Returning to Duke always felt like stepping into an unfamiliar world, bright and glittering and false. Lily kept her gaze on the light, red and fluorescent in the summer dark. The boy in the Audi rolled down his window. Their gazes raked over her red Mustang, the Audi R8 next to her that gleamed a sleek, hungry silver. College students lined both sides of Main Street. The air tasted of cigarette smoke and cheap beer, and even with her windows up she could hear the steady thrum of the bass from the speakers that jutted into the Durham night. Lily Wu drummed her fingers along the curve of her steering wheel, waiting for the darkness to change, for her world to change. He was not used to uncertainty from her, and yet when she was done, her voice was low, hesitant as she asked, Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into? CHAPTER 4 Over FaceTime, she had looked up the CEO of China Poly, its mission, all the ways it had its fingers in foreign trade. Irene had done all the things that he-skin humming, full of excitement and adrenaline and certainty that he would follow this adventure to its end-had not bothered to do. Moments later, he had received a text message with a link to an Air China reservation under his name for five first-class tickets to Beijing. The first, to the number on the back of the card, had taken him to an empty dial tone. What was real: the jade tiger in his palm, stolen from the Sackler just hours ago. It was the kind of evening where the impossible felt close enough to touch, to taste. Will would have done it in slow, sweeping brushstrokes, the sky curving around lamps that shone torch-bright. This late, Harvard was quiet, still, something out of a painting. Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.
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