Five years passed in Singapore like vignettes from a carefully choreographed life that Aria had never planned but mastered. Luna progressed from a watchful infant to a worried child with steel-gray eyes that missed nothing and questions that could disassemble adult assumptions with precision like a surgeon.
One morning, breakfast completed, Luna blurted out, "Mama, why don't I have a daddy like the other kids?" It was a logical line of inquiry from a four-year-old.
Aria halted mid-jam spread on Luna's toast, trying to process her response. They had explored variations of this conversation before, but Luna's questions were starting to become more sophisticated, given her entry to pre-K this year at the international school.
"Some families have mommies and daddies, some have only mommies or only daddies, and some have grandparents or aunts or uncles," Aria said, reverting to her unconscious calm business voice. "We are a family of two, and that's exactly right for us."
Luna looked at Aria as she tilted her head; it was an uncomfortable gesture that reminded Aria of someone else entirely. "But where is my daddy?"
"Your daddy isn't part of our family," Aria replied as she handed Luna her toast. "Eat so that we won't be late for school."
As it turned out, the deflection worked, as it often did. Luna's immediate interests were easily found - whether today they would be reading a story from Aria's favourite teacher or if their class hamster had learnt any new tricks.
But Aria could see that these questions would only become more complicated as Luna matured. Soon deflection would not be enough.
As Aria waved goodbye to Luna at the sparkling campus of Singapore International Academy and watched her daughter jog towards her classroom with her backpack flapping against her back, she remembered that Luna was both confident and social; she inherited Aria's confidence but had a social warmth that Aria had never possessed instinctively. Luna made friends quickly and charmed teachers without effort, and her emotional intelligence left Aria feeling uneasy sometimes.
"She is going to be tough," Marcus had said while recently visiting Singapore. "Smart like you but much better with people."
He was right. Luna was everything that Aria had been as a child, but without the walls that abandonment made her build.
"The Knight thing is getting tricky," David Lim proclaimed in the Monday morning executive meeting, bringing Aria's focus back to the conference room.
Over the course of five years, Knight Enterprises had thoroughly established themselves as Meridian Global's principal regional competitor. The aggressive growth strategy that Xavier had espoused during his tenure had taken on a more sophisticated but equally aggressive character - strategic partnerships, talent acquisition and technology development which was actively threatening Meridian's market position.
Vivian continued, "Their recent acquisition will give them a substantial competitive advantage regarding AI-based market analytics." She began exhibiting quarterly comparison charts. "We're beginning to lose clients to their predictive analytics capability."
Aria assessed the data with a sense of professionalism and dread. Xavier's business instincts had certainly been sharpened during his time in Singapore. The intelligence reports she received suggested that he had become even more intense, and more methodical, and he was probably more committed to being a market leader.
"What are we going to do about it?" she asked him, although part of her mind was still calculating school pick-up times and if Luna had remembered to bring home her library book.
"That's what we need to work out," David replied. "Knight himself will attend the Asia-Pacific Technology Summit next week. It may be worth the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting."
Aria felt the blood drain from her face. "Direct engagement?"
"A face-to-face assessment of their priorities, potential collaboration or at least better intelligence of their next moves," Vivian qualified.
"You've been the greatest strategist against Knight's expansion. Your perspectives would be great."
The irony was choking. For five years she's beaten Xavier to every business punch because she knew his personality as well as anyone could without being him. And now they were asking her to face him face to face.
"I'll think about it," Aria replied, taking care. "Send me the agenda and list of attendees."
When the meeting was done, she retreated to her office, and opened the summit site immediately. And there, front and center as a keynote speaker, was a recent photograph of Xavier Knight.
Five years had toughened rather than softened his features. The silver at his temples had increased, and his demeanor showed fatigue that was unmistakable. But those steel gray eyes were exactly as she'd remembered - intense, calculating, and as thorough in scope as a lockbox.
Eyes that Luna had inherited perfectly.
Aria shut the browser, picked up her phone, and called her assistant.
"Wei Ling, I need you to research private schools in Vancouver. And find out about expedited applications for visas into Canada."
It was possible she might need her escape plan, which she had kept intact but had never had the opportunity to use.
However, before she could truly entertain the idea of uprooting Luna's life, Aria's phone went off with a call from Luna's school.
"Ms. Chen? This is Principal Morrison. We need you to come in right away. Luna has been in an incident."
Maternal panic trumped professional concerns instantaneously. "What kind of incident? Is she hurt?"
"She is physically fine, but there was a fight with another student. Can you come to the office?"
Twenty minutes later, Aria was looking at Luna, sitting in the principal's office with her small arms crossed across her chest, her face turned towards the door in a way that looked strikingly familiar.
"What did you do?" Aria asked, positioning herself at Luna's eye level.
"Tyler said I was a liar because I don't have a daddy," Luna replied, her voice steady but her eyes bright with tears that she hadn't let fall. "So I shoved him down."
She cleared her throat diplomatically. "While we recognize that Luna was defending herself in light of cruel comments, children cannot have in their toolbox physical means for resolving conflict."
Aria looked back at her daughter, fierce, brave enough to stand up for her own dignity, and unwilling to suffer her humiliation without protest. The characteristics that would undoubtedly serve Luna well as an adult also caused complications in the social-world of four-year-olds.
"Luna, we don't push people even if they say mean things," Aria said softly. "But, I get why you were really upset."
"Tyler's daddy comes to school sometimes, and Emma's daddy picks her up on Fridays. Why don't I have a daddy like them?" Luna asked, a little less outspoken.
The question hung heavily in the sterile air of Principal Morrison's office, a weight that Principal Morrison could not entirely wrap his mind around. This was no longer curiosity of a child; this was a child starting to recognize that there was something missing, even though she'd never known she was missing it.
"Some families are different," Aria replied, still the only answer to give. But her eyes spotted something on Luna's face which began to indicate that wasn't sufficient.
After apologizing to Tyler and going through any regular discipline protocols, Aria drove Luna home quietly in thought. Her daughter's inquiries were moving ever so slightly more from deflective, and the sequence of events at school suggested that Luna was beginning to recognize their family identity.
That night, while playing with building blocks, Luna looked up at Aria with those same, devastating gray eyes.
"Mama, if I had a daddy, what would he be like?"
Aria gasped. She wasn't even thinking, yet she could only respond truthfully. "He would be very intelligent. And persistent. He would try to do everything he could for you to have every opportunity to succeed." "Would he read me stories?" "Probably," Aria said, recalling how tender Xavier had been the night before. "He would want to be around you." "Would he love me?"
The moment the words left her mouth, Aria felt at a particular fork in her otherwise careful emotional controls.
"Yes," she said in a whisper. "He would love you a lot." Aria understood in an uncomfortable way that was true. No matter what was wrong with Xavier, no matter what extra complication or stress he brought, he would love Luna fiercely and deeply once he knew about her. That tenacity that made him scary when he was in a business setting would translate to tenacity as a doting dad. Which was the exact reason he could never know.
That night, with Luna asleep, Aria stood at one of her apartment windows, contemplating Singapore's bright lights. Somewhere in those lights, Xavier Knight was building his empire, blissfully unaware that the most meaningful part of his legacy lay asleep only ten kilometers away. The Asia-Pacific Technology Summit was only six days away. Her work colleagues expected to see her, and each day, Luna asked more detailed questions about her father.
And Aria Chen, a woman who built her life on careful control and strategic planning, felt her reality start to fracture under pressure she was not entirely prepared for.
Change was coming for her, regardless of whether it was imposed or self-generated. It was only a matter of whether she would be the author of the story - when the two worlds collided.