Crossed by the Stars: A Second-chance, Slow-burn Romance

by LJ Evans

  Rana’s hand collided with Ito-san’s chest, but Ito-san acted as if Rana and the rest of the team were invisible. She spoke through them to Jada.

  “Oyabun requests you meet with him. He’s waiting in the car.”

  “I suggest you take a step back,” Rana said, shoving against Ito-san’s sternum harder. In a flash, both women pulled knives from nowhere and had them held to each other’s throats.

  Ito-san still didn’t acknowledge Rana, even with the knife pressed against her skin. Instead, she kept her eyes sealed to Jada’s. When I looked over, Jada had gone stiff with a face as blank as her old chauffeur’s.

  “If you don’t come,” Ito-san said with a growl, “it’ll be an admission that you’re working against him again, and you know what that means for your friends.”

  My stomach plummeted because I knew more than I should about what happened to friends of the Moris.

  Rana pushed her knife harder against Ito-san’s throat, and a nick of blood appeared on the white column. Ito-san matched the movement with her silver and ruby-studded knife against Rana’s skin.

  Jada slid around the opposite side of the booth.

  “Jada, no,” I said, a guttural protest that she didn’t even acknowledge.

  She forced her way past Cillian, standing next to the two females stuck in a battle no one dared interrupt.

  “I have nothing to hide,” Jada said to Ito-san. “But Rana will come with me.”

  Rana’s lip quirked, and Ito-san snorted.

  “You won’t need her, but even if you did, she wouldn’t be able to protect you.”

  Rana’s fingers tightened on the knife, the small cut on Ito-san’s neck growing. “Want to make a bet?”

  “Enough!” Jada demanded in a hushed voice as concerned expressions drifted our way from guests in the restaurant. “Rana, back off. Ito-san is simply doing her job, just like you.”

  Both women considered each other for a moment longer before slowly withdrawing their knives and shoving away from each other.

  I rose from the booth and pushed past Cillian and the two guards from Jada’s penthouse.

  “Jada!” I couldn’t keep the torment from my voice, and when she glanced my way, I added on, “If you go, then I’m coming, too.”

  She shook her head. I ignored it, stepping closer and looking down at Ito-san. “I’m coming,” I repeated.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “But your friend has to stay here. Only this one can come.”

  She pointed the blade at Cillian and then back in the direction of Rana.

  Ilan burst from the kitchen with a plate in one hand and a wine bottle in the other. His eyes widened at the guards and the tension.

  “Hold that thought, Ilan. We’ll be right back,” I said with a confidence I felt far from.

  “Stay here,” Jada hissed at me.

  “If you go, I go,” I hissed back.

  “Why do men always insert themselves where they aren’t wanted?” she demanded.

  “It has nothing to do with me being male and everything to do with me being your friend.”

  “Being Dawson’s friend, you mean.”

  It hurt. That she thought I would only do this because of Dawson’s request for me to check in on her. Jada and I had been friends for much longer. I’d sat at her side and snickered with her through the charity events we’d been dragged to years before Dawson had entered our world. And yet, she was also right, because I wouldn’t have shown up at her penthouse that morning if Dawson hadn’t called me. I’d evaded interaction with Jada as much as possible over the last few years.

  “I’m coming,” I repeated, determination filling me. Cillian didn’t like it any more than Jada did. He and I exchanged a look. I rubbed the corner of my right eye—a signal we’d agreed on long ago. A signal that said, hang back but follow. He still didn’t like it but gave me the return signal—a tug at the left sleeve of his jacket.

  When I turned back around, Ito-san was already leading the way out of the restaurant with Jada and Rana on her heels. It took several long strides through the tables to catch up as the flickering lights turned the guests' faces into mirage-like images, fading in and out just like the conversations in the room. I could only hope pictures of this wouldn’t make it to social media. That Papa wouldn’t see me scurrying after the Moris and their bodyguards.

