Chapter 24: Emperor of Wrath: Chapter 24

Hana and I sit together in silence. She doesn’t ask why I’ve been crying, or why Kenzo and I were screaming at each other. She doesn’t question why I’m still shaking a little, or inquire where her brother flew off to.

She just sits beside me in the garden with an arm around my shoulders and her hand stroking my hair.

As if I needed a reminder why I like her so much.

I feel her move, and I turn to follow where her gaze has just shifted. Mal walks out from the living room, his brow furrowed.

“What do you need, Annika?” He growls. “Tea?”

“I think something stronger and more Scottish might be better.”

His chuckles wryly and nods. Just as he turns to head back inside, we whirl at the sound of an engine roaring up the driveway. Tires squeal, and the crunching sound of metal has us all scrambling to our feet and bolting around the side of the house toward the driveway.

Shit.

Takeshi, who I saw ride off with Kenzo earlier, is staggering to his feet from the crashed bike. His helmet is missing, and even before he drops to his knees, I can see blood dripping down the side of his face and from the arm he’s cradling against his chest.

“TAK!” Hana screams as the three of us run over to him.

“What the fuck happened?!” Mal hisses, crouching next to his brother. I wince when I see the gash on the side of Takeshi’s face and the pain in his eyes as he grimaces. His eyes are blurry, but when they find mine, they come into focus.

“Kenzo?” I breathe.

His throat bobs. “They took him,” he grunts, wincing in pain.

“Who did?” Mal growls.

“Some fucking…Albanian, I think,” Takeshi mutters through grit teeth. “Pretty sure that’s what I heard him speaking to his men.”

“What happened?” I blurt.

“We went to Leka’s house,” he mutters, wincing again. “But it was empty, and there was blood all over the place when we got there. We found Leka all cut up, but then we got jumped by this fucker and his men.” He shakes his head. “Big motherfucker with a shaved head and a beard. Eastern European, for sure. His guys were calling him Gaza, or Gaza-something⁠—”

“Gacaferi.”

My heart drops, my face going white as the name falls from my lips.

“Yeah,” he grunts. “That was it.”

Oh fuck.

“They knocked Kenzo out. I got one of them, but there were like a dozen more. I…” His voice chokes as he looks away. “I…I left him⁠—”

“No, you got out, Tak,” Mal hisses quietly, shaking his head and grabbing his brother’s hand. “Getting yourself killed fighting a dozen guys doesn’t save Kenzo. Getting out and getting backup might. You got that?”

Tak nods grimly.

I’m already standing and marching away.

“Woah, hang on, cowboy,” Mal grunts.

I ignore him, my face stony and my heart thudding as I storm toward the garage. Inside, I grab a helmet and the keys to the same bike I rode the other night. Mal storms in behind me as I pause in front of the open locker on the wall.

“What the fuck are you⁠—”

He puts his hands up, stepping back as I whirl at him with a sword in my hand, pointed straight at him.

“I’m going after Kenzo,” I hiss. “What the fuck are you doing?”

His eyes flare as he tilts his head to the side. “It’s a trap, Annika,” he mutters. “You think they just let Tak run off? Gacaferi wants⁠—”

“He wants me to come to him,” I snap. “And he’s going to get his wish.”

Mal frowns.

“We have…history,” I hiss. “A business deal gone wrong. If this is how he wants to settle it…” I glance at the blade in my hand. “I know it’s a trap, Mal. But he’s got my husband.”

“And my brother,” he growls, turning and grabbing another set of keys and a helmet. He pushes past me, pulling a sword from the locker. “C’mon. We’re wasting time.”

My heart lurches as we step into the courtyard of Valon’s rental house.

That’s a lot of blood.

Like, a lot.

“Not Kenzo’s,” Mal growls quietly. His brow is furrowed as he stoops down, running his fingers over scuff marks on the stone patio. “Kenzo got dragged over…here,” he murmurs, moving quickly to one of the porches that ring the courtyard. He squats next to a post, pointing to some scuff marks on it. “He was tied up here. There’s a little blood, see?” He points a little higher up on the post. “Tak said they hit Kenzo in the back of the head. That’s what this blood is. It’s not…” He turns to nod his chin at the huge stain in the middle of the courtyard.

