Victor: Her Ruthless Crush

by Theodora Taylor

  No pictures of family or A+ homework on display like at our apartment. Just two white walls. Japanese minimalism, maybe?

  But something told me it wasn’t. I thought about how my father never gave the downstairs doorman a name. Also, how Donny pretty much invited me, a seventeen-year-old he'd just met, to call him by his first name. Sure, he was Chinese, but that was almost unheard of in Japan.

  Whoever lived here, they were rich and very, very anonymous, I concluded. As crazy nice as this apartment was, there were no personal touches. The residents didn't seem at all interested in letting visitors know who they were.

  "Victor is right through there," Donny told me, raising a hand toward a set of open double sliding doors at the far end of the hallway. " You can go right in. He’s expecting you."

  So that was his name. Victor.

  I started down the hallway. Alone.

  And to think, I was so irritated about having to read Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll last year. Sixteen-year-old me thought it was too childish and simplistic. But seventeen-year-old me was totally identifying with the confused and lost Alice as I walked down that long tunnel of a hallway.

  You need to calm down, Dawn, I told myself. It's just a kid. Don't worry. You’ve totally got this—

  I came to a dead stop when I reached the open doorway; my mouth fell open.

  I totally didn’t have this.

  Two guys were fighting with wooden sticks inside the room. I mean, just going at it, like they were trying to kill each other!

  They moved blindingly fast, and the sound of their wooden poles banging against each other filled the air. To me, who'd never seen anyone physically fight with sticks before, it looked like one of those kung fu movies Byron loved. They were grunting and swinging with extreme force. It honestly appeared like somebody was going to be broken or dead before the battle was over.

  One of the fighters was broad and with heavy muscles, and the other was tall and lean. They were pretty evenly matched, I concluded after watching them go at it for a while. Muscles’ swings looked way harder to block. But the lean one had a further reach, which allowed him to get in quick jabs from farther away.

  I stood there, frozen in the doorway, not sure what else to do but watch. Were these the older brothers of the boy I was supposed to be tutoring?

  A gray-haired teacher I didn't notice before suddenly yelled something out in a language I was pretty sure was Chinese. And the two fighters stopped on a dime, lowering their sticks.

  They bowed to each other and then to their teacher. Then both fighters immediately turned toward me.

  My stomach flipped, weird and clumsy, like that one time my mom tried to put me in gymnastics.

  Obviously, Donny had pointed me to the wrong room. And now the two fighters—the…wow…unbelievably hot fighters were walking straight toward me.

  My breath hitched as they approached.

  The lean one had long but somehow also spiky hair, an impossible combination that I had only ever seen before in anime. He was insanely gorgeous, and his unbothered lope told me he was used to girls staring. Confidence radiated off of him in waves.

  Muscles wasn't nearly as pretty as his friend, but he was way more arresting. His face was a collection of sharp angles that gave his beauty a harder and more dangerous edge. I'd be too nervous to speak with Anime Guy if we were alone in this room. But I'd be too scared to speak to the other one. Forget Muscles. I decided then and there to nickname this one Danger.

  But I wasn't here for them. I was here for Victor, their little brother.

  Reminding myself of that, I put a lot of effort into not looking as scared as I felt when they stopped in front of me.

  They both gave me short bows. I knew there were rules to bowing. We had learned them in Cultural Studies. But they all flew out of my head. So I just awkwardly returned their bows with something I could only hope was a decent head nod.

  Danger stared at me, even as Anime Guy asked him something I didn't understand in Chinese. Danger nodded in response to Anime Guy, but his eyes stayed on me, black and glittering with cold curiosity. I swear I could feel his gaze burning into my skin. It was like having two hot lasers aimed directly at me.

  "You're here to tutor Victor?" Anime Guy asked in Japanese. As pretty as he was, I couldn't say the same for his speech. His accent was rough and over direct, nothing like the careful and deliberately slow Japanese spoken to me at my school by people who weren't sure if I'd understand them.

  However, I nodded quickly, eager to move on from pretending that I wasn’t frying underneath Danger’s intimidating stare. "Yes, the guard pointed me this way, but I think I walked into the wrong room. Do you know where I could find him?"

  Anime Guy grinned. All perfect straight teeth and cool hair. "No, you’ve got the right place. This is Victor's room."

  “Oh…” I look around, taking in the rest of the space. Room was an understatement. Just like I didn't see the teacher beforehand, I hadn’t clocked that the room was actually a huge suite. The gym area had several barbells and a treadmill, but it was only a third of the room. There was a large viewing area with couches at the other end of the suite. Also, a door, which I assumed led to a bedroom. And in the middle of the enormous room sat a long, low table with golden cushions on either side, presumably for sitting.

  The table was covered with a laptop, a bunch of Chinese textbooks I couldn’t read the titles of, and a few English ASL books. So yes, this had to be where Victor did his schoolwork.

  Maybe his brothers had just borrowed the room for their weirdly intense stick fighting lesson.

  "Oh, my bad. Sorry. Do you know when Victor will get here?"

  Anime Guy screwed up his face like I was stupid. "You're looking at him."

