HAN: Her Ruthless Mistake: 50 Loving States, Delaware (Ruthless Triad Book 4)

by Theodora Taylor

  Luckily, Mika was as loyal as she was loving. She doubled down on my threat, and between the two of us, we managed to send Albie running up the stairs of the house.

  But as soon as her son was out of earshot, my nosy sister boomeranged right back to the subject of Faizan. “He’s only in his mid-forties. He’s just had a hard life. Maybe that’s why he’s pretty happy and grateful to be getting paid a lot to do a relatively easy job.”

  “Whatever,” I groused. “How much you want to bet the Broken Billionaire will roll away and shut himself away in his office before Albie makes it up the steps?”

  We both looked to where the Broken Billionaire was parked. And right on cue, her boss unlocked his chair and rolled back into the house before Albie could make it up the steps.

  “See? He’s so creepy!” I crowed. “I honestly don’t know how you put up with that all summer.”

  After that display, Mika had to give up any argument in her boss’s defense.

  “It’s just one more day, then I’m all done here,” she pointed out instead as we picked up all the surfboards.

  “Yeah, speaking of which…” I started heading toward the stairs that led up to the carport. “I don’t suppose you got paid the rest of the money and that bonus early?”

  “I don’t get paid until my last day of August,” she answered as we hiked up the stairs. “Why? Is there something that can’t wait?”

  I tried to figure out how to tell her Mom and Dad were short on bills again this month, without making her wonder where all the money she’d given them at the beginning of the summer had gone.

  Or how the reason I wasn’t able to help them was because I was trying to pay some random criminal back in order to get out of this crazy weird ownership deal. Yeah, the Fae King had only beckoned me one time since the whole mess went down. But that one time had been enough to convince me that I needed to prioritize extracting myself from underneath his thumb.

  “No, it’s fine. I just took out a loan to close a few gaps,” I answered, constructing the sort of lie as I spoke. “And I’m trying to figure out when I can pay it all back.”

  “Wait, you borrowed money?” Mika asked. “From what bank?”

  She had every right to be suspicious. My income was super sporadic. There wasn’t a bank in the world that would give me a loan.

  So I came up with another partial lie. “It wasn’t exactly from a bank. More like a person.”

  “What person?” Mika demanded as we reached the top of the carport stairs. “Who do you know who could afford to let you borrow that much?”

  I opened my mouth to answer but stopped when I saw the man standing next to my Jeep parked toward the back of the carport—the extremely handsome man with tattoos running down the length of one arm and all the way up to his neck.

  Mika followed my gaze and froze too.

  “Jazz,” she whispered. “Who is that?”

  HAN

  Han couldn’t say it was a decision. He couldn’t remember actually making the choice to come here.

  It was more like the jump cut in a Hong Kong film. One moment he’d been looking at the phone, and the next, Yaron was dropping him off outside a large modern villa in Diamond Head. It was the kind of place Victor would’ve picked out for them if The Silent Triad was set up in Hawaii.

  And according to the dot on his “Find My” app, Jasmine was somewhere inside, just a few meters away.

  “You want me to wait here for you?” Yaron had asked.

  “Wait a couple houses down,” he’d answered. “Stay out of sight until I text.”

  Luckily, he was a Dragon and never had to explain himself. Otherwise, he would have felt both crazy and embarrassed as he climbed out of the car.

  He walked up to the house, and sure enough, there was Jasmine’s Jeep. A few of the boards on top were missing, and the iPhone he’d given her was inside the open car, held up on a clamp. He could see his message on the front screen clear as day.

  But, of course, she had been here giving a lesson, and that was why she didn’t answer. He immediately felt stupid and turned to go before she came out of the house to find him there.

  But suddenly, it was too late. The voices of two women sounded, which abruptly halted when they reached the top of the stairs.

  They both stilled, staring at him.

  He froze too.

  But not because he’d been caught.

  The women.

  One of them was Jasmine. But he also recognized the other one, even though she was dressed in a yellow bikini, the opposite of the many pictures Phantom had sent of her dressed in winter coats.

  The woman standing beside Jasmine…she was Mika Hayes.

  His final target.

  11

  JAZZ

  “Who is that?” my sister demanded, her voice full of horror.

  My brain scrambled to answer her question as an incoming tsunami siren went off in my head.

  Han was here. Here at my sister’s place of work.

  What was he doing here? How had he found me?

  “A client,” I answered. As freaked out as I was on the inside, lying to my sister about this didn’t even feel like a choice. I’d do whatever it took to keep her out of this. Whatever it took. “I um…told him to meet me here.”

  “A client…” Mika repeated, her tone skeptical.

  She scanned Han up and down, and I knew she was eyeballing his ink, not his ridiculously good looks.

  Between all the military personnel, Polynesian cultural traditions, and general popularity, tattoos had become a dime a dozen in Oahu. It was almost more unusual to see guys in their 20s and 30s without any ink.

  But various Asian mafias had been running criminal rackets on the island since the 1950s. So, we locals knew the difference between the tourists who thought tats looked cool and the guys who provided those tourists with drugs, girls, and whatever illegal things their greedy hearts desired.

