The Ninja Daughter

by Tori Eldridge

  I planted my hands on the table and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw the picture of another blonde, blue-eyed woman staring up at me from the folded newspaper—Mia Mikkelsen.

  I recognized her from recent news reports on television. The cocktail waitress had been attacked in her home by a customer, and the press was having a field day maligning her reputation and fawning over her alleged assailant, J Tran. The photos they had chosen confirmed their bias. The shot of Mia made her look like a slutty puffer fish. The photo of Tran looked like the cover for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.

  I sighed. “Bet you could use a big sister, right about now, eh, Mia?”

  In addition to working for Aleisha’s refuge, which was funded by Stan’s previous vocation as a New York stock broker and a few celebrity angels, I did what I liked to think of as ninja pro bono work. I watched out for women getting harassed, shamed, or abused and stepped in when no one else would.

  If I helped Mia tomorrow, would it make up for my failure today?

  I thought about Kateryna’s makeup-covered bruises and wished I was back in that warehouse with the Ukrainian—I could have used someone to punch.

  Chapter Five

  “Okay to take Washington?” the taxi driver asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “All the way to Overland.” It was a straight shot southwest. Nothing to screw up. I could just sit back, enjoy the night breeze, and let my muscles cramp one by one.

  Now that the adrenaline had worn off, I felt every bruise and strain. At least the Ukrainian hadn’t broken anything. He had tried to kill me. I had stopped him. Period. End of story.

  That’s what I kept telling myself.

  But was it the truth?

  Had he really been trying to kill me? Or had he been trying to subdue me long enough to hang me back on the hook? Probably the latter, but he would have mutilated me for information. Kateryna would have been found. Aleisha’s Refuge would have been at risk. So, no, it didn’t matter.

  But I had also told the Ukrainian my story, the one I had never shared. Because I knew he would not live to repeat it.

  I had entered into the story gently enough. I mean, what did I care if some Ukrainian thug knew the origins of my nickname or how Baba had bounced me on his knee? Why should anyone have had to die just because they knew my father had thought my baby belly was stuffed with secrets like Mama’s dumplings?

  Besides, that wasn’t even the truth. They weren’t Mama’s dumplings at all. They were Baba’s. He learned to make them to ease her homesickness.

  But I hadn’t told the Ukrainian any of my parents’ secrets; I had only told him mine. And not just secrets, either. I had opened the door to my shadow world. I had given him a reason to fear me.

  It was easy to fool people when you showed them what they expected to see.

  I had spoken those exact words while telling the Ukrainian my story, and in so doing, had told him exactly how I would use his arrogance against him. Was it my fault if he had been too shortsighted to understand? Had I been giving him a chance? Maybe. All I knew was that once I had begun telling the story, the story wouldn’t let me stop.

  It had happened two years ago, in the summer before my twenty-third birthday. I was sitting in a bar, nursing a drink, pointedly ignoring the people around me. I didn’t like the way they could take one look at me and act as it they knew me, like they knew what I was about. It was profiling, but in my favor. They would take one look at my Asian-ness and assume I was this intelligent, ambitious college girl, struggling to find balance between the strict culture of my ancestry and the wanton opportunities of my youth. The stereotype.

  Were they wrong? No. But that was not, as my father liked to say, the meat of the issue. As in my namesake, there were other mysterious ingredients that comprised a dumpling besides pork.

  There was a man sitting beside me at the bar. I remembered him being surprised by the sparkling cranberry juice I had ordered. He had probably expected me to have a rebellious affinity for scotch or a predilection for chardonnay. I had friends who would have fit both of those stereotypes. I was neither. I was cautious.

  I liked my mind clear, my wits keen, and my legs ready to run. And if I had been inclined to violence, which I wasn’t yet, I would never have needed to be pushed by alcohol.

  No. What I wanted most, at that moment, was to run my fingers over every beautiful angle of that man’s stunning face. Wanted but didn’t; I was far too disciplined for that. Instead, I leaned closer and let my hair do the caressing while I blathered about national security, privacy, and the right to bear arms.

  Clearly, I had lost all of my good sense.

  I remember laughing to myself as he struggled to ignore my hair on his arm and formulate a cogent response to my seemingly contradictory views, and liked him better for it. In fact, I liked him too much.

  Everything about him put me at ease and teased me with hope.

  So when he ordered a martini and offered me the same, I accepted. The taste was clean, the fruit tart and plump. I remember liking it so much that I considered taking a new name for the evening—put aside Dumpling and call myself Olive. But after hours of conversation, names had not been requested or shared. While normally this would have felt odd, on that night, it felt right and natural, as though there were far more important things to discuss than names.

  He pinched the top of my toothpick and swirled the remaining olive, stirring up feelings I had only experienced once before. Was he congratulating himself on the conquest? If so, it was well earned because he had invaded my defenses and made himself at home.

  So when he downed the rest of his drink, I did the same.

  “We can go,” he said, and waited for me to rise.

  He followed behind protectively, like a gentleman. It had been a long time since I had allowed a man to do that.

  His car was parked nearby—close enough to be comfortable for me to walk if I had been wearing heels yet far enough to give him a chance to take my hand. It was an endearing gesture and one my compulsion for mobility would normally never have allowed.

