Rich People Problems-Kwan 2017 (WWT)

CHAPTER SEVEN
MANILA, PHILIPPINES
From Tommy Yip’s daily gossip column:
Titas were atwitter last night over what happened in the middle of the spectacularly elegant party at
China Cruz’s divine mansion in Dasmariñas. Apparently, while Chris-Emmanuelle Yam (clad in a curvy
Chloé confection) was belting out the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” accompanied
by a full orchestra, a tremendous crashing noise sent the couture-clad guests rushing out of the
ballroom to the grand foyer. There they found debonair Diego San Antonio wrestling on the marble floor
with an intruder.
“It was this Chinese man, rather handsome, but obviously quite deranged. He had Diego by the collar
and he kept shouting, ‘Tell me where she is!’ ” social dynamo Doris Hoh (enchanting in an emerald Elie
Saab) breathlessly told me. “It was surreal. Here were two men rolling around on the floor, with purple
glass everywhere and a huge roasted pig right next to them!” Apparently the fight began upstairs, where
Diego first encountered the intruder in China’s library. A tussle began and they ended up rolling down the
dramatic curving Gone with the Wind–style double staircase, toppling over the buffet table where a huge
lechon* was just about to be carved, and smashing into a Ramon Orlina glass sculpture.
“That sculpture was of my breasts. It was a beautiful masterpiece that got destroyed!” China
(sheathed in a showstopping strapless Saint Laurent) lamented. “What a waste! I was so looking
forward to the lechon. I heard it was a special pig that had only eaten truffles its entire life and was flown
in from Spain,” Josie Natori (draped in a dress of her own design, of course) said with a sigh.
Thankfully, before the intruder could do much damage to Diego’s fabulous Brioni blazer, Brunomars—
China’s 250-pound Tibetan mastiff—leapt onto the intruder and according to onlookers “bit him in the
ass.”
But the intrepid journalist Karen Davila (astonishingly alluring in Armani) quashed that story. “Tommy,
do your fact-checking, please! Brunomars did not bite him in the ass! He is still a puppy, and he leapt
onto the men on the floor because he was trying to get a taste of the lechon! He bit the lechon on the
ass!” Whoever’s ass it was, Brunomars saved the day, because the intruder suddenly calmed down
when he saw all the guests clustered around like they were watching Manny Pacquiao in the boxing
ring. (Manny was actually at the party too, but he was in the basement having an intense chess match
with China’s son.) He ran out the front door without another word, jumped into a waiting black Toyota
Alphard, and sped off before any of China’s guards could stop him.
···
Charlie leaned against the bathroom sink in his suite at the Raffles Makati, holding a
towel full of ice to his face to soothe the swelling. How in the world had he let things
devolve to this point? He had snuck unnoticed into China Cruz’s party, and managed to
get Diego’s attention when the singing began. Diego had suggested that they go upstairs