He shakes his head and cups my cheeks. “I have hidden who I am for so long, it no longer bothers me.”
“That is not true,” I argue; I see his pain every single day. He stares at me defiantly. “Argh!” I exclaim, throwing up my hands in irritation. “Can’t you see? This solves so many of our problems. Father will be safe from punishment. Mother will not be threatened ever again. And you, Koki. You will be free to be who you want to be. There will be no expectations. The price has already been paid and Papa will finally leave you alone.”
“And you? What about you, Momo? Who saves you?”
I straighten my back and suck in a breath of air, but the words are hard to say.
“I always knew this would be my destiny. Perhaps not with Tadashi, but with someone similar. Papa made it very clear that I would be our salvation.”
“His! His salvation, Momo. This has always been about him.”
“What about Mama? Does she not deserve our loyalty too?”
Koki waves his hand in dismissal and then flicks a gaze out of the window of my room.
“He’s here,” he says quietly.
For a moment I think he means Finn. But his whole demeanour is defeated. Finn might evoke emotions in my brother, but they are more likely discomfort at what he means to me, than failure.
“Tadashi-san,” I say, but Koki only growls at the honorific.
I move to the shoji and step behind it, letting my eyes fall on my wedding dress for the first time today. The shiromuku is all white with a red trim. The white represents purity, a blank canvas to be painted my groom’s own colour. The red is a more modern twist reflective of today’s society. The material is sleek and inlaid with a pattern that will only be visible when I shift.
This is not how I imagined as a small girl that I would dress on my wedding day. At least, I had not imagined my pure horror at dressing like this.
I slip out of my dressing gown and start to wrap the kimono around me. I will need some help and it should come from my mother, but I can’t seem to raise my voice to speak. When I step out from behind the shoji, Koki is still there. The look on his face almost breaks me.
“You are beautiful, imouto-san,” he says.
“It is a shame it is wasted on the wrong man,” I manage to rasp.
Koki’s eyes meet mine. For a long moment he says nothing, but then he whispers, “Have faith. I have never met a man more determined than Finn Drake. Trust him, Momo.” Finn’s words to me in the note. I glance across at the dresser and then rush over and pick it up. Holding it carefully, closely, as if I could hold him against my heart.
I know I shouldn’t, I might pay for it later. But I slip the note inside my dress, against my breast. Over my heart.
“What is he doing?” I say, not facing my brother. Finn’s words hadn’t been empty.
“What he’s been doing for the past night and day. Finding a way to save us. To save you.”
I don’t want to ask. I’m desperate to know. “Do you think… Is it possible… Can he?”
I look over my shoulder at Koki and he smiles.
“If anyone can find a way out of this mess, then that fucking man can. He is wily, Momo. Fucking determined. He walked into ASI and took control. Simply snatched it from Nick’s hands and started barking orders. You should have seen the boss’s face. But when Finn spoke, everyone jumped, and they haven’t stopped jumping at his orders ever since.”
The words are bitter-sweet. I wan’t to believe them. Trust them.
Will you trust me? Please? Trust that I can protect the dream.
But there is no more time. The clock on the mantel strikes three.
Koki’s face becomes solemn as he walks towards me and starts to finish off wrapping my shiromuku.
“It is traditional, I think,” he says as he winds the fabric around me and then proceeds to tuck the lengths over themselves to make the intricate bustle at the back. “To be a little late to your own wedding.”
I smile despite myself and allow him to fuss, when he usually never fusses, and lose myself to this peaceful moment with my brother before the storm unleashes.
It will undoubtedly be our last peaceful moment together. I have no idea where Tadashi plans for us to live, but I fear it will be miles away from Koki.
It takes Koki twenty minutes to finish dressing me, and in that time we are visited by my father twice and my mother four times. Each time Koki calmly tells them to go take their seats. Finally, they oblige. Towards the end, Koki catches my eye in the full length mirror, and then slips something small into the folds of my dress.
My hand goes to the spot his hand has just left. I feel the outline of nunchucks.
