Well, that explained where the music was coming from, I supposed. But I had no idea who this particular “she” was or how she’d wrecked Victor this bad if he was the one who let her go.
“I better get in there before Phantom makes good on his promise,” Han said. He pushed open the door for me. “Go in and wait. I’ll bring back your bag later.”
Phantom. So that was the ogre’s name. And that must make him the third Silent Triad Dragon Han had mentioned a few times. So he wasn’t just an ogre. He was an Ogre King.
Han disappeared down the hallway before I could respond to his instructions. And unlike Phantom, he closed the door behind him.
Leaving me to feel like Diane Keaton’s Kate getting shut out by one of Michael Corleone’s men at the end of The Godfather. How had I ended up in the middle of this mafia film?
I walked into a bedroom that turned out to be more like a whole apartment, complete with dark furniture and a view of the Rhode Island coastal beach beyond its paned floor-to-ceiling windows. Chen had told me the truth. This beach was nothing like Hawaii’s. The ocean was grey as opposed to crystal blue. There were huge rocks situated on the narrow strip of sand and these kind of scratchy-looking green bushes. They whipped sideways under a brusque wind that didn’t appear tropical in the least.
A low-key panic settled in my chest, and once again, I wondered why Han had brought me with him on this trip. Because one thing made itself evident as I looked around the too nice room…
I didn’t belong here.
HAN
Jasmine didn’t belong here, and bringing her with him had been a mistake.
Han had that figured out by the time he left his brother dozing in his room. Phantom hadn’t exaggerated when he called Han and said he needed to return to Rhode Island and take over Victor’s duties.
Their lead Dragon, usually so stalwart and reserved, had unraveled into a human-shaped mess. Barely capable of getting through the day, much less traveling to Delaware to handle the advance work on that deal.
Uneasy emotions crunched inside of Han’s chest after seeing his brother like that.
Up until he called off his engagement with the 24K Dragon’s daughter, Victor had been the most reliable of their group. Sure, he’d reserved one day a year to visit the woman he’d decided to imprison as a punishment for what her father did to his. But other than that, he remained the dependable, future planner who had founded their ultra-modern triad from the ashes of his father’s Red Diamond gang.
The brother he knew was nowhere to be found today, though. Since Victor had let his former prisoner go at her insistence and agreed never to see her again, he’d become a husk of his former self, tortured, drunken, and unable to function.
He’d also reeked. After finding the hidden Apple TV remote and wrenching a bottle of baijiu from his white-knuckled fist, Han and Phantom had been forced to strip him down and push him into the glass box shower. Then after toweling him off and redressing him like a baby, Han shoved a couple of sleeping pills down his brother’s throat while Phantom held his arms.
“No! No! I don’t want to sleep!” Victor had signed to them after they made him swallow the pills. “I’ll only have bad dreams, and then I’ll wake up to an even worse nightmare.”
Phantom and Han exchanged looks over his head.
This.
This was what letting yourself fall for a woman could do to you.
And Han realized his mistake in bringing Jasmine here as they waited for Victor to succumb to the pills.
Love was a destroyer. And Han didn’t want to lose himself like Victor had, like his trafficked mother, who’d been naive enough to fall for her richest client, had. Ever.
What seemed like years later, Han made the trip down the hallway to tell Jasmine not to bother with unpacking. He was sending her back to Hawaii. And he would set dozens of men on her as a protection detail. She would be safe. He would damn well ensure that.
But she wasn’t in the main part of the suite when he walked into his bedroom. Maybe she’d gone to the bathroom?
“Jasmine?” he called out.
“Oh great, Han, you’re back,” a voice answered from the direction of his walk-in closet. “In here! I need your help.”
He rushed over, worried that she’d fallen or otherwise hurt herself.
But the reason for her calling out to him turned out to be even more bizarre than that.
He found her sitting on the floor of the closet with her legs crisscrossed, struggling with a lacy bra. She appeared to be trying to rip it apart with her bare hands.
“Do you know where some scissors are?” she asked. “This woman named Yolanda showed up out of nowhere like a fairy godmother. She took one look at me, and like, less than an hour later, all these clothes showed up—which, okay, not nearly as comfortable as my t-shirts. But I figured I should try to wear something other than my bikini tops while I’m here. But these bras are something else. You can’t take out the cups easily, and they have these strips of metal underneath….”
It took Han a few confused beats to realize what was happening. “You’ve never worn an underwire bra.”
She shook her head. “What’s the point when wearing a bikini means….”
“Yes, yes, you can always jump in the ocean,” he finished for her with a laugh.
The sound of that laughter after dealing with all of Victor’s misery shocked him. He’d felt so pessimistic when he first walked into his bedroom, but here he was laughing after just a few moments with her. Jasmine truly was sunshine, bottled in one sexy package.
“You okay?” she asked, tilting her head over the bra she was trying to deconstruct. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Han decided at the same moment he said it. “Don’t unpack your bag….”
Jasmine’s scrunched her forehead and lowered the bra.
