Emperor of Havoc: Chapter 3

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ve failed you, raising you to be stronger than our world permits.”

My father’s words settle heavily into the space between us. He’s seated across from me in his office, his hands folded neatly on the oak desk as if we were discussing something as inconsequential as a shipping route, instead of my entire future, and our family’s.

I hate every second of it.

Kolya Ishida doesn’t say things lightly, not to anyone, and certainly not to me. He wields words like weapons, precisely and deliberately. There’s something softer in his tone just now, a rare glimpse of the man beneath the steel exterior. Then it’s gone as quickly as it came, his storm-gray eyes pinning me in place with cold resolve.

Many people find my father confusing, because they like to put others into boxes that are easy to distinguish or label, and Kolya Ishida defies description.

Part Russian, part Japanese, Papa is a complex man. For one, his reputation is one based on brutality and savagery: that’s followed him ever since he returned to Japan to claim what was his.

Papa’s mom, my grandmother Kiko, was the daughter of the Ishida-kai Oyabun. When she eschewed her arranged marriage because she had fallen in love with a Russian man, my great-grandfather banished her for loving a man from another world and culture and cut her out of the family. And then Grandpa Leo’s Bratva family did the same to him for the same reason.

So they moved to Vladivostok, in the harshness of Northeastern Russia, where they lived as outcasts as they raised my father and my uncle Jin, straddling a cultural divide between old-school Japan and old-school Russia.

When Papa’s parents died when he was just a teenager, Papa took matters into his own hands. He came back to Japan, not as a tourist, nor as a beggar looking for a handout from his estranged family.

As a dark angel of vengeance.

Papa took on the full might of the Ishida-kai, hacking away at them little by little until he finally went head-to-head with his own grandfather and killed him for throwing my grandmother out into to the cold.

Papa seized both his grandfather’s sword and his empire and honed them to a deadly force, turning the Ishida-kai into the most powerful Yakuza family in Tokyo.

Until the fucking Mori-kai decided to branch out from Kyoto.

“Papa, you haven’t failed me⁠—”

“You know what I mean, Koshka. Women do not lead alone in the Yakuza world,” he continues, leaning back slightly, the subtle wince and tightening of his jaw betraying the pain in his back.

He never speaks of it beyond the clinical updates I force him to give me. But three months ago, doctors found the source of the pain he kept having in his back and neck: a tumor growing on his spine.

A tumor that’s threatening to kill, or at least cripple, the father I love.

A tumor trying to take down a man that no assassin or war ever has.

A tumor which is directly responsible for this whole goddamn conversation.

“You need a husband, Koshka.”

The “kitty-cat” nickname is less cute when it comes after those first four words this time. They sting, not because they’re unexpected, but because they’re inevitable. I’ve heard this argument before, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

“I don’t need a husband to lead,” I sign quickly, my hands calm despite the fire simmering in my chest.

“No, you don’t,” he says simply. “But the men who will answer to you need to believe that you do. The interconnected alliances that I’ve built across this city in the last twenty-five years do as well. This isn’t about your ability, Katarina. It’s about perception. If you want to lead effectively, you need to silence any doubts before they take root.”

“Right, because a woman can’t lead, obviously,” I sign. “Who knows what chaos I’d sew as a puppet to the whims of my weak, inferior hormones and emotions. I mean, God forbid I should get my period during a negotiation⁠—”

“Katarina.”

I trail off, dropping my hands and glaring at the desk between us. My anger isn’t directed at Papa. I know he’s on my side and dislikes the idea of me marrying for this reason as much as I do. But reality is reality.

“Do you have someone in mind?” I continue, raising my eyes to his, the walls of his office closing in with every word.

His expression remains unreadable. “Rodion Vorobev.”

I feel my stomach twist. “You can’t be serious.”

“He’s the heir to the Vorobev Bratva, Kat. Their operations in the Port of Tokyo are expanding rapidly. An alliance with them would fortify us against anything that might develop later with the Mori-kai.”

“Rodion is a notorious drunk,” I gesture quickly, my eyes desperate. “He’s been kicked out of virtually every bar and club in Tokyo, even with the power his family wields.”

