a half. She’d met the man of her dreams, and he’d swept her clean off her feet. Life had been hard living in the slums and working as a maid at the hotel where they’d met. Who would have guessed that bringing extra towels to his room would have changed the path of her life so much?
Chang’s English was broken, but when his eyes met hers they said everything words couldn’t. It only took him a week to convince her to leave everything she knew and follow her heart. Laurette didn’t even pack a bag. She just left New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved to Guilin, China.
If it had been left up to Chang, they would have married as soon as his private plane landed, but Laurette had a different idea. She wanted her wedding day to be perfect, which meant not being almost nine months pregnant on their wedding day. Laurette managed to convince him to postpone their perfect day. But now, she was more than ready to become Mrs. Chang Lee-Xiou. All they needed was for his work schedule to calm down so they could resume the planning.
When Laurette arrived at his office, it was strange that Lou, one of his security guards, wasn’t standing outside his door. He was always there. Her timing couldn’t have been more perfect. This way she could surprise him. Laurette placed her hand on the doorknob and turned.
The door crept open. The smile on her face froze, and her knees almost buckled. The man before her looked like Chang, but it couldn’t have been him. This man’s face was twisted. It didn’t look human, and the unhinged stare in his eyes was terrifying.
A shirtless man knelt on his knees in front of him. His mouth was taped, and his hands were tied and bound with rope. His back had been beaten so badly that it looked like raw meat. The worst came when someone handed Chang some sort of knife, and he drove it into the temple of the man’s head. The lifeless body crumpled to the floor.
It was Laurette’s sharp intake of breath that drew Chang’s attention. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep the bile from rising up and vomiting it out.
Laurette backed away from the room almost tripping over her feet to get away. Chang’s only reaction was to watch her go. He picked up a napkin from off of his desk to wipe his hands as he took a breath.
Chang turned to Lou. “Clean this mess up, while I go deal with Laurette.”
*****
It had been several months since Laurette witnessed the unfortunate situation in Chang’s office. At least, that was what he called it. Her pious attitude was driving him insane.
He’d brought powerful men down to their knees, but he couldn’t seem to find the right motivation to convince a petite, Creole woman to accept his role as head of The Family Council and to share her life with him.
Position, clothes, money, cars meant nothing to her. Material things couldn’t break through her wall of ice. It forced him to take drastic measures. He hoped she’d start to come around, but he didn’t think that day was today. Even now, she looked through him as if he weren’t standing just a few feet in front of her. Dammit, if she would just cooperate, he would give her the world. Instead, she had the nerve to look down her nose on him after all he’d done for her. Maybe he should have left her ass in the United States; then he wouldn’t be pining for a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.
“You asked to see me?” Her gloved hands were clasped in front of her as she donned a silly grayish maid’s uniform. It did nothing to bring out the color of her satiny smooth, latte colored skin or eyes the color of dark chocolate that at one time sparkled like diamonds when they were focused on him. Her hair was a joke too. She wore it in a tight bun knowing it would piss him the hell off.
Chang remembered how he had once been allowed to run his fingers through the thick mass of hair, and how it looked when it was fanned out across the silky sheets of his bed. To anyone else Laurette was the picture of submissiveness. He knew