  At least I was wearing my sturdy boots; I hadn’t forsaken all my good sense.

  Although, with the sensual breeze and the warmth of his hand against mine, I was having a hard time remembering why I thought that might be important.

  When we arrived at his car—clean, sporty, not excessively expensive—he opened my door and waited for me to fold in my legs. I could feel his admiration, and I understood it. My legs have always been my strongest feature. They might not be model-long, but they had an athletic grace that makes men think of passionate embraces—or so I was once told by a would-be suitor who never had the privilege of helping me into a car.

  As we drove, I thought about how out of character all of this was for me: the bar, the martini, the car. I didn’t date. And I definitely didn’t accept invitations from men I had just met. But something about him made me want to give up my lonely quest for vengeance and take a chance on love. Or at least, that’s what I thought was happening.

  The more I tried to recall the moment of my decision, the harder it was to remember when I had actually agreed.

  The leather seat felt warm against my back. My skin flushed with fanciful thoughts. And my mouth drooped in a dopey smile, betraying feelings I didn’t understand. I looked out the window and tried to hide the thoughts I feared were playing across my face. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.

  What would have been the right idea?

  The streets were dark. There were no neon bar signs, no cozy restaurants, no security-lit establishments. Everything seemed closed for the evening. We had ventured onto unforgiving streets with oppressive buildings and gaping alleys. Streets that were empty except for phantoms huddled near dumpsters.

  “Where are we?” And why did my tongue feel like a swollen slug?

  I looked over at the man of my dreams, and what I saw was death.

  Ev
erything about him had changed. His alluring scent had soured with sweat, and his breath carried ugly words. I searched for signs of that calm, sincere gentleman, and saw a psychopath.

  The seat jarred back as he made space to mount me. And I did nothing.

  Me, the kunoichi who was never out of control, sat immobile as he ripped open my blouse and hiked up my skirt. I didn’t strike or scream or buck. He had me, and he knew it.

  There was a metallic taste in my mouth that I hadn’t noticed before, and it wasn’t cranberries or vermouth. It was medicinal in a way that would have tainted pure vodka. As I struggled to move my unresponsive body, my mind honed in on that swirling olive. His hand had been cupped over my glass as his fingers twirled the toothpick. This monster had dropped something from his palm while I had been gazing into his eyes.

  What had I allowed to happen?

  My arms hung limp, one beside me and the other perched against the door, as he petted my hair and told me how long it had been since he’d had a China girl like me.

  That’s when I saw him—when I really saw him. He wasn’t just a tall, blond hunk in a Hugo Boss suit. He was the same well-dressed predator who had fooled my sister and ended her life.

  My numb hand hovered near my necklace, a long silver chain with a dagger-shaped phurba. No one ever commented on it. Why would they? It was just some odd talisman with a carved face on a ceremonial-looking dagger. It was barely four inches long. It wasn’t even sharp. Just a harmless Buddhist artifact. And yet, there it was within reach of my determined, nimble fingers.

  As he unfastened his pants, I walked those fingers across my collar bone. As he maneuvered his hips, I folded the carved face of the phurba into my knuckles. And as he shoved his pants to his knees and fumbled with the feeble barrier of my panties, I gripped the base of the dagger.

  Make me strong, I prayed.

  And then I struck.

  He dropped onto my lap, and slapped my face on the way up to clutch at his throat. But there was nothing there to grab. I had removed the dagger to continue my attack. I was gaining control over my arms and used them both to distract and deflect, making it hard for him to understand which hand was inflicting the damage. He could have smothered me with his weight if he had remained calm; instead, he panicked, and a lucky fist hammered my sternum.

  The pain was stunning.

  I grabbed for my chest as if to hold it in place so the broken plate wouldn’t move. Crazy, I know, but that’s how it felt: as if the only thing holding me together was my hand on my chest. So I kept up the pressure until I was sure nothing would move and my sternum felt solid and secure. Then I stabbed him in the face.

  With every strike, I yanked and ripped, tearing his flesh into dog meat with the three-sided dagger. I didn’t need to see the damage. I just kept striking until his strength gave out and his body expired. Then I opened my door and fell onto the curb.

  It took several minutes before I stopped shaking, before I had quieted my sobs and spit away all traces of his blood. It took a few more to crawl to my feet, where I swayed until my drugged body grew accustomed to standing. My clothes were ripped. My face and torso were covered in blood. But I was alive.

  I was lucky.

  I had spent years trolling for the man who had raped and murdered Rose, with only scant descriptions from eyewitnesses to guide me. I knew my fifteen-year-old sister had used a fake ID to get into one of the clubs that catered to the eighteen-plus crowd. I didn’t know if she had done it before.

  Had she gotten scared? Had her friends ditched her? Was that why she had texted me? To come and get her?

  I’d never know. I’d never responded.

  I had abandoned Rose when she needed me most, and all I could do after her death was hunt down her murderer. I played bait in every underage haunt I could find and searched for the tall, blond twenty-something man with the strong jaw, predatory eyes, and out-of-place suit the witnesses had described. I had felt certain I would recognize his ill intent when he came to prey on me.

