When my biological father, chairman of Hong Kong City's leading international investment bank, found me, I was wearing flip-flops and riding my little electric scooter around town collecting rent.
The old man on the third floor was two months behind, so I dragged a plastic stool over to block his doorway. Sipping iced lemon tea, I shouted:
“Uncle, if you don't pay up, I'll really take apart your air conditioner!”
My father scowled. “Is this what you do every day?”
I counted the cash I'd just collected. “What's wrong with that? It's the people who can't collect their money who should be embarrassed.”
The fake heiress held her coffee and mocked my common, streetwise ways.
“Big Sis, real business is about capital operations, not arguing with tenants.”
That was before the group spent thirty billion acquiring an urban village.
More than a dozen investment banks and dozens of negotiation experts worked at it for half a year, only to be sent packing every time.
But I crooked a finger, and the whole village came smiling over.
“Ah Xin, come have some sweet soup!”
“Our little landlady's back!”
“Who dares bully our little landlady?”
The connections they couldn't buy for thirty billion.
I'd had them since childhood.