My father sighs. “Yes, and that can be to your advantage.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re correct. He’s a drunk buffoon. That means he’s controllable—easily so, at that.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that pretending a sloppy, vodka-swilling piece of shit like Rodion Vorobev is leading our organization is a better look that me, simply because I menstruate.”

Papa’s brow furrows. He was a rock, raising me on his own after my mother died when I was barely a baby. But still. I know there are aspects of our gender differences that throw him off at times.

…Which, obviously, I use when I have to.

“This isn’t about what you or I want, Katarina. It’s about what the Ishida-kai needs.”

I stand abruptly, my chair scraping against the floor as I push it back. “Then find someone else to sacrifice on the altar of the Yakuza,” I sign coldly. “It won’t be me.”

He doesn’t stop me as I leave the office and storm to my bedroom before slamming the door shut behind me. For a moment I just stand there breathing heavily, my heart pounding in my chest, the weight of the conversation pressing down on me like a stone, heavy and suffocating as the walls of the estate.

I need an outlet. Something to distract me from the cage my life has become.

Before I know it, my phone is in my hand, and I’m opening the Venom app for the first time in a week, since I fled the Mori-kai initiation.

I should note that my father doesn’t know anything about the initiation and never will. Not just because I snuck into the Mori-kai’s base of operations in Tokyo, which I’ll grant was beyond reckless.

But because I left this house at all.

I’ve heard every version of every rumor concerning the fact that I barely leave home and hardly ever make public appearances. Some assume it’s because Papa is controlling and overly protective of me, especially after that week of darkness and fear when I was nine when he almost lost me.

Others assume I’m agoraphobic and can’t bring myself to leave. There was once some truth to that particular rumor, but I’ve gotten over that now.

No, the reason I’m scarcely seen out and about is mostly strategic, a decision made by both Papa and me: if I’m hidden away, and if enemies and allies alike don’t know what to make of it, human nature will lead them to think the weakest of me.

That I’m scared of the world. That I’m a freak. That I’m ‘touched’, or something.

It means they’ll underestimate me.

I do go out—infrequently—but when I do, I’m usually in disguise. Up until a couple of months ago, I even had my own secret elevator at my apartment that went down to a sub-garage, where Okita would be waiting to drive me wherever.

Except that all changed when Kenzo Mori’s beyond-psychotic younger brother, Takeshi, set it on fucking fire a few months ago as some sort of insane provocation before our almost-war with his family devolved into a Cold War.

Crazy fucking asshole.

I do love Papa, but there was a reason I’d been living on my own for the last year…

Back in my room, staring at the Venom app on my screen, my pulse quickens as I navigate to my messages. Kaiju’s name is there, glaring at me like a taunt.

I hesitate for a moment before clicking on his profile. The last message he sent still lingers on the screen:

As if summoned by my thoughts, a new message suddenly appears, making my pulse spike so hard I almost drop the phone.

My fingers tremble as I type.

His response sends a bolt of something dark and forbidden through me.

My eyes bulge. Jesus fuck.

My throat bobs heavily.

My mind spins, a hundred scenarios flashing through my head—some pulse-poundingly arousing, others terrifying. My fingers hover over the keyboard. Before I can reply, another message appears.

A shiver runs through me. My thumb hovers over the screen, the temptation to say yes almost overwhelming. But then I remember the chase, the way he toyed with me like a predator savoring his prey.

Meet me, or I WILL come find you.

I quickly navigate to my profile, my eyes scanning the settings until I exhale with a rush. The location sharing is still off, like I toggled it right after I fled the Mori compound the other night.

He can’t “come find me”.

He doesn’t even know who I am.

If he knew that, he’d have never in a million years have let me go the other night. Whoever he is, he’s clearly someone high up in the Mori-kai. And I’m, well, Kolya Ishida’s daughter and only heir.

All the more reason to walk the hell away.

I don’t bother responding. I just slam the phone down on the side table next to my bed, my heart pounding.

But as I sit there, staring at the phone, his words from the other night echo in my mind, a dark promise I can’t shake.

“But don’t think for a second that this is over…”