"Enjoy."
After nodding to the old man who brought the dishes over, Chen Zhen picked up his chopsticks.
"Go on, try Old Master Hua's cooking. I'm not exaggerating. This is the most authentic Chinese food in all of Britain."
The smell rising from the food was enough to wake up every bit of hunger Bruce had been holding back. He nodded and reached for his chopsticks.
"Come on, let's have one."
Chen Zhen handed him an opened bottle of beer. They clinked bottles, then drank straight from them instead of bothering with glasses.
The slightly bitter Budweiser slid down easily.
For a moment, with the familiar-looking little restaurant around him and the low hum of conversation in the background, Bruce felt as if he had been thrown back into his old life. Back to those days in Shanghai when he had been living at the bottom of the pile, no car, no house, no girlfriend, getting off work at night and drinking with coworkers, talking nonsense, trading dirty jokes, complaining about life, complaining about society, pretending not to care.
"What's wrong?" Chen Zhen asked.
"Nothing." Bruce shook his head and lifted the bottle again. "Drink."
He had no desire to go back to that life, a life where the only thing he'd really had was a small amount of freedom and almost no visible future.
"Old Chen, you're still in school, right?"
"Yeah. If you count it out, I should be in my junior year."
"What school in the States?"
Bruce hesitated for a second, then decided not to hide it.
The older he got, the more clearly he understood one thing: people lived in layers. The excellent tended to gather around the excellent. Chen Zhen, an Oxford Law graduate who wore a limited-edition Patek Philippe worth a small fortune, was clearly not an ordinary guy.
"Stanford."
"Stanford in California?"
Bruce smiled. "Are there a lot of Stanfords in America?"
Chen Zhen stared at him, then laughed.
"Well, damn. Didn't expect you to be one of the smart ones."
Bruce took a sip of beer.
"Oxford isn't exactly second-rate either. Especially not the law school."
Then, after a pause, he shifted the topic.
"So what about you? You're graduating and heading back home. Any plans?"
"My family lined up a job for me," Chen Zhen said, "but honestly, I'd rather start something of my own."
He was open and easygoing, but not stupid. Even after several hours together, he still didn't reveal too much.
Bruce nodded.
"What kind of business?"
"No idea yet. I'll probably work for a couple of years after I get back, then decide. What about you? You're a junior now, right? What's your plan after senior year?"
"I started an internet company with a friend. It's doing pretty well so far."
"Internet?" Chen Zhen raised an eyebrow. "After the Nasdaq crash, the whole world is acting like the internet's already dead."
"The environment's definitely ugly right now," Bruce said calmly. "But if something like the internet exists, it exists for a reason. I still want to see how far I can take it."
Then he added with a grin, "Worst case, Stanford's still Stanford. If the startup fails, I can always find a decent job in the Valley."
Chen Zhen nodded, then lifted his bottle again.
"One more. Here's to both of us getting what we want."
Bruce raised his own.
"To getting what we want."
The two bottles knocked together with a crisp clink.
As the drinking continued, the conversation got looser and broader. By the time an hour had passed, both of them felt that rare kind of immediate kinship people only stumbled into once in a while.
Then the restaurant door slammed open.
The violent bang turned every head in the room.
A group of seven or eight Black men walked in, dressed in mismatched street clothes, tattoos crawling up their necks and arms, the kind of hard, ugly look in their eyes that made it immediately clear they weren't here to eat.
It was already past nine at night.
Other than Bruce and Chen Zhen, the only person left in the restaurant was Old Master Hua behind the register, doing accounts.
The man in front, broad-shouldered and heavily built, swept a sharp look over Bruce and Chen Zhen before fixing his gaze on the old man stepping out from behind the counter.
"This Ray Hua's place?"
The old man looked frightened, but hearing his son's name, he still moved forward.
"Yes. I'm his father. What do you want with my son?"
"You his old man?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The man's eyes instantly hardened.
"Trash it."
The men behind him moved at once, grabbing chairs and stools and smashing them into tables, walls, whatever they could reach.
"No, no, don't do that. Please, we can talk!"
Watching the restaurant he had spent years building get wrecked right in front of him, the old man's face turned pale with panic and pain. He tried to rush forward to stop them, but he was old and frail. One of the taller men shoved him hard, sending him crashing to the floor.
"Hey! Stop!"
Chen Zhen was on his feet first.
Bruce stood right after him.
At the end of the day, some instincts didn't change. He couldn't just sit there and watch one of his own get bullied.
The lead thug glanced at them with open contempt.
"You two better sit your asses down unless you want trouble."
That did it.
Chen Zhen exploded.
Without saying another word, he grabbed one of the empty beer bottles from the table and smashed it straight across the man's head.
The attack came so suddenly that the man never even got a chance to dodge.
The glass burst.
Blood ran down half his face.
It was a vicious hit. But the bastard was tough. He still didn't go down.
"Kill them!"
The roar filled the room, and the others rushed in.
Bruce didn't hold back. He drove a kick into the nearest stocky thug, sending him staggering, then snatched up another bottle and charged in.
He looked lean, but that was deceptive.
As Stanford's starting point guard, his body was far better trained than most people's. And growing up in America, he'd had more than enough experience dealing with harassment. Back in middle school, he'd taken up some kickboxing to protect himself. He wasn't an expert, but with his size and athleticism, he could handle a few people if he had to.
The men coming at him clearly hadn't expected him to be that dangerous.
In just a few minutes, he had already dropped three of them.
But in the end, two men were still just two men.
They were up against at least eight.
The fight turned into a blur of smashing, shoving, fists, curses, and splintering wood. After six or seven brutal minutes, both Bruce and Chen Zhen were marked up.
Bruce got off lighter, blood on one elbow, bruising on his thigh.
Chen Zhen looked far worse. His lip was split, his nose was bleeding, and he was breathing hard.
Bruce wanted to help him, but he could barely keep himself standing. Once the others realized he was the more dangerous one, five of them swarmed him at once. He had no choice but to fight with his back near the wall to avoid getting taken from behind.
"Dad!"
The shout hit the room like thunder.
Before Bruce could even react, one of the men attacking him, the one holding a broken chair leg, let out a scream and flew through the air.
"You filthy bastards!"
Then came a series of heavy impacts.
Bruce and Chen Zhen could only stare.
The same eight men who had just been beating them half to death were now getting thrown around like bowling pins. In just a few seconds, every last one of them was on the floor.
"Dad, are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Thanks to these two young men. If not for them, I might not have survived this."
The old man, shaking a little, was helped slowly to his feet.
"Thank you," he said.
Bruce shook his head and looked up at the man who had just arrived.
He was even taller than Bruce by half a head, dressed in dark blue work clothes stained with dirt and grease, with thick muscle showing even through the fabric.
"No need."
Then Bruce turned and went to help Chen Zhen up off the floor.
"You all right?"
Chen Zhen was grimacing hard enough to make the answer obvious.
"I'm... fine."
He clearly was not, but pride was still doing its job.
The big man had just started to say something when sirens tore through the street outside.
A moment later, two white police officers burst into the restaurant.
They had probably expected a routine fight call.
Instead, they found eight Black men sprawled across the floor, some groaning, some motionless.
Both officers froze for half a second, then exchanged a look and drew their guns at the same time.