by LJ Evans
Before I could respond verbally, Dax was already at the door, speaking softly to someone, and then back at my side.
“Go home, Armaud,” I said, unsure if I was loud or soft because my voice echoed through my brain like a pinball machine.
His face darkened. “No.”
A nurse hustled in with a bag of fluids, hooking them up to the IV stand. “No more pain medicine,” I said to her, slurring.
Dax growled, “Stop being a martyr. Take the damn medicine.”
“Stop telling me what to do,” I threw back.
The nurse chuckled. “You and your fiancé are adorable.”
I turned to her, barely breathing out, “What?”
She assumed I hadn’t heard her because of my hearing loss, and she repeated it a little louder.
“He’s no―”
“Thank you,” Dax said with a smooth smile that had the nurse flushing before she scrambled out of the room.
“Why in the hell does she think you’re my fiancé?” I asked, eyes narrowing on him.
With deep emotion lodged at the back of his throat, he said, “It was the only way they’d let me in.”
I closed my eyes, hurt winging its way through my soul instead of my body. I couldn’t do this with him. I’d let him into my life too many times and had him flit away on tender feet, too afraid to walk over the coals with me, too afraid of the image of a Mori at the side of an Armaud.
He’d kissed me once and then disappeared from my life for three years.
He’d held my hand in another hospital much like he’d done today, making promises with eyes and hands instead of words, and then disappeared for another two years.
I wouldn’t survive it again. I wouldn’t be able to recover and keep the frail pieces of my soul from completely shattering.
“As if I’d ever agree to marry you,” I threw out, trying to regain some level of the snark that was our norm but knowing I failed miserably.
“Never say never, mon amour,” he teased, knowing I hated being called the stupid endearment. Hated it as much as someone calling me babe or chick.
He ran a hand over my hair. It had been up in a twisted knot while I’d worked out with Lía, and I was sure it was now a bird’s nest of tangles. Even still, the movement was sweet. Tender. It made me want to sob like I had when Obaasan had come home to find me locked in my room at her apartment a decade ago. She’d wrapped me in her arms and shh’d me as if that could make the knowledge of my father cutting someone’s finger off vanish. As if I could forget that every single thing we owned had been earned at someone else’s expense. As if I could ever look at my father again without seeing anything but a villain.
The pain medicine in the IV hit me hard, making my eyes too heavy to lift back up.
“I don’t need a husband. I don’t need you,” I told him, words slurring.
“Maybe I need you,” I thought I heard him whisper right before sleep overtook me.
♫ ♫ ♫
When I woke again, the light was filtering through the blinds in the room. The antiseptic smell of the hospital hit me at the same time as the sounds of the machines and the laughter from the nurses’ station. I wasn’t sure if they were less muffled than before or if I was just growing accustomed to this new level of sound. The ringing was still there, an annoying buzz that I wanted to shake away but couldn’t.
I turned to the chair that Dax had been in. The jacket he’d had on was draped over the back, but instead of Dax, my father sat there. Eyes unreadable. Suit and hair perfect. I glanced at the doorway where Cillian was standing with a hand at the back of his waist on his concealed weapon. But I had nothing to fear from my father at the moment. He would never end my life with his own hand.
“What did you tell the police?” he asked. No How are you?, or You scared me, or I’m glad you’re okay. But I knew better than to expect it. I knew better than to think he was in the room for me at all. Instead, he needed to know what risk there was to the kingdom he sat atop of.
I answered him truthfully, with the same thing I’d told the detectives who’d shown up the day before to ask about the bomb and the threats against me. “I told them I have no idea what happened or who it was.”
“Did you tell them about the other note?”
“The threat to bring holy retribution down on me? That’s hardly a note. But no, I didn’t tell them,” I said.
He stared, assessing my honesty. What I didn’t say was how I was expecting a call or a visit from Dawson’s former boss at the FBI at any moment. Cruz Malone was still a member of the international crime division, even if Dawson was not, and he knew more about my father and his organization than I ever had. I was pretty damn sure someone would’ve alerted him to a bomb going off in my apartment, which meant Violet and Dawson would know as well because Malone would call them. My stomach turned nastily, and if I’d had anything in it, I was sure it would have come back out.
I didn’t want Vi and Dawson coming home to this. I didn’t want them walking into the middle of an unseen battle between me and whoever at the Kyōdaina was out for revenge. I’d never forgive myself if they got hurt…like Bobby had. My chest burned from lack of air, but the pain felt justified. When I finally inhaled, the searing in my lungs was replaced with a stabbing in my rib cage.
“I can’t protect you this way,” Otōsan told me. “If you come home, I can guarantee your safety.”
I snorted. “This is you, Otōsan. All of this…” I waved at my body and the hospital room. “It’s all because of you, so forgive me if I don’t think you can keep me safe.”
He let his shield down, and I saw a flash of emotions. The anger was expected, but it was the glimpse of sadness that surprised me.
“I can, and I will, but it means coming in fully. No more contact with this…life. No more rebellion. No more carousing with the Armaud boy and working with the Langleys.”