  When we emerged from the restaurant, the chilly air hit me in the face. The fog had rolled back in, turning the November night even darker. The streetlights were vainly trying to push through the haze settling down on top of the sidewalks.

  Ito-san didn’t even hesitate as she marched through clouds and the bustle of people headed toward the bars and restaurants this part of the city was famous for. She stopped at a black sedan, opening the rear door. Jada slid in, and when Rana went to follow, Ito-san stepped between her and the opening. “No. You must wait here, with me.”

  I ignored them both, pushing past them to join Jada into the dark recesses of the vehicle, hoping that I could save us both from whatever new hell her father promised us.

  Jada

  LIVE TO SURVIVE

  “You cling to lies and call it truth.

  It's so deep in your nature,

  You dragged me down that hole with you.”

  Performed by MØ

  Written by Ailin / Orsted / Lewis / Sivertsen

  The streetlights behind my father’s head turned his face into shadows. I hadn’t seen him in two years, and those years had not been kind. He’d always had an agelessness to him, skin almost wrinkle-free, shoulders broad and powerful. Now, even in the darkness, I could see the new lines that creased his brow and surrounded his lips. There was more white in his hair than ever before. His lifestyle―his world―seemed to have crashed into him at full intensity, finally leaving a mark.

  “Otōsan,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. Showing fear was never received well in his presence. Emotions of any kind were not respected, but being afraid was its own kind of sin.

  “Musume,” he acknowledged with a slight tilt of his head. The word “daughter” was uttered as further depersonalization of our relationship. I no longer even had a name.

  As a little girl who’d amused him by wielding the sword behind his desk and fighting pretend dragons, I’d been Jada-tan. I’d lost the -tan when he’d found my naked body entwined with our very attractive male chauffeur at fifteen. I’d wanted my father to find us like that―entangled in the backseat―but I’d been unprepared for the loss I’d felt when he’d withdrawn further instead of storming into my world more. Now that I’d betrayed him by becoming an informant for Dawson and the FBI, I was even less. I wasn’t sure what it would take for me to go from musume to nothing. To someone who no longer had the right to breathe.

  He looked behind me to where Dax had joined me. I hadn’t wanted Dax there. I didn’t want him anywhere near my father, and yet I’d allowed him to come. It was strange, the dichotomy of emotions Dax had filled me with since showing up in my penthouse that morning. I wanted to escape into his pretty, clean world as much as I wanted to show him the complete and utter dirtiness of mine. It was the same beg and push I’d once thrown to Otōsan, the one that had ended with this—the word daughter spoken like a curse word.

  “You broke your word again,” he said in Japanese, a way to shield his message from Dax. What he didn’t know was that Dax could speak Japanese with some semblance of accuracy. I knew because I’d been the one to teach it to him. It had been a joke at first, merely a way to spend our stolen moments while we escaped the events our parents attended on opposite sides of ballrooms.

  “I haven’t,” I told my father with a shake of my head. “Unless you really think making sure Obaasan was okay counts as breaking my word.”

  “I would have overlooked that if it hadn’t come with a new listening device planted in her apartment,” he said.

  My surprise must have registered with him as
being authentic, because his nostrils flared as if he’d been certain it had been me. No, he’d been hoping. It would have been easier if there was only one mole in his organization. One traitor.

  “If there was one, I had nothing to do with it.” I backed up my surprised look with the words to match it.

  His eyes―the ones I’d inherited―round and wide with dark lashes, narrowed at me. “It would be a strangely timed coincidence, Musume,” he responded.

  “Or it was there before, and you only found it because you don’t trust me.”

  “A mistrust you’ve earned.”

  I had. I couldn’t deny it. There’d been so many reasons I’d agreed to help Dawson and the FBI, but the main one had been the need to strike back at him, to hurt the man who’d all but abandoned me to be raised by a grandmother who came and went and a staff who reported my every action to him.