“But I thought…” she began to say.
At the same moment, he informed her, “Tomorrow, we are going to Delaware.”
“Oh, okay,” Jasmine answered, her eyes shifting to the side. Then she asked. “What’s in Delaware?”
The answer to her question was another change of plan. Han had decided on the plane ride over to leave her here, safe in their impenetrable Rhode Island fortress, while he did the meet and greet with the president of the Ruthless Reapers and the leader of the DE Reyes street gang.
But as they laughed together in the closet, he decided that he’d rather she be safe by his side than anywhere else.
“I believe I promised her some attention to make up for not feeding her for the last twelve hours,” Han said instead of answering her question about Delaware. “Is she still hungry?”
The way Jasmine’s eyes darkened told him she was just as ravenous for him as he was for her. And he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
The image of Victor curled up on the floor of his shower would stay with Han for a long time.
But that wasn’t him. Not yet. So he decided not to think about what he was falling into with his surfer girl as he carried her to his bed.
25
JAZZ
“Who the hell are you, and what have you done with Han?”
The joy I’d found at discovering a breakfast buffet in the formal dining room greatly diminished when Phantom came up behind me. I froze in the middle of ladling some congee that looked like a Chinese take on the rice porridge my mom made into a bowl.
Han was still asleep, but even the six-hour time difference hadn’t allowed me to sleep past nine am. However, I might have thought twice about coming downstairs if I knew the Ogre King would come in here and try to start something with me this early in the morning.
“Um, what did Han say?” I asked in careful response to his question.
He glared at me like I’d side-stepped some invisible trap. Then he started throwing piles of breakfast food onto his plate as he answered, “He said you were friends.”
“Then let’s go with tha
t.” I placed a couple of bacon pieces on my own plate beside the bowl of congee—also some eggs that had ham mixed in, not Spam—nope, definitely not in Hawaii anymore.
“Han doesn’t have friends like you,” the Ogre King answered.
“You mean Black?” I asked with a cringe. Because I really didn’t know how to handle his potentially racist answer with a head full of fuzzy jet lag.
“I mean a woman,” Phantom answered like I was an idiot. “Bringing a woman home with him, letting them stay overnight in his room—he doesn’t do that shit.”
“Hmm, so he told me….” I set down my plate and took a seat at the nearby dining table. “I’m not sure whether to feel complimented or sorry for, like, every other woman Han slept with.”
Phantom sat down on the other side of the dining room table and glared at me over the pile of food on his plate. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” I admitted. “Believe me. I don’t want to be having this conversation with you. If I could say the right thing to make it stop, I would.”
His glare slit even narrower. “Are you always this honest?”
“Should I not be?” I asked. “Is honesty also something Han doesn’t do?”
Phantom looked at me for a hot, angry second, then, for some reason, said, “Okay.” As if it was the final answer to whatever questions he had.
“Okay,” I answered, my voice as confused as his was declarative.
Fortunately, more men filed in, effectively ending our one-on-one. It was the dead of summer, but they must have had the utmost faith in the higher power of air conditioning. All of them were dressed in suits, ties, and wingtips—not a sandal or open collar to be found like their Hawaii counterparts. However, the other STs all gave me side-eye as they headed to the buffet.
“This is Jazz,” Phantom told them. “Han brought her home with him from Hawaii.”
You’d think that would have cleared everything up, but that only got me more confused looks, like a green sea turtle had wandered into their predators-only habitat.
At least they were a lot politer than Phantom. They mumbled hello, and one of them even introduced themselves with a handshake.
“Hi, I’m Wang. I usually drive Victor around, but I’ll be coming with you to Delaware since he doesn’t need my services right now.”
I smiled back at him, appreciating his spin on the situation. “Doesn’t need my services right now” sounded a whole lot better than “seems to be having a complete mental breakdown.”
However, I’m surprised a few hours later when Han and I leave the house with our bags. Instead of jumping in one of the three Audis pulling out of the long circular driveway, Han led me over to a large, free-standing garage and lifted one of the several sliding doors.
My eyes widen when I found a muscle car standing behind it. I’m not into vintage cars myself, but my father was. And thanks to the weather that prevented wear and tear and the price of shipping, Oahu had a serious fetish for older rides. So I knew just enough to tell the car was a classic, probably from the 70s.
“What is this?” I asked Han.
“My Mercury Cougar. Normally I prefer to drive myself around, and this is how I travel.”
The Mercury Cougar wasn’t the only gem in his collection. He had a mid-70s Corvette, a Pontiac GTO, and even an original Ford Mustang. Apparently, he’d restored all of them himself in his free time.
“I would never have guessed you had a hobby,” I said after surveying his impressive collection. I threw him a teasing glance. “Is that why you chose me of all women to bring home? Because I’m a fixer-upper?”
“No,” he answered with a cool Fae King look.
I waited for a further explanation. But he not only didn’t expound on the subject, he changed it altogether.
“Pick the car you want to drive to Delaware,” he told me. “That’s an order.”