“For luck,” he says with a wink.
I love my brother.
Half an hour after my groom arrived at our family home, Koki leads me down the stairs to the ground floor. The house smells of flowers, so many from my shop I almost feel giddy. And then I see the swathe of people out on the back lawn and I spot Tadashi standing tall at the makeshift altar and I feel sick to my stomach.
A small sheen of sweat graces my skin and I sway on my feet.
“Momo,” Koki says urgently, just as my father arrives in order to escort me.
“What is wrong with her?” I hear him say.
“Can’t you see?” Koki growls back in a low voice. “She’s panicking.”
“I’m not,” I try to say, but I simply can’t breathe.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
“Get her water,” Papa orders, and I watch through blurred vision as Koki rushes away, leaving me.
“Momoko-san,” my father’s voice says from beside me. He has crouched down and I realise he is holding my hand in his larger one. “It will be short and then it will be over.”
It will never be over.
“There is no other way,” he says softly. My father rarely uses a soft voice. It is not in his nature. But he treats me now like a fragile piece of glass and it does what shouting could not.
I straighten my back, lift my chin, and breathe.
I am a Tanaka. One day I wish to be a Tanaka-sama. Today I become Tadashi’s.
There are dreams and there are dreams. Some we think of wistfully and some we treasure forever. I know what lies ahead will be neither.
But inside I will be brave. I will be strong. And I will honour my father.
And he will know. For a brief moment in time, I will be his Tanaka-sama.
I grip his hand and move to my feet, standing tall beside my father.
“I am proud,” he says quietly. “I am honoured,” he says with feeling.
And then we’re walking.
I see Fujiwara-sensei and friends of my father’s. I see faces I know and those I don’t. Some happy, some impassive.
I see Tadashi and I almost falter.
And I see Finn behind my eyelids when I close them briefly.
I have loved and I have lost that love, but I will never forget either.
I will wear that pain for eternity.
Just as we reach the grand doors of our sitting room, Koki shouts out from behind us. Papa pauses, then turns to look over his shoulder. I can’t look. If I stop now, I may never be able to walk forward again. Tadashi frowns in the distance. Murmurs start up around the guests out under the trees.
And then I hear him. A voice I thought I’d never hear again. A sound so beautiful I am instantly crying.
“Tanaka-sama,” Finn says. “You’ll want to see this.”
I spin around and he’s there. Dishevelled and sleep deprived and looking like he’s gone a round with a van door. Or a baseball bat. I smile. My lips tremble. He offers me a wink and a smirk and I almost fall to my knees.
I want so much for this to be real. I want so much for this moment to never end. Just looking at this man before me is enough to fulfil every dream I’ve ever had.
“Finn,” I hear myself say, but it’s drowned out by Papa’s gruff voice and Tadashi’s shout and Koki’s insist
ence that Papa will definitely want to see this.
They’re showing him something. Photographs I think. So many. Too many for Papa to hold. Some of them hit the floor. And there’s a recording. Tadashi’s voice, I know it, it haunts my nightmares when I try to sleep. But he’s not speaking English. Not even Japanese.
He’s speaking Mandarin.
A rough hand wraps around my neck and I’m suddenly hauled backwards, to land against a hard chest. The sharp tip of a knife blade pricks the side of my neck.
“I wouldn’t do that, If I were you, Mr Drake,” Tadashi says calmly.
“Tadashi-san,” Papa snaps. “What is the meaning of this?”
“It seems, old man, that we must part ways,” Tadashi says.
“Is this true?” Papa demands, his eyes flicking over me so quickly, I’m not sure whether the move is intentional or a slip. But I see the small nod of his head. A bare movement.
My hand runs up the side of my shiromuku, finding the folds at my waist. I tense, but Tadashi is talking, and I find myself eager to learn what Finn has done to put that look of hope on Koki’s face.
