by Sara Fields
“Did you ask him to kill someone?” I replied calmly.
“I did not,” he said.
“Would it hurt the company?” I asked next.
“It would not,” he responded.
“Then I have no problem with giving you what you asked my father for,” I said.
“Your offer is very compelling, Ms. Mikaels,” Shinobu said quietly, running his thumb over the knuckle of his other hand. “But your presence would give me something all the more powerful. You see, I have been told that you keep company with Dominic Porter and he’s a man who holds the kind of power that I have been looking to take for myself for a very long time.”
Shit.
“What are you saying?” I asked. My voice was strong but there was a tremor in my hands that I covered up by pressing them into my lap.
“I refuse your offer. I have something else in mind for you that will certainly bring Dominic Porter out of hiding in order to save you. Deep in the red-light district, I have many houses of pleasure and in my most luxurious one, there will be a place for you. You will be my most expensive whore, a pretty rich American commodity,” he replied. His voice was dangerous and sure and as I pushed myself up out of my chair, a number of suited guards poured into the room.
“You can’t do this!” I shrieked.
“I can and I will,” he sneered.
Chapter Ten
Dominic
When I woke up to an empty hotel suite, I knew what she had done. I groaned and glared at that empty coffee cup, knowing she’d once again drugged me with a sedative in order to sneak out on her own. I closed my eyes once more, trying to shake off the effects of whatever she’d used to put me out and when I opened them once more, I saw a piece of paper on the table not far away from me. I pushed myself up and walked over to it. Her signature was on the bottom.
She confessed to what she had done and that she’d taken the responsibility of her father’s rescue onto her shoulders.
I sighed.
She was incredibly smart and had this been a normal situation with normal businessman, I would have applauded her for this decision. But it wasn’t normal. We were dealing with the mafia and they didn’t play by the rules.
They made their own.
She didn’t say exactly what she was doing, but I hazarded a guess that it had something to do with the time she’d spent away from me with Kiyota’s wife. I picked up the phone and called him right away.
“Mr. Porter, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon,” he answered.
“I didn’t think so either, but I’ve got a problem on my hands and I would be very grateful for your help,” I started.
“What can I do to help?” he asked, and I explained how Brooke had disappeared. I asked him to question his wife about what she knew. I told him I was going to put every single one of my resources into finding her and he offered his too.
“Kiyota, if Shinobu has taken and hurt her, I will not hesitate to kill him,” I warned. I heard him take a deep breath and sigh.
“I know, Mr. Porter. If it was Chiyo, I would do the same. Whatever you need, Mr. Porter,” he replied.
“Thank you, Kiyota-san,” I said and hung up the phone.
I made one call after another. I broke out my laptop and enlisted Richardson to help. He began to hack into every single camera within a mile of the hotel. He also looked into the digital footprint of exactly when Brooke had left the hotel as a means to pinpoint when she would have passed them. It didn’t take long for him to find her on the footage he’d found.
He followed her into an alley where we watched as she climbed into a limo. Richardson could only get a partial off of the vehicle, but I called into some of my connections within the Japanese police force and had a list of potential names to look into within a few minutes.
It took a few hours, but after hacking into a number of traffic cameras, my team had been able to track her last known location to a tall office building where she’d entered with Kai and her protective detail.
After a few well-placed threats, the Japanese police force stormed the building, but it had been wiped clean. There wasn’t a single trace of Shinobu, Kai, or Brooke inside. It was as though the building had never been occupied.
Just that alone told me that Shinobu did not have good intentions.
By midafternoon, I had the entire Japanese police force on the case along with my own team of people looking into every camera and whatever trace we could find. Money like mine bought a lot of power and I used every single ounce of it that I could.
My phone rang and I picked it up. It was Kiyota.
“I’ve put my ears to the ground for you, Mr. Porter, and I’ve heard something you’re not going to like,” he said hurriedly.
“What is it?” I answered.
“Shinobu has a number of houses of pleasure, some high class and exclusive, others not so much. He’s begun to advertise a secret, very expensive commodity at one of them and I fear that it may be Brooke,” he replied quickly.
“Do you know which one and where?” I replied calmly.
“I do,” he answered. He told me the location and I had my team look into it immediately. They would get me the blueprint for the building, a list of people who came in and out of the place and also the closest place of surveillance that they could find.
“Mr. Porter?” Kiyota asked. His tone seemed tentative and quite nervous.
“Yes, Kiyota?”
“I can’t have my men go with you. It would mark a war against the Yamaguchi, and I won’t send my men to their deaths,” he said.
