Gene couldn't sleep.
He lay on his couch watching Taipei's dawn light creep across his ceiling, and all he could think about was Diana's face. The way she'd smiled when he said Steven seemed different around her. The way she'd died three days later.
His phone buzzed. 4:47 AM. Mei.
*I know you're awake. I can feel your insomnia from here. Coffee in an hour?*
Gene stared at the message. He owed her an explanation. Owed her the truth.
All of it.
*Yeah. Your studio?*
*See you there*
-----
Mei had coffee ready when he arrived. Real coffee, the good stuff, not the instant crap. She took one look at his face and didn't ask questions. Just handed him a mug and waited.
They sat on her beat-up couch, surrounded by half-finished pottery, while Gene tried to figure out where to start.
"Someone I knew died," he said finally. "Someone we both knew. Diana."
Mei's mug stopped halfway to her mouth. "What?"
"Car accident in Singapore. Except it wasn't an accident." Gene's hands were shaking. He set his coffee down before he spilled it. "She was on the board of a company Steven and I were looking at. The company was dirty—money laundering, conflict minerals, connections to people who kill when you get too close. The owner got shot. Diana's brakes got cut. Steven and I went into hiding."
"Jesus Christ." Mei set her own mug down. "Are you safe now?"
"Mr. Chen says yes. Says we got lucky, that our names weren't in the files. Says we need to forget any of it happened and move on."
"Can you do that? Forget?"
"I don't know." Gene looked at her. "But there's something else. Something I haven't told anyone. Not Steven, not Lin Yue. Not my family."
"Okay…"
"I'm not from Irvine."
Mei blinked. "What?"
"I'm from New York. Queens, actually. Jackson Heights. My family doesn't own an import-export business. My dad drives for Uber and my mom works at a nail salon." The words came spilling out now, three months of lies collapsing. "I made it all up. The whole backstory. The family wealth. All of it."
Mei was staring at him like he'd grown a second head.
"I had some money saved," Gene continued. "Worked in tech for a few years, lived cheap, invested well. Had maybe two hundred thousand. Enough to look rich for a while if I was careful. So I came to Taipei, bought expensive clothes, learned to talk like I belonged, and just… faked it."
"Why?"
"Because nobody takes you seriously if you're from Queens. Nobody invites you to parties if your dad drives Uber. I needed a story that would get me in the door. So I invented one."
Mei was quiet for a long moment. Then she started laughing—not mean, just disbelief.
"You're telling me this whole time, while you were impressing Mr. Chen and working with Steven and attending parties with people who actually own islands, you were just some guy from Queens pretending to be rich?"
"Yeah."
"That's insane."
"I know."
"That's also kind of brilliant." Mei shook her head. "Does Steven know?"
"No. Nobody knows. Well, now you do."
"Why are you telling me?"
Gene looked down at his hands. "Because Diana died and I realized—what's the point? All these lies, all this performance, pretending to be someone I'm not. For what? So I can keep playing a game that gets people killed?"
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know. Tell Steven the truth, probably. Watch him realize he bet on a fraud. Lose everything I've built here."
"Or," Mei said slowly, "you tell him the truth and he respects you more for it."
"Why would he respect me? I lied to him for three months."
"Because you made it work anyway. You didn't succeed because of your fake backstory—you succeeded because you're actually good at this. The analysis, the instincts, the work. That was all real." Mei picked up her coffee again. "Steven doesn't care where you're from. He cares whether you can deliver. And you can."
"You think he'll forgive me?"
"I think he'll be pissed for about ten minutes, then he'll get over it because he needs you." Mei smiled. "Besides, after everything that just happened? A fake backstory is pretty low on the list of problems."
Gene felt something loosen in his chest. Not relief exactly. But something.
"There's more," he said. "The reason I came to Taipei specifically, not Shanghai or Hong Kong or Singapore."
"Why?"
"Because I'm gay. And my family doesn't know. And New York felt too small, too close. Everyone knows everyone in the communities I grew up in. I needed distance." He laughed bitterly. "Thought maybe if I reinvented myself completely, I could figure out that part too."
"Have you? Figured it out?"
"Starting to. Turns out spending three months working with someone intense and brilliant and occasionally infuriating makes you realize some things about yourself."
Mei's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh."
"Yeah."
"Steven?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Probably. I've been trying not to think about it because it's complicated and he's my boss and he just lost his girlfriend and—"
"Gene. Breathe."