  I stilled. The alarm bells were back. And this time, they weren’t faintly ringing. They were full-on blasting.

  "So, you’re Victor?" I asked Anime Guy hopefully. He was almost too pretty to look at, and I was barely keeping it together for this conversation. But the alternative….

  I couldn’t even manage a glance at Danger, even though I could still feel his stare on me.

  Anime Guy didn't straight up laugh at me, but he looked like he was thinking about it.

  "No, I am Han," he answered. Then he waved a hand toward Danger. "This is Victor."

  My heart dropped all the way to my feet.

  A Chinese boy, my father had called him.

  But none of the boys I knew had muscles. As mean as Jake and his buddies had been to Byron, none of them could fight like that. And none of them had ever looked at me in a way that froze me in place because my body couldn't decide whether to throw up or run away screaming.

  "Hi, I'm Dawn," I somehow managed to squeak out to Victor in Japanese anyway.

  The not-a-boy at all signed something back, but I didn't understand.

  "He's saying you can speak English," Han translated for me. "He doesn't talk, but he can understand it."

  So he wasn't deaf after all. Either that, or he was really good at reading lips.

  I swallowed, trying to get some water into my throat.

  "Oh, okay. Nice to meet you, Victor," I eventually managed to lie. I was all sorts of self-conscious even though I didn't have to struggle through English the same way I did with Japanese.

  There came a long, intense moment of silence. Then Victor raised his hands to sign some more words I didn't understand.

  But his signs weren’t directed at me, as it turned out. As soon as Victor lowered his hands, his friend and his teacher started to clear out.

  "It was nice to meet you," Han said in English as he grabbed his stuff and headed for the door. Maybe it was his accent, but it sounded like he was mocking me.

  In any case, he disappeared out the door before I could say anything in return. The teacher didn't even bother with goodbyes. Just bounced.

  And then suddenly it was only Victor and me.

  Him, silent and looming. Me, frozen and afraid
.

  My dad had been wrong.

  Victor wasn't a boy.

  He was something else entirely.

  And now…

  Now, I was all alone with him.

  2

  VICTOR

  This was a mistake.

  Victor realized that almost as soon as Han and his martial arts teacher left him alone with his specially ordered tutor. The girl who’d introduced herself as Dawn seemed unable to unglue her eyes from the floor. He didn’t believe it was due to deference.

  He'd been anticipating this meeting all day. He'd even pushed back his regular sparring session with Han to happen right before it. He’d hoped to tire himself out so as not to appear overly eager when she arrived.

  But now, doubt, a feeling he was most unfamiliar with, began to creep in…along with a chill from the sweat he’d broken during his ill-advised pre-tutoring workout.

  She had appeared so relaxed and natural when he’d first seen her on the dance floor of one of the clubs his triad owned in the Roppongi district.

  The fact that she was both rounder and browner than most of the other women in the club had been enough to draw his attention from the VIP balcony. She had long curly black hair that ran wild down her back without rhyme or reason, like hanging foliage that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be ivy or flowers or both. Her outfit was overly practical in the way of American tourists. A swing top and jeans paired with brightly colored sneakers. Her shirt was loose at the bottom but clung to her large breasts as she danced.

  At first, he’d merely watched her, absently wondering what it would be like to fuck someone who looked such the opposite any woman he’d had before.

  But when she’d started signing with her dance partner, he’d become transfixed. And oddly jealous—even though boyfriend obstacles were easily cleared with money or violence. Or both.

  Was the tall boy she was dancing with her boyfriend? No, he decided upon closer look. He was tall and thin, while she was short and wide, but other than that, they’d looked very much alike. Their skin was the same shade of light brown, and they both had wide but slightly upturned eyes—perhaps one of their parents was Asian? They also had matching smiles, happy and breezy.

  Neither of them looked old enough to be in this club. Yet, they didn’t seem concerned about drawing too much attention to themselves as they enthusiastically danced to an American rap song, encouraging everyone in the club to get tipsy. Then, as if the track had given them ideas, they’d headed toward one of the club’s three downstairs bars.

  Victor was supposed to be pretending to care about whatever business his father was discussing with the Nakamura-gumi crime syndicate leader. But he’d risen from his seat to track her progress, unable to stop watching the girl who shouldn’t have been in their club.

  Her hands flew as she and her brother waited in line, and she kept on bubbling over with laughter. Real, wide-mouthed laughter. She didn’t cover up her joy with a hand like so many girls in Japan did.

  It had killed him that he couldn’t comprehend her version of sign language. He’d never in his life wanted to understand someone more.

  “Do you wish to have her?”

  The inquiry came in from his left, like a wind whispering secret desires.

  Victor unglued his eyes from the girl to find his father regarding him with an amused look.

  In the background, Daizo Nakamura and his syndicate members were making moves to leave. All the bottles of champagne they’d ordered now sat on their sides, emptied of their intoxicating wares. And the girls the triad had arranged to entertain them all during their meeting had been transferred to arms for later assignations at nearby love hotels.

  Nakamura’s showy “face guard” was already at the stairs, scanning for possible enemies to assure his bosses’ safety. He was a large black man with no visible tattoos, and he’d towered over everyone else on the VIP balcony.