“It’s alright. I’ll make a call to the Kobe family. They will be very happy to stand by my side. Plus, Muramoto owes me a favor,” I replied.
He was quiet for a long time. He knew what I was insinuating. The Kobe and the Yamaguchi have been rivals for a very long time. Muramoto was the Kobe family kingpin and he had been looking for a reason to go to war with Shinobu for a very long time.
I was about to give him one.
“Thank you, Kiyota. Keep your men off the streets tonight. You and I will have sake again when this is all over and I will ensure that you not only have your hands in the Tokyo casino, but also the one that will be built in Nagasaki as well,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Porter,” he answered, and I hung up the phone. Immediately, I made a call to Muramoto next and made plans with him to take down the Yamaguchi once and for all. He was more than excited to hear my proposition and agreed quickly. I thanked him and assured him that I was looking forward to working with him.
I made a call to a gun distributer based in Tokyo next. I told him that I would pay whatever he charged to get me enough guns to outfit the Kobe, my own men, and me by tonight. He guaranteed delivery within two hours. I promised a generous bonus upon receipt.
I called a number of others as I started to formulate my plan to take down a man many considered untouchable. He wasn’t though, not to me.
Shinobu was kingpin to the Yamaguchi, the richest mafia family in the world.
But he’d declared war against me by taking Brooke, and now I was going to show him that he wasn’t in charge and that he did not hold the upper hand.
I did.
I was far more powerful than he was, and I was going to show him that when he made a move against me, he would lose. Every single time.
Especially if he even thought about putting his hands on Brooke.
Chapter Eleven
Brooke
I woke up confined to a bedroom with a rather elegant French-style upholstered bed and grand cherry wood nightstands to either side of it. Thankfully, I was alone, and I rubbed my head, trying to recall the last thing I remembered. It was difficult to think, and I felt like my mind was stuck in a heavy vat of cement. I remembered an office building and the limo ride through the city with Kai, but everything else was much slower to come back to me.
With a sigh, I lay back on the pillows and furrowed my brow, trying to figure out what the fu
ck had happened between then and now. I sniffed and a rather sweet and flowery scent permeated the air around me. I knew what that was. I remembered a cloth being forced over my mouth after that.
I’d been knocked out with chloroform.
Fuck. Where was I now?
I groaned as I forced myself out of bed and walked over to the door. My entire body felt stiff and unused to movement, and I did my best to push through it. I tried to open the door when I reached it, but it was locked. There weren’t any other doors or even a single window in the room for me to think about shimmying out of. There were a few ventilation grates in the walls, but none of them were big enough to crawl through. My options for escape were nil. I was going to have to wait until someone came inside the room with me and hope that they left the door unlocked long enough for me to get past them.
I opened the drawers to the nightstand and was horrified to find full boxes of condoms, a number of vibrators, as well as a great many dildos and anal toys inside it. The nightstand on the opposite side of the bed was the same. On the wall was a television and when I turned it on, the only options were several different types of Japanese porn, from sweet to filthy to incredibly kinky and dark. It soon became very clear that I could only be in one place.
I was in a brothel.
I remembered that Shinobu had threatened with putting me in one and it appeared that he’d done just that. Right now, he was probably auctioning me to the highest bidder. He didn’t know me though. I wouldn’t lie down and spread my legs without a fight. While I was waiting, I’d prepare myself for the inevitable possibility that the next person that walked through that door would be expecting much more than I was willing to give. I searched the room for anything I could defend myself with and found a few metal chopsticks. Some of them came to a point. They weren’t very sharp, but they would have to do. In addition to the eating utensils, I also found several expensive pairs of shoes with rather pointed heels.
I’d use those too.
No one was going to force me onto the bed and take what wasn’t theirs to have.
It was about an hour later when the door opened, and a man walked through the door. He was dressed in a very expensive suit and had a rather extravagant gold watch on his wrist. Everything in his wardrobe screamed money, as well as his well-trimmed beard and short-cut hair. He had to be somewhere in his forties, probably a rich Japanese businessman of some kind.
He’d likely paid a large sum to be the first man to have a go at me.
“Such a pretty American,” he mused as he stared back at me.
“You can tell Shinobu to go fuck himself,” I growled, and he chuckled.
“He said you would be a difficult one. Lucky for you, I like it when they fight back,” he answered, and a sickening feeling came over me. “You see, I have very particular and very expensive tastes. I’ve paid for the right for you tonight, but it’s highly likely the bruises won’t fade for at least a week, so I’ve paid for that too.”
I stood beside the bed and took a step back, eyeing the door behind the man.
