Not quietly.
The restaurant seemed to freeze.
Danielle looked down.
$100,000.00.
Pay to the order of:
Danielle Brooks.
Richard had even asked the hostess for her full name while Danielle had been serving another table.
This wasn't spontaneous anymore.
It was theater.
He wanted witnesses.
Richard leaned back.
“There.”
Danielle didn't move.
Her father's medical bill flashed through her mind.
$18,742.
Then the roof he'd been patching with tarps.
Then her student loan.
Then the master's degree she'd abandoned eleven years earlier when her mother died.
One hundred thousand dollars.
More money than Danielle had ever possessed at one time.
Richard mistook her silence for fear.
“That's what I thought.”
Danielle looked up.
“Who decides?”
His smile faltered.
“Decides what?”
“Whether I'm fluent.”
“You speak to Mr. Chen.”
“And he decides?”
Richard glanced at Liang.
“Fine.”
Danielle looked toward Liang.
“Mr. Chen?”
Liang had been studying her since the challenge began.
Now he nodded.
“If you are comfortable.”
“I am.”
Danielle placed the wine bottle on the table.
Then she untied her apron.
Richard laughed.
“Giving up already?”
“No.”
She folded the apron once and placed it over the back of an empty chair.
“I just don't want to spill wine on your hundred-thousand-dollar lesson.”
Someone at the bar laughed aloud.
Richard's face tightened.
Danielle pulled out the empty chair opposite Liang.
She sat.
And for the first time that evening, she was no longer standing over them as a server.
She was sitting across from them as an equal.
Richard checked his watch.
“Five minutes.”
Danielle turned toward Liang.
Then she spoke.
Perfect Mandarin.
Not a greeting.
Not a memorized sentence.
Not restaurant vocabulary.
She calmly asked whether Liang preferred to discuss his impressions of Seattle, Tianyu's North American investment strategy, or the financing structure Richard had spent the previous forty minutes pretending wasn't in trouble.
Liang's eyes widened.
The executive beside him stopped moving entirely.
Richard looked from one face to another.
“What did she say?”
Nobody answered.
Liang replied in Mandarin.
Fast.
Danielle answered immediately.
He switched subjects.
She followed.
He asked where she'd learned the language.
“Taipei.”
“Where in Taipei?”
“Da'an.”
“What street?”
Danielle answered.
Liang smiled.
Then he deliberately shifted into a more colloquial rhythm.
Danielle changed with him.
They spoke faster.
Richard's confidence disappeared.
One minute passed.
Then two.
By the third minute, Liang was laughing.
By the fourth, both of his colleagues had joined the conversation.