“Dax isn’t a boy. He’s a man. And as for cutting Violet and Dawson from my life? Not ever going to happen,” I told him. Violet was the best and brightest person in my entire world. She was goodness personified. She was the exact opposite of me but loved me for who I was anyway. Dawson…well, he understood me and accepted me. Dax…I didn’t know what to think about Dax other than the back-and-forth between us had left me confused, frustrated, and raw for over a decade.
“Then your life, and theirs, will always be in danger,” he said quietly.
“Don’t threaten them,” I said with a slight growl to my voice.
“I am not threatening your friends, Musume. I am only stating the facts.”
I wasn’t sure how he could still stab me in the gut after all these years. I thought I’d removed all the knives from his reach, and yet he still easily accomplished it. And like I always did when wounded, I lashed back.
“They aren’t just my friends. They’re family,” I said.
He steepled his fingers together, a solitary sign that I was getting to him, and it tugged at something deep inside. A memory I couldn’t bring back to life.
“They do not share your blood. There is no lasting bond there.”
I struck back, using the stupid, untrue words Dax had uttered to the hospital staff. “I’m engaged to Dax, so I guess that’s as solid of a bond as there gets, right?”
His eyes widened, and then, to my surprise, he chuckled. It was cold and humorless. “He’ll never marry you, Musume.”
“Just because you cannot accept me for who I am, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way.”
“He hasn’t told you about his aunt, then?” Otōsan’s eyes narrowed.
“That she died before he was born? What has that got to do with anything?” I asked, frowning. A heaviness in the air and a foreboding that I couldn’t shake crawled up my back.
He refused to answer me. Instead, he rose from his chair, looking down at me. “You know the price that must be paid for their safety. For yours. To be forgiven for your di
sloyalty.”
A bloody appendage being removed, even if it was a figurative one. Cut out the people in my life and come home. Fall on the sword of repentance, and they’d be safe. I’d be safe. He’d sworn he wasn’t the one coming after me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this was exactly what he’d wanted all along. A means to getting me back in his grasp, under his thumb. To control me when, for a decade, he’d only seen a wild child running around the globe, shaming his name with her sins.
He didn’t wait for a response. He slid out of the room just as Dax was coming in. Dax shoved a hand into Cillian’s shoulder. “You let him in?”
Cillian responded with something I couldn’t hear, something that took the anger from Dax’s frame and replaced it with worry. He turned on his heel and returned to the perch at my bedside.
“What did he say?” Dax asked.
My stomach was flipping from pain meds and dizziness and the words my father had uttered. It wasn’t the threats that stayed with me the longest—maybe because I was used to those coming from Otōsan. Instead, the words about Dax’s aunt were at the forefront. Did I want to know the truth? Or did I want to stay in oblivion for longer? I’d already had my eyes ripped open to my father’s life, and I couldn’t handle something similar happening with Dax and the Armauds. I needed to believe there was some good in the world that extended beyond Violet and her family, beyond the company we’d built for ourselves. I needed to believe there was more light than dark living amongst the human race.
“He offered me protection if I came back home and forgot about my life here,” I said and tried to shrug, but it sent pain through my rib cage and body. There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t ache. My ribs weren’t broken, just bruised, like the rest of my body. Like my heart and soul.
Dax glowered in a way he rarely did, and an animalistic bark erupted from him. “You are not going back to that man.”
While it was true, it only raised my back and made me snarl, “You keep forgetting you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“You would never leave Violet to go back to him,” he said, confident in his knowledge of me, which was as equally sweet as it was annoying.
The doctor from the day before came in, halting any further discussion. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was thrown into a table by a bomb,” I said dryly.
She grimaced at my words.
“We’re going to release you, but I’ve prepared a list of things to watch out for in relation to each of your injuries.” She turned to Dax. “I’m assuming she’ll be staying with you and that you can monitor her for any of these warning signs?”
She handed the paper to Dax.
“I’m not―” I said just as Dax said, “Thank you.”
“You’ll want to make appointments with your regular physician to check in on the bruising and concussion. It’s my understanding that the otolaryngologist already scheduled your follow-ups with him?”
I nodded, the motion causing the room to spin and spots to flicker in front of my eyes that I fought against.
She took us both in for a moment, as if debating something she wanted to say, then she just shook her head. “Be well, Miss Mori.” Then, she left.
“I’m not staying with you,” I told Dax.
“You have some other place to stay?” he said.
“I can go to Violet and Dawson’s.”
“Right across the hall? Where they can easily find you? And get their place blown up, too? There may already be a target on Dawson’s back, and you being there would just add to it.”
I swallowed hard, gut twisting. He knew I didn’t want to bring this to their doorstep.
“Staying with you isn’t any better,” I said.
“I have a plan,” he said.
I shook my head, and the room spun again. Nausea had me gagging and reaching for the vomit bag the nurse had left. Dax frowned, rubbing my back.
“For once…just once, mon petit bijou, please let someone take care of you.”
I closed my eyes. God…I’d wanted so badly to lean into him the other day. To let him take my worries away. To make me forget. But it was just another escape I couldn’t afford. Just another way for me to abuse my body…except this time it would be my heart.