  I was wrong.

  I had fallen for his charms, just as my sister had, and had come close to suffering the same fate.

  As I staggered away from that car and into the alley, covered in my sister’s killer’s blood, I made a promise to always remain vigilant and never accept what was presented. I would look deep and jump slow. And I would question everything. It would keep me alive. More than that, it helped me keep others alive.

  There was no mention in the news of anyone killed that night in that vicinity. Nor could I find any man fitting his description in any of the nearby hospitals. So he had either somehow driven away, or I had suffered a horrifyingly visceral hallucination that had somehow drenched me in blood. Either way, it left me feeling incomplete.

  I would never know for sure if Rose’s killer was dead or alive.

  ***

  I leaned my face out the open window of the taxi and let the breeze dry my tears.

  The version of the story I had told the Ukrainian had been simple and to the point. The more profound recollections and personal revelations were only now invading my mind. I had told him just enough to relieve my heart of its burden, but not enough to send him running in fear of his life. I had given him reason to respect me but not enough to fear me.

  I had given him a chance.

  But after sharing my darkest secrets, the Ukrainian, whose death had been burning a hole in my conscience, had only said one thing: “I don’t give a shit.”

  Well, if he didn’t, why should I?

  Chapter Six

  I lived in Culver City just past the Sony Pictures lot, where Culver and Washington Boulevards kissed and parted to follow their own jagged trajectories. It was a commercial area filled with everyday stores selling essential products and services for urban survival—auto parts, furniture, dentists, hair salons—plus colorful non-essentials like tattoos, bongs, and bubble tea. We also had several ethnic eateries, which included Wong’s Hong Kong Inn, a restaurant named for my mother and run by my father. I lived on the second floor.

  I pulled the sweatshirt hood over my head and hobbled into the alley. Anyone who noticed would assume I was heading for a cardboard bed behind a garbage bin. And if my legs gave out on me, they might be right. However, I was actually heading toward the twin golden dragons emblazoned on the side of our delivery car. I liked to think these dragons, along with the giant version of them that covered the front of our building, protected our family from ill-intent and unexpected disaster.

  I could have used some dragon protection today.

  I shook off my doubt and limped toward the steps to the kitchen entrance, scanning the alley as I went. No lurking Ukrainians this time, just a bunch of produce crates, flattened cardboard boxes, and trash containers from the smoke shop next door. I punched in the key code and opened the door to a blast of garlic, ginger, and grease. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten much today. Maybe Baba had left me a treat.

  Sure enough, a couple of savory pastries waited for me on the prep table. He had also left a bamboo steamer sitting on a wok at the end of the long cooking station. The fire was out, but the pan still radiated a little warmth, so he couldn’t have been gone long. I opened the lid and found two char siu bao and one zòngzi wrapped in bamboo leaves. Char siu bao were pillowy buns filled with barbecue pork. Zòngzi were little presents tied with husk that hid yummy treasures embedded in sticky rice. Sometimes Baba filled them with ground chicken or a paste of sweet red bean. Tonight, I hoped for lap cheong, a ridiculously greasy sausage. My body craved fat, and after the day I had just experienced, a handful of nuts were not going to cut it.

  I put my steamed treasures on the plate with the pastries, filled a couple zip-lock bags with ice for my bruised muscles, and headed for the stairs that ran along the back of our narrow building.

  Baba had grown up on a North Dakota farm before catching the cooking bug. He liked wide open spaces. So he turned the back third of our b
uilding into a kitchen. Fortunately, our takeout business made up for the small dining room and paid for the expense. But while we all benefited from the spacious kitchen, only Baba and I were permitted upstairs.

  I glanced at the seventeen-pound Merida road bicycle suspended at a slant on the staircase wall. My legs ached just looking at it. Climbing the stairs felt worse.

  I remembered another tiring ascent five and a half years ago when Baba and I had carried my mattress up these stairs for my first night in the apartment. He had been sad. I had been relieved. We had left my furious mother at home to sulk over my “foolish” decision to move away from home for the second time.

  The first came just before my eighteenth birthday when I moved into a college dorm. While only an hour from Arcadia, living on the UCLA campus had felt like living in another country. I was free of Ma’s scrutiny and in absolute control over everything I did, where I went, and how I walked in the world. Ironically, I ended up doing many of the same things I had done before, but I did them because they pleased me, not her. I dove into my studies, met new friends, and joined the Wushu team. I kept myself so busy I rarely came home for a meal, let alone a weekend. I even took a holiday retail job so I would have an excuse to stay on campus during winter break. I met Pete, went on dates for the first time, fell in love, and forgot all about Rose.

  After Rose died, I moved back home and pulled away from my college friends, especially Pete. My first experience of making love would always be linked to my sister’s rape and murder. How could I be with Pete? I couldn’t even speak to him. I deleted his calls and messages, dropped out of school, and put all my energy into training in the park with Sensei. But after living in a college dorm for a year, moving back home was intolerable. Rose’s spirit clung to every square inch and flooded me with memories—here we sat, there we fought, around the corner we hid. Every space reminded me of Rose.