“Oyabun made a mistake letting you go,” Tadashi says. “Your defection and dishonour has caused multiple ripples in an otherwise calm lake. Allowing one man, even one he considered a close friend, to defy him has cost him too much. But when your location was revealed, I persuaded him to reconsider.”
“And how was my location revealed?” Papa asks carefully.
Tadashi starts to laugh, and drags me a little farther towards the open doors out onto the back garden. I can hear voices behind me, but no one is rushing Tadashi. Not when he holds a knife to my throat.
“I found you,” Tadashi says with no small measure of pride. “Your son has made a name for himself in certain criminal circles.” I flick my eyes to Koki, who blanches. “All for the wrong reasons, of course. You picked your side, Koki-san. It just happened to be a side the Yakuza do not favour.”
ASI. It has to be because of Koki’s association with ASI. And their efforts to thwart national and international drug rings. I will my brother not to do anything stupid, the look on his face right now is deadly.
But Papa simply raises a hand beside Koki, enough of a movement to pause his son’s headlong race toward both our deaths.
“It was easy after that to manipulate things,” Tadashi says.
“By infiltrating the Triads,” Papa hisses.
He holds up a photo and waves it toward Tadashi. I see in it Tadashi shaking the hand of Huang Fu.
“You paid his bail,” Finn sneers. “Bigger bread crumbs you couldn’t have left me.”
Tadashi snarls and digs the knife tip in further. I gasp. Everyone stills. And then Tadashi laughs.
“For some reason their cashflow right now has been hindered.” He jostles me roughly against his side and then leans down and whispers in my ear, “You have been very, very naughty indeed.”
“Let me get this straight,” Koki says, trying to draw Tadashi’s attention away from me. “You riled up the Triads, but not on orders from Oyabun. Got them harassing Momoko, which in turn threatened Papa, and made him reach out to the Yakuza, giving you an in.”
“Yes,” Tadashi says simply.
“Why? Just to get your hands on Momo?” Had he even known of me beforehand?
“To get my hands on Tanaka-sama’s favourite child.” Koki doesn’t show any emotion at this assessment. He has always seen himself as Papa’s greatest disappointment. “To make him pay. Not just once. But every single day from here on after. He would get to watch his beloved daughter die a little every minute of every hour of every rise and fall of the sun and moon.”
Papa snarls and takes a step forward. Koki moves in tandem with him. Tadashi just laughs and lifts the knife blade off my neck infinitesimally. But it’s enough to show his hand.
“The plan has changed,” he says, and I strike.
The nunchuck falls into my hand and I whip it upwards, hearing the satisfying crunch as it connects with Tadashi’s nose beside my face. He gasps, lets go of me, and I’m spinning. Before he can grab my shiromuku again, I’m lining up my next shot to his kidneys. I manage to land several blows in quick succession.
And then he throws the knife at my face.
I dive to the side, my long wedding dress tangling around my feet, and land hard on the marble flooring. The knife skitters away ineffectually.
And then it’s a blur of action for a moment. Papa is shouting. Mama is screaming. Koki is throwing a punch and a kick.
But it’s Finn who manages to deliver the felling blow.
By raising my mother’s Hayashi Chuzo vase over Tadashi’s head and bringing it down with a cry of pure outrage.
The Cloisonné breaks into a thousand tiny pieces and Tadashi falls to the floor in a dead faint.
For a moment no one says anything. Who would have thought a warrior trained as Tadashi Ishikawa has been trained could be felled by a Japanese vase?
“What?” Koki says. “Forgot your baseball bat?”
Finn shrugs his shoulder and then rushes toward me. I’m reaching up before he gets there, welcoming him into my embrace.
“Koibito,” he says against the curve of my neck. “Oh, fuck,” he adds, making my mother faint and my father growl threateningly.
Or it could have been because he called me his lover.
Chaos explodes around us. ASI storm the house, followed by Pierce from the CIB.
And in the middle of it all, I lie in the arms of my dream. In the arms of my koibito. Never wanting to wake up. Never wanting anything but this man before me.