“Tonight, we’ll stay at my place, but tomorrow, we’re heading down the coast. Vanya has a cottage we can stay at.”
I snorted. “Vanya? The poster boy for European rugby teams has a house in California?”
Dax nodded. “Yes, it’s in a tiny seaside town practically no one has ever heard of and where no one will think to look for you.”
“You want me to run and hide? For how long? Forever? I can’t do that. I have a company to run. We have products due out, and I have meetings with new distribution channels. I refuse to be the reason Violet and Dawson cut their honeymoon short just to deal with it all.”
He stared at me, hand continuing its circular motion up my back to my neck, lulling me into some kind of trance. “You know as soon as they hear about what happened, they’re going to come back. If you’re gone, we might have a chance to convince them to stay away until we figure out who’s behind this.”
I scoffed. After my father’s visit, I was back to believing, with almost a hundred percent certainty, that it was him. The talk we’d had in the sedan had all been some kind of ruse. As if my father would ever let some faction of his organization disobey him. It was ridiculous.
“At least stay with me tonight…we can figure out what comes next from there,” Dax said softly, a beg to his tone that was more mesmerizing than his hands on my body.
I was tired and full of pain. I could barely hear what was being said over the cotton and buzzing in my ears. I wanted to sleep for an entire day. Did it really matter where that happened?
Thoughts of the one and only time I’d woken up in Dax’s bed hit me in my core. The surprise of finding him without a stitch of clothing on. His lust-filled eyes slowly lifting when I’d surrounded him with my mouth. But there would never be a repeat of that experience. Not ever. And definitely not when I’d just been thrown across the room by an explosion that had left behind bruised ribs and nausea.
I could do this. It would be one night, and as Dax said, I could decide what to do from there.
Dax
LOVE AND FEAR
“Good people do bad things
Bad people do good
If the choice is between love and fear
I choose love, yeah.”
Performed by Imelda May
Written by May / Hogarth
Every bump the Escalade hit had Jada wincing on the short ride from the hospital to my apartment. She refused to let me carry her from the car, but when she all but fell over trying to walk to the elevator in the underground garage, Cillian grunted and swept her into his arms. I hated him for it, and the look I’d shot him clearly told him how I felt even when I knew she would have struggled against me if I’d done it. It would have ended up hurting her more than helping.
Once inside, we settled her into my bed, and she protested.
“I need a shower,” she said, biting her lip against the pain that coursed over her from the short journey.
“Not now. After you rest.”
“You’re doing it again.” She glowered. “You can’t tell me what to do with my own body.”
I rubbed my hand over my chin. “Mon Dieu! Just rest, mon bijou. You’ll feel stronger, and unless you want to wear my underwear, you have nothing here to put on.”
Her mouth opened and closed as she realized the truth. Her bedroom had exploded. If there was anything left in her closet, it wasn’t useable.
“I could always sleep naked like you,” she threw back.
Cillian coughed, and I flushed, but it wasn’t with embarrassment. It was at the thought of Jada, completely bare in my bed. Even knowing she was bruised and battered, it was enough to make my body respond. She kne
w it, because her lips quirked, and that one tiny action relieved some of the weight that had settled on my shoulders over the last twenty-four hours. It meant she was slowly getting her fire back.
“I have Cara on it,” I told her. “She got your sizes from Yuriko, and she’s pulling things together from a few boutiques until Yuriko can send you a new wardrobe from her collection at Éclair.”
Jada’s black hair was splayed over the white pillows, eyes flashing at me for having the audacity to arrange her life when I’d really just been determined to care for her. It was such a fine line with Jada—one I thought I understood, given her past, but one that drove me over the edge of calm at times.
After she fought against her own emotions for longer than necessary, she gritted her teeth and ground out, “Thank you.”
“Dōitashimashite,” I told her. My saying you’re welcome in Japanese caught her off guard even when I’d spoken to her father in Japanese in the car. Jada and I hadn’t spoken in her family’s language in years. Since a kiss had gone awry. Since I’d run.
I went over to the blinds and twisted them shut before turning back to the darkened room. Her eyes were closed.
“I’ll just be in the other room,” I said softly. “Please don’t get up without getting help.”
She didn’t respond. Either she was already passed out, or she was choosing to ignore me. I left the door cracked open and went into the main room of the apartment.
The sun had tried to break through earlier in the day but had never quite made it. With even more clouds rolling in, the minimal daylight that had existed was fading fast. I could barely see the man on the balcony with his back to the glass, his black cargo pants and windbreaker blending with the oncoming night.
I turned around to find Cillian waiting for me by the front door.
“I’m sorry to throw all this at you, but I’m grateful for your help,” I told him.
“I’m going into a video meeting with Reinard to revise our security plans. We have agents on the roof, and that’s Jim out on the patio. We have two more posted outside the door and a crew in the garage. I’m staying in the apartment above you. It’ll also be our home base while we’re here, so there will be plenty of us coming and going. The apartments on either side and below you were already occupied, but we’ll monitor the activity going in and out.”