His Heir Was Meant for My Sister, but the Kingpin Wanted Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Flat in Bang Khun Thian

Pim tells Phat she will carry Chak's child and move into his compound, Phat insists on going too, and Chak walks in and calls him a stranger.

Pim made him sit at the kitchen table in the flat in Bang Khun Thian.

She put a bowl of rice porridge in front of him.

"Eat," she said. "You look like you slept on a bench."

Phat nearly choked on the first spoonful.

His neck was buttoned to the chin, and every time he swallowed he felt the bite under the collar.

"I need to tell you something," Pim said.

She sat across from him with her hands flat on the table.

She was twenty-nine and had raised him since he was eleven, and he knew every kind of silence she had.

This one was the careful kind.

"A friend of mine needs a baby," she said. "And I'm going to carry it."

Phat put the spoon down.

"For the friend."

"For the friend."

"That's the whole sentence?" His voice rose. "Pim, you're going to be pregnant for somebody else?"

"Listen. His father built a business from nothing, and he left it with a condition. Chak has to have a child of his own blood, or the family goes to his uncle." She looked down at the brass key-case on the cord at her throat and turned it once. "He can't do it the usual way. He asked me because he trusts me, and I said yes before he finished asking."

"Chak." He said the word and hated how it sounded.

"Chakrit Lertsiri. You've seen him in the papers." Her mouth twitched. "Don't make that face. He's my best friend, Phat. I nursed his father for two years. I know where every bone in that family is buried."

"Lertsiri," Phat said. "The river docks. The casinos."

"Yes."

"Pim, that's the mafia," Phat said.

"It's a freight company with enemies."

"They shot at someone last night. In my lab building."

She went very still.

"What?"

He should not have said it.

"I heard it from a guard," he lied. "Two men, in the corridor."

She looked at him for a long moment, and he made himself eat the porridge.

"The clinic is in two weeks," she said slowly. "Until then I move into his house on the river. It's safer there. He wants me where Mee can watch the door."

"You don't know what that family does."

"I know exactly what they do." Her voice was gentle. "That's why I'm going in with my eyes open."

"Then I'm coming."

"Phat..."

"You raised me. You are not walking into a house like that alone while I sit in a dorm and do titrations." He pushed his glasses up. "I'm coming, and that's all."

Pim looked at him for a long time.

Then she laughed, short and wet, and wiped her eye with her wrist.

"You're such a stubborn little shit. All right. All right, ai-nong."

The doorbell rang.

Pim got up to answer it, and Phat's stomach turned over.

He had not thought.

He had gone from a lab bench to a kitchen table without once thinking about what came next.

Boots sounded in the hall.

"Pim." The voice came before the body, low and amused. "You said noon. Mee's parked in the soi and the neighbours are looking at the car."

Chak filled the kitchen doorway.

He had changed his shirt.

It was black, open at the throat, with a bandage showing white at the hem, and he was holding a bag of mangoes.

His eyes found Phat at the table.

Nothing at all moved in his face.

It was the most impressive thing Phat had ever seen.

"This is my brother," Pim said. "Phat. I told you about him. Phat, this is Chak."

"Naphat." Chak set the mangoes on the counter. "Pim talks about you all the time. Chemistry, right?"

"Biochemistry." Phat's voice came out level. "Khun Chak."

"Just Chak."

"I prefer Khun."

One corner of Chak's mouth lifted and was gone.

Pim turned to the stove to get the kettle.

In the second her back was turned, Chak walked behind Phat's chair.

A finger slid under his collar and laid itself flat over the bite.

It was there for one second.

Phat's whole body lit.

"You're blushing," Chak said, in a perfectly conversational voice. "You work too hard. Pim, does he eat?"

"Not enough," Pim said from the stove, and she did not turn around.

The finger withdrew.

Phat stared at his bowl and his hands, which were clenched into fists on the table.

"He's coming with us," Pim said. "To the house. I won't be talked out of it, and he won't either."

Chak was quiet.

Phat made himself look up.

The black eyes were on him, steady and unreadable, and underneath them something was moving that was not at all calm.

"Then he comes," Chak said. "Mee will pack his things."

"I can pack my own things."

"I know you can." Chak smiled with no warmth at all. "Pack them fast."

Twenty minutes later Phat sat in the back seat of a black car between a duffel bag and a box of textbooks.

Pim had taken the front seat so she could talk to Mee about the dog.

Chak got in beside Phat and shut the door.

The car pulled out, and the street slid by, and Pim's voice went on about vaccinations.

A big warm hand came down on Phat's knee and closed.

"You didn't tell me," Chak said, very low, and not at all pleased, "that you were her brother."

His thumb slid slowly up the inside of Phat's thigh.

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