“You are my dream,” I say to him. Then repeat it in Japanese. “You are my heart,” I say, the words tumbling out in both languages. “You are my everything.”
He grips me tighter, holds me against his heaving chest, and cries silent tears with me.
I blink and there is Papa, standing over us, watching on with a strange look in his eyes. Finn notices, and pulls back slightly, pushing me ever so carefully behind his body. As if to protect me.
Papa smiles. It’s a little disconcerting for Finn, I think. But I know my father’s expressions well. And this is one I have not seen for a while.
“Masume-san,” he says, “anata no kareshi ni watashi o shōkai.” Daughter, introduce me to your boyfriend.
I push to my feet, Finn cradling me as though I am something precious, and say, “Papa, this is my Finn Drake.”
My father stares at Finn for a long moment and then holds out his hand for him to shake.
For a split second I think Finn will ignore it, but he lifts his own and squeezes back just as firmly as my father. They both flex their fingers when they release.
“Thank you,” Papa finally says. “Arigatoo gozaimasu, Drake-sama. Thank you.”
And I am finally free of my cage.
Epilogue
Finn
One Month Later
We’re sitting on the couch. My arm wrapped around her shoulders, her head resting on my chest. It’s peaceful. It’s comfortable. It’s perfect.
The build-up to the All Blacks playing Wales on the TV is muted, soft music playing out of my stereo system instead. Momo loves watching rugby, but all the talking that goes on beforehand drives her mad. So, the pictures are flickering and the music is playing and when the game starts we’ll change things back.
But I don’t care about the rugby, only insofar as Momo loves it so much I went out and bought a fucking enormous wall-mounted TV. I care about the fact that we’re here. That she’s mine. That this is no longer a dream, but our reality.
Tadashi Ishikawa, the youngest wakagshira in the Yakuza, has been sent back home to Kyoto. A dirty stain in their pure white snow. Their Oyabun, a man I never wish to meet if I can help it, ordered his return immediately. It wasn’t said, Mr Tanaka won’t reveal details of his former Yakuza family, but I got the impression Tadashi is heading for a whole lot of whoop-arse.
He’d not been operating
on orders from the head of the family when he’d first approached the Triads. Although Oyabun agreed he could come out here and force Tanaka-sama’s hand, bring him back into the fold through marrying his daughter, that initial contact and every interaction thereafter with the 14K had all been on Tadashi’s head.
What I do know is Yakuza do not fraternise with the Triads. Ever. Tadashi had broken some unbreakable law and now he was paying for it.
The payoff for everything that happened, the heartache, the vandalism, the assaults and life threatening situations, was that Oyabun considered it a favour that Tanaka-sama had brought this to his attention. No one wants their first lieutenant going off on their own and breaking family rules without their knowledge.
A ceasefire, if you will, was agreed upon. Tanaka-sama has finally gotten his freedom. In exchange, he’s to keep an eye on the Triads here in Auckland.
The 14K Triads, for their part, are dealing with a huge mess of their own. You can’t just go around and kill drug dealers and not expect to get prosecuted. Pierce and the CIB are putting together a pretty damn solid case against Huang Fu. Who, although out on bail, is being followed and watched intimately.
Even ASI has been pulled in to help.
So, no Tadashi Ishikawa. No Yakuza coming over to finish off what he started. And currently no active 14K Triads in Auckland City.
In six months Momoko managed to clean up the city streets and free her family.
My little love-bird is finally flying.
“Do you want something to eat?” she asks me, not moving from where she’s snuggled into my side.
I stare at all the food on the coffee table, courtesy of her very appreciative mother, and shake my head.
“Just you, koibito,” I say, laying a kiss in amongst her glorious hair.
“Um,” she mumbles and sits up straighter. “Didn’t I tell you?”
I arch my brow. She’s looking nervous. “Tell me what?”
“I invited Koki and Brook over to watch the game,” she rushes to say. Her eyes dart to the front door. “In fact, I think I hear their bikes now.”
Sweet Seduction Sayonara Page 17