HAN
She chose the Mercury Cougar.
Han tried not to make too much of it. It was a beautiful car. And yes, it was strange for someone unfamiliar with 70s cars to pick it as their favorite—Victor and Phantom both preferred the Corvette, even though Han had explained the Mercury Cougar’s superiority to them several times.
But Jasmine choosing this particular car for the Delaware trip didn’t mean anything.
Yet…
He glanced over at Jasmine again.
“What?” she said this time. “You keep on looking at me. Is it because of my hair?”
Indeed, her hair was now a mess. The steadfast ponytail was used to ocean water and gentle tropical breezes. It proved no match to the Delaware wind currently whipping through the car’s open windows as they sped down one of the backroads he preferred to the highway when it came to driving in one of his beauties. It had taken them nearly two hours over the usual five to reach Delaware, but the trip had been worth it.
They’d talked on various subjects. Easy ones, like how cold the East Coast ocean water was in August. And complicated ones, like why his body was only half-covered in tattoos. Han was known for being charming, especially when it came to seducing women.
But during their trip, he’d come to realize just how much effort had gone into his façade. With Jasmine, there was no analysis to figure out what she wanted to hear. No tricks or laser-focused flirting. Their conversation had flown with natural ease, without any underlying agenda. It had felt good just to talk with her and get to know her that much better. Like sunshine in his chest.
“No, you look perfect,” he answered her now, giving her and her outfit and an appreciative once over.
She’d come back upstairs from breakfast and donned one of her new dresses, mumbling something about maybe needing to look like a Dragon’s girlfriend because she’d gotten a lot of strange looks from the guys downstairs while dressed in her baggy t-shirt and surf shorts.
She looked so pretty in the peach sundress, he’d decided not to explain that she’d gotten looks for her mere presence as an overnight guest of Han’s—something he’d never had.
“I don’t feel perfect,” she retorted to his compliment. “I think this bra is mad that I tried to cut it up yesterday. It’s stabbing me in my underboob. I’m taking this thing off as soon as we get to your place in Delaware.”
“You won’t take it off,” Han replied. “That’s an order.”
“You’re really trying to tell me not to take off this bra, even though it’s straight-up trying to murder me?” Jasmine asked, her voice full of outrage.
They were on a straight road with no cars in front of them, so Han moved his hand from the gear shift to her soft inner thigh.
“I’m telling you…” he said, his tone patient and wry. “…that you will let me take it off of you as soon as we get there. I must apologize myself to your breasts for the attempted murder.”
Jasmine threw her head back, and her laughter filled up the car. More of that Hawaii sunshine shipped directly to his East Coast.
Had I really thought about leaving her behind? Han was extremely glad he’d changed his mind.
But then she sobered and asked, “So Victor…is he the reason you hate women so much?”
Han moved his hand back to the stick shift. “I don’t hate women.”
“I mean, if that’s how the break-up left him,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard his denial. “I can only imagine what the relationship was like.”
“He was obsessed with her,” Han admitted, his voice becoming quiet. “Even after her father ruined his life and brought about the end of the Red Diamond.”
“The Red Diamond—that was the original triad you all belonged to, right? The one that made you get tattoos at every level,” she said, pulling in details from the earlier conversation about why he’d stopped getting tattoos so abruptly. “So I guess you’re walking around with the reminder of what the wrong relationship can do.”
She nodded, coming to a conclusion, even though he’d ne
ither confirmed nor denied any of her suppositions.
“I can see why all the Rhode Island STs are acting like it’s a miracle that I showed up here with you.”
The conversation had been so pleasant before, but ire rose inside Han now. He didn’t like that she’d managed to unearth some of his deepest fears and truths with just one question.
Close. She was getting too close.
“You know how you do not like to talk about your father having a disease that will waste his muscles away and eventually kill him?” he asked, his tone low and tight. “That is how I feel about this subject.”
He wasn’t looking at Jasmine. He kept his eyes glued to the road in front of them. But he could imagine her face during the long, terrible silence from her side of the car and could almost see it resetting to closed off when she said, “Copy that.”
Guilt sank like a stone in his gut.
“Jasmine…” he began to say.
Another vehicle slammed into them from behind, sending the Cougar into a spin. Han fought to regain control of the car, assuming someone must have hit them on accident. But before he could bring it to a stop, a black F-50 truck bore down on them again, slamming into the Cougar’s back.
The car flipped, and all the windows shattered after the Cougar landed like a green sea turtle onto its hardtop.
“Jasmine!” She was his first thought—his only thought.
She was hanging upside down, with her head lolled to the side. Fear stabbed through him. Was she unconscious or dead?
“Jasmine!” he yelled, reaching over to shake her. “Jasmine, wake up!”
Han didn’t realize he was hurt, too, until the world started to fade out on his words. Still, he called her name, over and over again, until everything turned black.
26
JAZZ
HAN: Her Ruthless Mistake: 50 Loving States, Delaware (Ruthless Triad Book 4) Page 18