Empire in His Grip

Arthur Pérez is the long-lost son of Varon, president of the Altamira Group, recovered by the family and trained as the heir to the empire. Part of that training was a posting to Sun City, where he ran the group's branch office there. When he comes home for the Mid-Autumn Festival, nobody knows any of this. His wife's family treats him as a son-in-law with no prospects, and relatives press her to divorce him. A Tang Bohu painting and a string of imperial jade beads pass through the arguments. He wants to see his wife and their daughter, and instead sits through people telling him what he is worth. Every quarrel that follows ends the same way, with Arthur on top of it, and the people around him start asking how a nobody keeps winning. The Valvin Hotel is preparing a gala, and the guesses about his identity harden into something closer to certainty before the night is over.