  Mika turned to me, her eyes wide. “Tell me he just really likes tattoos, and he only looks like he’s part of a Chinese mafia gang.”

  Not just part of one. He was a Dragon. He told me that before I knew his name. But how bad would Mika freak out if I told her?

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “I haven’t talked with him about his work. You know I don’t care about stuff like that. Money’s money. Especially right now.”

  Mika grabbed my arm, her expression as alarmed as mine would be if I wasn’t doing everything I could to hide my real feelings about Han showing up here. “Is he the one you owe the money? Is he harassing you? Stalking you? If he is, you can tell me.”

  I didn’t blame her for jumping to that conclusion, considering her history with the Chinese mafia. They’d killed her husband and pretty much ruined her entire life the year Albie was born.

  I hated how scared she looked. Hated even more that her guesses about my current relationship with Han weren’t that far off.

  “No. He’s just…a client, I swear,” I lied, nonetheless.

  I did it for her sake, but guilt just about ate me alive as I added, “And I’m supposed to be giving him a lesson right now. So please let me go. You’re making me look bad, and like I said, I really need the money to pay back that loan.”

  Mika looked at me, then back to my “client.”

  We might not get to see each other as often as either of us wanted, but she was still my big sister. I could tell she didn’t completely believe me and was struggling with her instinct not to let me anywhere near the dangerous-looking guy standing in her boss’s carport.

  But in the end, she handed me back the surfboard she’d carried up for me and said, “Promise to call after you’re done with your lesson.”

  Her tone made your lesson sound like your obvious lie.

  “I promise. Bye, love you,” I answered. And for her sake, I pasted on a light, breezy smile.

  But that smile immediately disappeared when I shifted to face Han.

  “What the hell are you doing here?
” I whisper-hissed as soon as I reached him.

  Han’s eyes stayed glued over my shoulder. And instead of answering my question, he asked, “Who is that woman you were with?”

  HAN

  The hot anger drained from Jasmine’s expression when Han asked her about the woman, she just hugged goodbye.

  “No one,” she answered. Too quickly.

  Then she busied herself with getting the surfboards she carried attached to the rack on top of her car.

  A gentleman would have offered to help.

  Han simply waited for her to complete the task with more patience than he felt.

  And, as soon as she finished, he let her know, “I don’t tolerate lies from anyone I employ. You belong to me for the next two years, so I most certainly won’t tolerate them from you. Try again.”

  Jasmine rubbed at her brow. “Okay, why are you asking?”

  He held her gaze and answered, “I like threesomes.”

  Right answer. Relief flashed across Jasmine’s face even as she answered, “Well, she’s my sister, so—eww, no. Absolutely not.”

  Han’s stomach turned into wet concrete. Her sister.

  Mika Hayes was her sister.

  Jasmine, the woman he planned to spend his last week in Hawaii with, was the sister of his last target.

  Several extremely foul Cantonese expletives fired off in his head.

  “So, this is a private beach, but we could drive over to Makapuu. They’ve got great waves going today, according to this morning’s surf report.”

  Jasmine’s words interrupted the expletive fest in his head.

  He glanced at Mika Hayes. He knew for a fact that Hayes was her maiden name, so why didn’t she have the same last name as her sister?

  A possible answer occurred to him in a flash.

  “Matapang. Is that your maiden name?” he asked.

  “I mean, it’s my mom’s maiden name that I used to surf under,” Jasmine started to answer. But then she narrowed her eyes at him, “Wait, were you google stalking me?”

  “Yes,” he confessed, too knocked off-kilter to be self-conscious.

  If anything, he was furious with himself for stopping when he did. He’d been afraid of falling into obsession as his chosen brother, Victor, had with his high school girlfriend. But just a few more articles and in-depth portraits might have revealed her connection to his target.

  It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. You have a job to do.

  He glanced again at Mika Hayes. She still stood at the top of the steps leading down to the beach. And she glared back at him as if she knew exactly what he was. But if she truly had access to that information, she’d do more than scowl. She’d grab her little sister and run.

  “I’ll drive,” he said before Jasmine could ask him any follow-up questions about his snooping.

  “It’s my Jeep,” Jasmine started to protest.

  “Two years of doing what I say. Whatever I say,” Han reminded her, his voice hard and unrelenting.

  She gritted her jaw but handed over the keys.

  And a few moments later, they drove away with Mika Hayes staring after them as if a devil had claimed her sister.

  “So, your sister lives here on the island?” he asked a few minutes later as they sped down the Kalanianaʻole Highway.

  “She used to,” Jasmine answered with a sigh. “But then her husband died, and she moved to Connecticut. She’s only here for the summer, working for this super-rich guy from the Middle East.”

  “That sounds like a cushy job,” Han said, careful to keep his tone casual. “You couldn’t ask her to help you out with your father’s debt?”