  “Why would I do that?” I asked. “You promised my friends and I would be safe. That’s all I care about. I wouldn’t risk them.”

  My heart was pounding furiously, and my skin felt heated and tight as if I might faint, just like I had that fateful day in the study at Obaasan’s. The day my entire world had crumbled one step further.

  “But you would easily risk your family,” he said, and for the first time in many years, I thought I heard emotion in my father’s voice. A hint of sadness.

  I scoffed anyway, “Were we? A family?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Look,” I continued, “I want nothing to do with you or whatever organization is trying to take you down now. I just want to run my business and stay the hell away from yours.”

  “Threaten her again, and there will be consequences,” Dax’s voice broke through, choppy in Japanese in a way it never was in French, or English, or even Italian. I wished he’d remained quiet, because it drew my father’s eyes to him once more.

  “And an Armaud would know how to deliver these consequences?” Otōsan’s voice was amused as he switched to English for Dax’s benefit.

  Dax shifted uncomfortably, but I could feel the anger in him building. Dax rarely lost his temper. In all the years I’d known him, I’d only seen it twice. One of those times, he didn’t even know I was coherent enough for it to register. I still had a hazy recollection of Dax’s power and strength on display that night. Traits he rarely let out of the controlled box he normally lived in.

  Before Dax could actually respond to the rhetorical question, my father turned back to me with narrowed eyes. “You’ve been receiving threats?”

  “I’ve got it under control,” I told him.

  “What did they say?” Otōsan demanded.

  “Read it yourself,” Dax said, shoving his phone in my father’s direction. Otōsan hesitated before taking it, zooming in on the note Dax had taken a picture of that morning.

  Even though he’d already been sitting, barely moving, my father seemed to go even stiller, like he’d been turned into rock by a spell cast on him. The impregnated air was stagnating, turning stale, cloying at me until I wanted nothing more than to lunge for the door just to feel the breeze on my face.

  When Otōsan moved again, his hand trembled ever so slightly. Dax took the offered phone back. My father assessed Dax as if he’d never seen him before, as if he was adding up the parts to determine how much Dax was worth.

  “There are factions,” my father said. “I’m slowly weeding them out. They are demanding stronger justice for Matsuda’s death.” The words were torn from him as if he hated every second of the admission. And I knew he did. It made him look weak to not have his entire organization held tightly in his fist, to have anyone slipping through his fingers instead of going in the direction he pointed.

  Otōsan had told his organization that Dawson and I were off-limits, even as he’d tossed me from his life for good, and that should have been the end of the story. His people should have followed his command without question. So, who would dare go up against my father? Only someone powerful enough that they felt comfortable to do so. His advisors―or a regional boss―would have to be involved. I drew in a sharp breath.

  “Hiroto Matsuda?” My voice shook saying the name. Ken’Ichi’s father―the man in charge of the entire West Coast operation. The man who’d lost a son because Dawson had killed him defending Violet…and me. The son who’d been my fiancé for a few hours and who’d put a bullet in me defending the Kyōdaina. Loyalty that had not been rewarded when my father had insisted that the FBI’s breach into their world had been Ken’Ichi’s fault.

  The fact that Matsuda was based out of San Francisco had been the only thing that had given me pause in following Violet to the West Coast. But I truly hadn’t believed anyone would dare go against my father.

  Otōsan shook his head. “No, Hiroto was humiliated by Ken’Ichi’s failures. There is no anger in him.”

  “Humiliation is as good of a motive for revenge as anger,” Dax said, reminding me that we were still talking in English, reminding me that Dax was listening to this entire conversation when normally he ran for the hills when my father’s world was even hinted at.

  My father seemed to consider Dax again. They shared a look that spoke of some shared knowledge that pissed me off. What did Dax know that I didn’t?

  A knock on the window drew my father’s eyes to his watch. “Do I have your word, Musume, that the listening device was not you?”