He breathed.
"Okay," Mei said. "So. You're from Queens, not Irvine. You've got maybe two hundred thousand dollars, not millions. Your family works normal jobs. You're gay and figuring that out. And you might have feelings for Steven. Anything else you want to drop on me?"
"I think that's everything."
"Good. Because my crisis-processing capacity has limits." She stood up, walked to her shelf, and pulled down a bottle of whiskey. "It's 6 AM and we're drinking. This situation requires alcohol."
She poured two glasses, handed him one.
"To the truth," she said. "However messy and terrifying it is."
They clinked glasses.
"You need to tell Steven," Mei said after they'd both taken a drink. "Not about the feelings—that's your business and your timing. But about the backstory. He deserves to know."
"What if he fires me?"
"Then you go get another job. You've got three months of experience with one of the best VCs in Taipei. That's worth something even without the fake pedigree." Mei squeezed his shoulder. "But I don't think he'll fire you. I think he'll be mad, then impressed, then he'll move on because that's what Steven does."
Gene's phone buzzed. Steven.
*Awake? Need to talk*
*At Mei's studio. Want to come here?*
*Be there in 20*
Gene looked at Mei. "He's coming."
"Good. Tell him. Rip the bandaid off." She refilled his whiskey. "Want me to leave?"
"No. Stay. I might need a witness in case he kills me."
"He's not going to kill you. He's going to yell, maybe throw something, then ask if you're still good at your job."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know Steven. And underneath all the intensity and the workaholism and the emotional unavailability, he's pragmatic. He doesn't care about pedigree. He cares about results."
Twenty minutes later, Steven walked into the studio looking as wrecked as Gene felt. He saw the whiskey, didn't comment, just accepted a glass from Mei.
"What's going on?" he asked.
Gene took a breath. "I need to tell you something. And you're going to be pissed."
"After the week we've had, I doubt anything can shock me."
"I'm not from Irvine. I'm from Queens. My family isn't rich. I made up the whole backstory to get into your world." Gene forced himself to keep going. "I had some savings, bought the right clothes, learned to talk the right way, and faked it. Everything about my background is a lie."
Steven stared at him.
Mei drank her whiskey and waited.
The silence stretched.
Then Steven started laughing—a harsh, slightly hysterical sound.
"You're from Queens," he said. "You're from fucking Queens."
"Yeah."
"And you just… decided to pretend you were California rich?"
"Basically."
"For three months. You lied to my face for three months."
"Yes."
Steven drank his entire glass of whiskey in one swallow, then held it out for Mei to refill.
"You know what the funny part is?" he said. "I don't actually care."
Gene blinked. "What?"
"I don't care. You lied about your background. So what? Half the people in our industry lie about something—where they went to school, who they know, how much money they really have. At least you're good at the actual work." Steven took another drink. "Diana's dead. David's dead. We almost got killed over rare earth minerals. Your fake backstory is the least of my problems right now."
"You're not mad?"
"Oh, I'm mad. But I'm also too tired to sustain the anger. Ask me again in a week and I'll probably yell at you properly." Steven looked at Mei. "Did you know?"
"Found out ten minutes before you did."
"And you're okay with it?"
"Gene lied about where he's from. I lied to myself for two years about whether I could handle your lifestyle. We've all got our shit." Mei raised her glass. "To surviving our own bad decisions."
They drank.
"So what now?" Gene asked.
"Now we go back to work. We forget David Koh existed. We don't talk about Diana. And we build something that doesn't get people killed." Steven looked at him. "And you stop lying to me. About anything. Deal?"
"Deal."
"Good." Steven stood up. "I have meetings all day. Come by the office at six. We need to figure out what deals are actually safe to pursue."
After he left, Gene collapsed back onto the couch.
"That went better than expected," Mei said.
"He's going to kill me later. He's just saving it."
"Maybe. Or maybe he actually meant what he said." Mei sat beside him. "You told the truth. That counts for something."
Gene's phone buzzed. Lin Yue.
*Heard you're back. Dinner tonight? I want details*
*Can't. Working*
*Tomorrow then. And Gene? Glad you're alive. Whatever happened*
Gene smiled despite everything.
He'd lied about who he was. People had died. His feelings for Steven were a mess he didn't know how to process.
But he was alive. He'd told the truth. And somehow