“Valon,” I hiss venomously through clenched teeth.

Mal nods. “Yeah, I think that was him.” He frowns. “Shit. That’s…a lot of blood.”

The stain becomes a wet looking drag mark, like a body being pulled away to one side. We follow the trail, my heart thumping at the prospect of walking around the corner and finding the monster cut in half. When we hit a wall with bloody scrabble marks streaked up and over it, my brow darkens.

He got out too.

I glance at Mal, who is nodding.

“My guess is, they left Leka for dead. After he was alone, he made it over here and got away over this wall.”

I swallow thickly, twice. A second later, I glance over at Mal to see him looking at me curiously.

“I want him dead,” I hiss coldly.

He nods. “I think you probably already got your wish. That’s a crazy amount of blood on the ground. He might’ve managed to get over the wall, but he didn’t get far.” He peers at me closely. “Leka’s gotta be dead, Annika. He might’ve made it down the street, or across the road on the other side of this wall to hide in a ditch. But he has to have bled out by now.”

A burning desire to go find the body and cut out the heart consumes me. But there’s something else I crave even more than that.

I need to find Kenzo.

I can’t think about Valon right now, or my revenge if he is somehow still clinging to life nearby.

Right now, I have to find my husband.

“They’re not far.”

Mal is crouched down, pointing to a cigarette butt in the white stones of the Zen garden. It’s still glowing faintly.

The bastards who took Kenzo are still close.

Which means he is too.

A searing pain I’ve rarely felt before stabs into me. It’s the pain I felt the night my family died. The night I thought I’d lost Taylor. It’s the pain I felt not so long ago, when she was in harm’s way and I almost lost her all over again.

The realization hits me like a slap.

I know what this pain is.

It’s the fear of losing love: real, genuine love. The sort of love I’ve tried to shield myself from since I was eighteen. The sort of love I now feel deep in my bones and in my soul for Kenzo.

I am not going to lose that.

I’m not going to lose him.

“How tight are you with the local authorities?”

Mal nods, reading my mind. “Tight. I’ll call our guys at the local station. There’s only so many roads in and out of Kyoto. They can set up some bullshit drunk driver roadblocks and scan for Gacaferi and his men.”

I nod brusquely and yank out my phone. “Thank you,” I mumble as I tap on the contact name and bring the phone to my ear.

“What is it, two in the fucking morning there?” Freya grumbles. It’s around one in the afternoon back in New York, which means she’s probably just getting up.

“I need you to hack into the Kyoto municipal CCTV system,” I blurt.

“Oh, is that all,” she mumbles.

“NOW, Frey!”

Her sarcasm drops. “On it. Hang on,” she says quickly, sensing the urgency in my voice. “Gimme a minute.”

I can hear her keyboard clicking.

“Okay, I’m finding a back door right now. Shouldn’t be too…there we go,” she grunts. “I’m in. What am I looking for?”

“Ulkan.”

Freya sucks in her breath sharply.

“He’s there?” she hisses.

“Yes. And he has Kenzo.”

There’s a pause.

“Did you hear me?” I mutter. “He⁠—”

“Yeah, no, I heard,” Freya responds, typing away. “I guess sentiments have…changed?” she asks, her voice lifting in surprise.

I nod, my heart wrenching. “They have,” I whisper. “Please. Find him, Frey.”

“Gimme a starting point.”

I rattle off the address for Valon’s rental house.

“Back up the footage maybe forty-five minutes or so.”

“Just a sec.” Her fingers clack on the keyboard of her laptop. “Okaaaay, here we are.” She swears. “Yeah, there’s Ulkan. Looks like his guys offed the guards at the house and dragged them inside…” She types some more. “Fast-forwarding—got it. Yeah, they’re dragging someone off the property…”

My chest clenches when her breath sucks in again.

“It’s Kenzo. They shoved him into a van and drove off.”

“Is he hurt?” I whisper, staring into the middle distance as Mal eyes me with concern.

“Yeah, Anni,” Freya says quietly. “He’s hurt.”

Fuck.

I glance up, my eyes locking with Mal’s as his jaw grinds grimly.

“I got the van,” Freya blurts into my ear.

I start to run back to the bikes with Mal hot on my heels.

“Guide me.”