  An unorthodox choice for the head of one of Japan’s oldest syndicate’s to be sure, but Victor had understood why he’d been chosen. There was no way the guard had been given any real power or access to yakuza business as a foreigner. Yet, all of Daizo’s enemies would think twice before trying to confront him in public.

  Victor had known he should stand and walk behind his father as he escorted their guests out, but he’d found his eyes wandering back to the girl.

  “She looks to be about your age,” his father had observed, following the direction of his stare.

  Yes, she did look his age. Though, the way Victor lived, it was often easy for him to forget that he was also too young to be in this club. He wouldn’t even be eighteen, the legal drinking age back in China until January.

  “It doesn’t matter that she’s a foreigner,” his father added. “Arrangements could be made.”

  Victor hadn’t doubted it. Aladdin’s genie had nothing on his father. And since his wife’s death, there was nothing Raymond “Macau Boy” Zhang wouldn’t do for the son she’d left behind.

  But he hadn’t wanted the girl his father’s way. His father’s way would have destroyed her innocence and killed that happy light in her slightly upturned eyes.

  She and her brother had acquired neon-green drinks, and they sipped from them like children getting away with something naughty.

  “I only wish to know the language she’s speaking,” Victor had answered, careful to position his body so that the members of the Nakamura syndicate wouldn’t see him signing. His father had taught him never to sign unless he had to in public. Both their allies and their enemies could perceive it as a weakness.

  So that was all Victor had signed his father. But it had been all he’d had to sign. Especially after Raymond discovered that the girl was the daughter of Nakamura’s face guard.

  And now, here she was, standing before him. The same as all the new electronics, video game consoles, and services Victor had requested in the years since his father had decided to tuck him and Han away in Tokyo.

  However, Victor found himself unable to regard the girl with the same sense of entitlement as those other things and people.

  This wasn’t the same girl who had so entranced him at that club. She wore a prim Japanese school uniform now, with a baggy, short-sleeved white shirt, a dark blue tie, and a pleated skirt of the same color. Her wild hair had been pulled back into a tame braided ponytail. And she wasn’t close to smiling like she had when he’d been observing her from afar.

  Just the opposite. She appeared to be terrified. Of him.

  He was used to such fear from women in Japan. He had prioritized strength over everything else after what had happened to his mother. So now he was the opposite of the Japanese ideal. Bulky and scary.

  “Can you believe Han tried to get me to come over and talk to his flatmate? No, thank you! He doesn’t even talk. He’s like a big, scary animal!”

  He’d overheard a girl say that about him at one of Han’s parties. Since neither of them had tattoos yet, she had no idea who he and Han really were. And she’d had too much to drink.

  She’d burst into drunken tears and screamed like a banshee when Han threw her out. Victor hadn’t told his chosen brother what she’d said, simply asked that she be ejected from the party. A request was all it ever took in Victor’s world.

  But this wasn’t one of Han’s parties. And the way Dawn refused to meet his eyes…it reminded Victor of what he really was to girls who weren’t paid to ignore his inability to talk and his unusual aesthetic.

  To her, he wasn’t the son of the Red Diamond’s dragonhead. He was just a mute freak, too deformed and scary to attend a proper school or interact with other people his age.

  Victor averted his eyes too, suddenly too ashamed to keep staring at her.

  They might have remained that way for the full hour, but to his surprise, she broke the silence first.

  “How…how do you want to do this?” she asked. “My father didn't tell me much. Just that you were looking to learn ASL.”

  Her innoc
ent mention of her father made Victor wonder if she knew who her father was? Who he served? Perhaps not, Victor decided, glancing down at her still bowed head.

  Sometimes the men of their world did that. They raised their sons to take over for them and inherit their titles. But they shielded their daughters from the truth of who they were. Who knew how Raymond would have treated the girl that had been in his mother’s womb if she had survived what had happened as Victor had? He might have coddled and protected her and kept her far away from the ugly business of their world.

  He'd heard that Americans were significantly laxer about raising their children to assume responsibility. Perhaps even her brother didn't know what their father really did for a living.

  Victor thought back to how happy and carefree the two siblings had appeared while dancing and concluded that no, neither knew the true details of their father’s job.

  But of course, even their protective father hadn't dared to deny a request from Raymond Zhang.

  That was the only reason she was here, Victor reminded himself. And again, that had been a mistake.

  She could barely look up, and she obviously didn’t want to be in a room alone with him.

  He should send her away. Forget this idea altogether. He nearly pulled out his phone to send Donny a message to come fetch her and tell her to go home.

  But then, he remembered something his father had told him often. “Dragonheads must preserve face too. Surround yourself with the strong, but never let them believe they are stronger than you.”

  Victor dropped his hand away from the pocket of his fighting pants. No, he couldn’t do that. Panicking like a little boy and sending this girl away would make him appear weak. Better to remain with her for the agreed-upon hour and then never send for her again.

  With this decided, he indicated for her to sit at the long table where he made his studies.

  After a moment of hesitation, she sat down in the spot designated for tutors. He waited for her to settle before taking his own seat on his usual side of the table.