Poisonous Kiss: Chapter 30

I’m not typically one for day drinking.

But today, I’m fucking day drinking.

My fingers clench the crystal rocks glass in my hand tightly. The 1964 Glendronach fifty-year-old is perfect smoke, peat, and sweetness on my tongue as my gaze stabs out the window over midtown Manhattan.

I built all this—Crown and Black, that is. Alistair, Taylor and I were young, ambitious, and fucking good when we laid the first stone of what would become this empire. None of us was handed shit. None of us was given a leg up, or an easy road. We built this place with our blood and sweat.

Today, for the first time ever, I wonder if I’ll lose it all.

I looked at Fumi’s computer after she stormed out.

It’s bad.

Not silver bullet to the heart bad. But any freshman attorney with the ink still wet on his license to practice could take what she has to court and destroy me with it.

Part of me is actually listening for sirens, waiting for the police to storm out of the elevator screaming at me to drop the three-thousand-dollar glass of booze and kiss the floor.

But an hour later, I’m still a free man.

Two hours later, I’m confused, and maybe a little worried.

By hour three, I’m done fucking waiting, and I’m definitely done giving Fumi whatever “space” she needs.

She doesn’t need space.

She needs me. And today, I come with a side order of the truth.

All of it. Every gritty, gory detail. I’ve already opened myself up to this woman in ways I’d never dreamed I’d be able to.

She’s stood at the very fucking edge of my black abyss and stared longingly into it. She’s met my monster. She’s been intimate with him.

She’s fucked him, hard, and begged for more.

Perhaps realizing that I’ve killed people is a shock. But discovering the true nature of my savagery and my full capacity for viciousness shouldn’t be that much of a stretch for her, given what she does know about me.

But now she needs to know the why. The how. And she needs to hear it in my own words, from my own lips.

She needs to know all of me in a way not a single person ever has.

That thought doesn’t fill me with dread, or fear. It doesn’t concern me that I know I need to rip myself open to this woman.

Because she already has ripped me open and crawled inside. She just needs to be made aware of what she already is…

Everything.

But Fumi isn’t home when Trevor drives me there. Tate, the nurse I hired to take care of Hideo who may or may not also be a former Green Beret and surveillance expert, confirms that she’s not over there, either.

She’s not at any of her go-to restaurants or bars. Nor at the bookstore on Fifth and East Seventy-ninth I know she loves to lose herself in.

She’s not with any of her friends. Her phone is off. And when I ask Chase, the tech guy at work, to trace her company cell, it’s back in her office.

My pulse starts to pound as my nerves begin to fray. It’s not that I’m worried she’s going to turn me in. She would have done that by now if she was going to.

But I’m worried.

I’m really fucking worried.

My teeth grind as I wait for Ares Drakos to answer my call.

“Gabriel,” he says casually. “What can I⁠—”

“I need to know if that travel ban we spoke about a few weeks ago is still in effect,” I growl curtly. “And I need to know yesterday.”

Ares knows when it’s not a time to fuck around.

“Give me an hour or so. I’ll call you back as soon as I know.”

“Please, come in.”

Hideo bows as he welcomes me into his apartment. I return the gesture, slipping my shoes off before stepping in.

“Can I get you a drink?”

I shake my head.

“Have a seat.”

I sit on the couch as Fumi’s father sinks into a chair by the window—the same chair he favored back at their old place, which he’s had moved here.

“You look troubled.”

I’m not about to tell this man that I’ve chased away his daughter. Nor am I going to let him know why exactly she’s hiding from me.

Truth be told, I’m not actually sure why I’m here. Maybe it’s because this is the closest to Fumi I can get right now.

…And maybe that means more than I realize.

“I…” I smile wryly at him. “I was about to lie to you. I was going to tell you it was a work thing, but…” I spread my arms. “It’s more of a your-daughter thing.”

He grins. “My daughter is a force to be reckoned with when she wants to be.”

“That’s…one way to put it.”

“Did you fight?”

“No—” I frown. “Sort of.”

“Do you know the very first thing my Bella—Fumi’s mother—said to me when we met?”

I shake my head.

“Stop bothering me.”

I chuckle, and damn, it feels good to have a different emotion aside from anger, confusion, and worry right now.

“That woman was tenacious, just like our daughter is tenacious. Believe me,” he says, arching a brow. “Marriage is hard. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.”

“Or maybe just a good lawyer,” I smirk.