  “You do,” I told him the truth. I may have helped the FBI and Dawson, but I hadn’t lied to my father while doing it. I’d only lied to him once. I’d told him I’d gone into business with Violet before we’d actually done so. It had been a tool to get me out of his house, to get me away from Ken’Ichi before he could lay his hands on me. I would have done just about anything to keep that man from touching me. A shiver ran down my spine at the memory of his dead eyes and cold hands. The viciousness in him. The stories I’d heard whispered about him by the staff.

  The knock repeated, and then the door opened with Kaida tilting her head to look inside.

  “Yano-san has news. He’s at your office,” she said.

  Hearing my cousin’s name surprised me. Isamu’s parents, my mother’s sister and her husband, normally wanted nothing to do with my father, which meant I’d been around my cousin very little growing up. My aunt and uncle must have been beside themselves to find Isamu working for my father. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who could disgrace their parents.

  “Musume and her friend were just leaving,” my father said in acknowledgment.

  I pushed at Dax, and he clambered out of the vehicle, offering his hand to help me just as he had earlier. On the sidewalk, Rana’s relieved expression greeted me.

  When I turned back to the vehicle, my father’s eyes were on Dax’s fingers tangled with mine. “You remind me of your aunt, Armaud,” Otōsan said and then looked forward, waiting for Kaida to close the door, as if his words would make perfect sense to Dax, or me, or both of us. And it was obvious Dax did understand, because he stiffened at the comment, sending a glare in my father’s direction as if him mentioning Dax’s aunt was its own kind of sin. I hadn’t even known Dax had an aunt.

  After the door was closed, Kaida glared at me. “Everything that happens from here is your fault, Uragirimono.”

  Then, she turned her back on all of us, got into my father’s car, and drove him away.

  Betrayer.

  To Kaida, who was all about the organization and all but idolized my father, it would seem that I was one. But she hadn’t been there when I’d been a mere child. When my father had betrayed me first.

  He’d left me to the wolves, and they’d come for me.

  Dax’s fingers tightened on mine.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to go home, or do you still want dinner?”

  “You trying to get out of buying me dinner, Armaud?” I teased, forcing a lightness into my voice that I didn’t feel.

  The worry in his eyes
was real, and the rigidness hadn’t disappeared from his shoulders. The lights from the streetlamps and storefronts made it easy to read him. Once upon a time, I might have loved the concern he was wafting in my direction. I might have fallen for that look, but now I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Even though my body called for me to do just that.

  I pulled my hand from his.

  “Dinner it is, then,” he said.

  From the shadows, Cillian emerged. He and Dax shared a look, and then the four of us headed toward the restaurant.

  “You knew Cillian was there?” I asked, surprised.

  Dax gave me a small smile. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Signals. We have a list of unspoken ones that we’ve had for years.”

  Rana had handed me a list of signals when I’d first hired her. I’d thought they were ridiculous and hadn’t bothered to learn them. Now, she sent me a knowing look. I could tell we’d be revisiting them, and I was suddenly okay with it.

  Once we were seated back in the restaurant, Ilan brought us a new appetizer and a new bottle of wine, as if the wine had also been ruined by waiting for us. Or maybe he’d drank it after the room had been cleared of knives and tension.

  My body was still overflowing with the anxiety from the discussion with my father. My thoughts whirled, trying to put together the clues Otōsan had laid out for me. After a moment, I gave up and turned the topic to one I could get an answer to.

  “You have an aunt?” I asked Dax as we shared the pastry puffs filled with mushrooms and cream.

  Dax stilled. His normally easy-to-read face became a mask that somehow reminded me of my father. I hated it. I didn’t want that look on Dax’s face—ever. I wanted him all grins and suave one-liners. Dax had a smile that lit up the room. That lit me up. It had since we’d first met, with my pubescent self drooling over fifteen-year-old Dax in a fitted tux. He’d been larger than life in my thirteen-year-old, hormone-driven brain. Tall and lean with those lined eyes staring at me.