  Jazz shook her head. “No, absolutely not. The money he used to gamble was pretty much her entire pay for the summer. She gave almost all of it to our dad, and she’s giving him her last check too. I couldn’t ask her for more. She’s a single mom, and she’s got this tragic backstory—basically, her husband turned out to be working for this sex trafficking ring. He tried to kill her when she found out, but then, he got shot up before he could. It was just awful, and her in-laws are still harassing her about it—so no, I’m not going to tell her I owe money to the Chinese mafia.”

  Jasmine trailed off. And Han let her. He’d hoped she would provide him with further intel about her sister, and she had. But it wasn’t valuable. Instead, it only made his guilt over what he had to do that much greater.

  “That’s not you, right?”

  Jasmine’s question drew him away from his guilty thoughts. “What is not me?” he asked, not understanding.

  “I don’t know anything about whatever organization you work for—but you said you weren’t like K Diamond, right? You don’t deal in humans?”

  His gut clenched, and he tightened his fingers on the wheel. “No. Nothing that breathes—that’s my organization’s number one rule,” he answered. It wasn’t a lie, and even if it was, Han didn’t care about lying. He lied whenever it suited him. Like Victor and Phantom, he was dedicated to The Silent Triad’s future and would do whatever it took to help them advance.

  Yet, the partial truth burned like K Diamond’s terrible weed in his throat.

  Maybe that was why he confessed. “My mother was trafficked. She was from a rural town in the south of China. Her family was poor, but she was very beautiful. A cousin who lived in the city came to visit and told my mother she could get her a job in the city. The job was how she met my father. He made her his mistress and allowed her to keep me.”

  Boyhood memories…things he hadn’t thought about in years flashed like gunshots in the dark. His mother’s beauty. His mother’s sadness. The grateful smiles when he brought her tea. The way she jolted when he shook her awake. As if she’d forgotten that she had a son. As if she thought whatever happened in her dreams was her real life.

  “I had a boyfriend back in my hometown,” she once told him. “I promised him to write when I went away. But I never did.”

  Han, who’d hated writing practice as a schoolboy, hadn’t understood her guilt over those unwritten letters.

  She talked about her hometown a lot. Yet, she never told him its name.

  He had not realized that small-but-essential omission was probably intentional. Not until she was gone.

  All those old memories rose like shadows and blocked out the cheery Hawaiian sun.

  And he found himself telling Jasmine another truth despite himself. “I don’t want anything to do with that kind of business.”

  He kept his eyes on the road and refused to look over to see how Jasmine was taking all of this. But he could hear the sympathy in her voice when she said, “Mika was traumatized for years after she found those girls in the crate. I can only imagine what it was like to grow up with one. I’m sorry that—wait, what are you doing?”

  Han didn’t answer, just pulled into the turnaround he’d spotted, put the car in park, and got out. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his ears.

  He could not do this….

  “Where are you going?” Jasmine called after him just as Yaron pulled up behind the Jeep. Fortunately, his driver had followed them and realized what Han was doing when he pulled over without warning.

  He could not kill Mika Hayes. At least not on the original timeline. Maybe not ever….

  “Are you coming back?” Jasmine asked, now a befuddled voice in the distance.

  He might have answered, but he doubted she would have understood. He barely understood.

  How could he explain that he was running away from her because he’d just realized how dangerous she was? That she was a bomb disguised as a woman?

  Worse than a bomb, actually. A bomb would only kill him. But, in less than a month, Jasmine “Matapang” Hayes had completely upended his life.

  He climbed into the back of Yaron’s car and closed the door on any further questions.

  Then he scraped a hand over his face and told Yaron, “Drive.”

  12

  JAZZ

  He i
nsisted on driving, and then he left me there. Just left me there on the side of the highway in the passenger seat of my idling car.

  I watched him drive away, and eventually, after I got over my shock, I climbed into the driver’s seat, which was where I belonged anyway. But what the hell was that?

  No idea because he didn’t answer any of my WTF texts.

  Mika went back to Connecticut with Albie the following day. I think something happened with her boss.

  The morning after our sleepover, Albie and I came out to the living room to find her curled up on the couch. She insisted everything was fine, but she was so distracted she didn’t ask me about my supposed surfing client or the money she’d figured out I owed him. All she wanted was a ride to the airport—and not to talk about whatever had brought her to Mom’s and Dad’s house in the middle of the night, hours before we planned to meet.

  I found myself wishing I could go with them after dropping her and Albie off at the Honolulu airport. I’d only been to the mainland for a couple of competitions in California. I’d never even flown over the East Coast where Han lived. Rhode Island was pretty close to Connecticut. Maybe I’d ask him about it when I saw him again.

  But I didn’t see him again.

  Days passed. Then weeks. I kept the phone charged and even adopted it as my own—let’s face it, it was way nicer than my five-year-old device. Plus, someone else was mysteriously paying the bill every month, so I figured I might as well get rid of my Galaxy and use the one he gave me. At least until he showed up to take it back.

  But he never did.

  Life went on as it had before him. I worked all the hours that I could, helped my mom with Dad, talked to Albie on the phone about how much he hated Connecticut, went surfing at dawn by myself. Rinse, wash, repeat.

  I tried not to think about how my life, which had been perfectly fine before the Fae King’s arrival, suddenly seem dull and colorless.