Hideo smiles back, nodding at me.

“Mr. Yamaguchi, I know you’re aware of the circumstances surrounding my relationship with your⁠—”

“Do you love my daughter, Mr. Black?”

I could stall. I could ask for a court recess, or force a delay, or slap up some roadblocks.

But this isn’t court.

This is my life.

“Yes.”

I don’t have to think about it. I just know it, as surely as I know the sun rises in the east.

“Yes,” I growl. “I love your daughter.”

Hideo smiles. “Good. Then let me tell you a few things I’ve learned about you.”

My brow cocks as he steeples his hands.

“You’re a good man, Gabriel.”

I scoff. “I think that might depend on your perspective.”

“I don’t think perspective enters into it. It’s a fact. Look what you did for me.”

“Let’s be honest, Hideo. I needed your daughter⁠—”

“But you didn’t need to move her old cancer-ridden father into a multi-million-dollar penthouse with a live-in nurse and bodyguard.”

I arch a brow. Hideo sighs.

“Which brings me to my next argument, counselor. You know who and what I am.”

I shake my head slowly. “Your past doesn’t⁠—”

“Yes, but it could have. Maybe it should have. You’re running for Governor, Gabriel. And your father-in-law was a Yakuza oyabun. Which, by the way, is how I know Tate is more than just a nurse with ‘some army training’.” He stares long and hard at me. “Taking care of me, even keeping me in the picture at all, was a huge risk for you. And yet…” he shrugs. “Here we are.”

I nod slowly, turning to stare out the window.

“You don’t need to tell me precisely what’s bothering you,” Hideo says quietly. “But I’m going to tell you one other thing I know about you.”

When I turn back to him, he’s eyeing me coolly.

“You’re a wolf, Mr. Black.”

I stiffen. “Excuse me?”

“A lone one, without a pack.”

“Mr. Yamaguchi⁠—”

“And once a wolf…” His eyes lock with mine, and I realize the man is more of an equal than I could ever have dreamed. “Always a wolf.”

The room goes silent.

“And the thing about lone wolves, Mr. Black⁠—”

My fucking phone chooses that moment to go off. I scowl as I glance at it. “Mr. Yamaguchi, I’m terribly sorry. Hold that thought. I need to take this.”

“Of course.”

I stand, walking to the doorway into the kitchen area before answering Ares’s call.

“Takato Ito is still on a non-entry list into the US. His passport is still showing him as being in Japan.”

I exhale slowly.

Thank fuck.

It means she’s not in the danger I was worried about. She’s just hiding.

Well, she can hide as much as she wants.

I’ll always find my Kitten…

“Thanks, Ares,” I say, my shoulders relaxing. “I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry about it. Oh, there is one other thing my guy mentioned. I don’t know if it’s important. Although Takato himself is in Japan, a private jet registered to Ito Enterprises took off from Westchester Airport outside New York six hours ago.”

My whole world turns to ice. My face freezes and my muscles clench as something vicious snarls in my chest, rattling the bars of its cage and demanding to know if Fumi was on that plane.

I end the call. Slowly, I turn to Hideo, whose face is as stoic as mine as our eyes lock.

“What was it you were saying?” I growl. “About lone wolves?”

His lips curl darkly. “They’re excellent hunters. Because they don’t kill for the pack, or to mark their territory, or to feast.” He pauses a moment, making sure his words sink in. “They kill because it is necessary for them.”

I nod. “Mr. Yamaguchi,” I growl quietly. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Orochi Ito.”

The Hato-kai have enough local authorities bribed that Fumi’s passport didn’t ping once Orochi’s private plane touched down in Kyoto. But it did register as leaving the US via the Westchester Airport. And the smart-camera outside my front door that recorded a van pulling up and yanking Fumi into it would highly suggest she didn’t do so willingly.

It also suggests that I’m about to spill the blood of everyone who had a hand in taking her.

Taylor is standing with her arms folded in front of the helicopter that’ll take me to the private airfield when I step out onto the roof of Crown and Black.

My head shakes side to side, my jaw grim as I storm toward her.

“Don’t even fucking think about trying to dissuade⁠—”

“Do you love her?” She eyes me. “I don’t mean for what she does for your campaign. I mean do you love her, Gabriel?”

“If you made me choose between you, Alistair, and her,” I growl, “I’d pick her every time. I love her.”

Slowly, she grins. “Good.” She steps aside, gesturing to the chopper. “Then go fucking get her.”