“Don’t you dare put your hands on me,” I snarled, and he grinned like a rabid hyena.
“Perfection. I’ve never had the pleasure of subduing an American before, but I can assure you that I’m going to enjoy every last moment,” he murmured excitedly. He was already hard. I could see the outline of his dick through his gray slacks. He was practically salivating at the prospect of taking me.
The room that Shinobu had imprisoned me in was sizable. It felt incredibly small though right now as the man circled around me like a predator, a vulture that had me marked for certain death.
I still had the chopstick behind my back and a pair of heels close by on the bed. I had means to defend myself.
“Would you like to wear those for me? I rather like chasing a girl in heels,” he purred creepily, and I had to try to stop myself from gagging at the thought.
He came even closer to me and that’s when the world outside that door started to fall apart. The quiet hallways I’d been able to see when the man had opened the door weren’t silent anymore.
Boom!
It sounded like someone had torpedoed the front door of whatever establishment I’d been placed in. The floor rattled ominously. I couldn’t tell how far it was away from me, but it had been extraordinarily loud all the same.
The sound of heavy gunfire popped loudly outside the room and the man turned back toward the door in surprise, which gave me the opportunity I needed. I skirted around him and he grabbed at me, but I deftly avoided his reach.
I rushed into the hallway and dove headfirst into what I could only call a bloodbath. Men lay dead or dying on the floor, surrounded in pools of blood. I stared down at one man who’d been shot straight between the eyes. They were still open but entirely vacant and glassy. It was the most haunting thing I had ever seen. The plush carpet beneath my feet and the extravagant detail down to the deep cherry wood trim was lavish and spoke to great wealth, only now it was stained with blood.
It was almost sad, but I didn’t let it distract me.
I stepped over the dead man and continued on down the hallway away from the gunshots. The sound of doors slamming into walls echoed loudly and I picked up speed as I ran down the hall in the opposite direction. I didn’t know how big the building was or where even in the city it was located, but I knew better than to run toward the pops of gunfire. I ran away instead.
I heard footsteps slapping against the floor behind me. I looked back and the businessman who had apparently bought me for the night was running after me at full speed, or at least as fast as he could go.
Fuck that.
I ran harder only to come to a dead end. There were no stairs or even an elevator at the end of the hallway. With a deep breath, I turned around to find the man slowing down. He was grinning, clearly pleased that he had me trapped now. The carnage hadn’t reached this far yet. We’d left it behind and now it was just me and him in this lone hallway. There were several closed doors, but as I tried turning one doorknob after the next, I found that they were all locked too. It was highly likely that each room held a woman, imprisoned and forced to give up her body for a payout she’d never see.
I still held the metal chopstick in my hand and twisted my wrist so that the man couldn’t see it. I hid it behind my back and readied it for when he came at me, having no doubt that he would. I stood there at the end of the hallway as he strode toward me, his self-assured arrogance growing as he drew ever closer. I scowled and prepared myself to fight.
My father had hired a self-defense instructor to teach me how to protect myself since I had been a little girl. I knew the places where a man was weak. I knew what to hit in order to gain the upper hand. It only took five pounds of pressure to break a nose. The eyes were always a weak point and had no natural defenses against attack. A strategic punch to the throat would ultimately block someone’s ability to draw in air, offering an opportunity for escape. A hard elbow to the back of the neck could paralyze a person or even kill them. And in the case of a man, there was always the crafty knee to the nuts trick, my personal favorite for asshats like this fucker.
With a quick shake, I loosened my muscles and relaxed my knees, ready to launch at a moment’s notice.
“Thought you could run from me, pretty American, didn’t you?” he growled. His gaze darkened considerably, and I found my stomach rolling with nausea.
I didn’t answer.
“Normally, I don’t prefer public displays of affection, but you might necessitate my first,” he continued, and I swayed from side to side, readying myself for what was to come.
He moved even closer toward me. He probably thought I was a done deal and he’d be able to take what he wanted just because he had cornered me.
He was wrong. Very, very wrong.
The second he got close enough, I struck. I grabbed his wrist with my free hand and pulled him toward me. I brought my knee up between his legs and kneed him in the balls a
s hard as I could. He crumpled and I took the opportunity to slam my elbow down on the back of his neck and he squealed in pain like a stuck pig. I moved to run around him, and he grasped at my wrist as he pulled himself up with a groan.
I didn’t hesitate. Not even for a second.
My arm swung around, and I slammed that chopstick I’d been holding straight into his right eye. He screamed in agony and something wet spurted toward me, but I swiftly released the metal utensil and started to run. I didn’t look back.
I didn’t need to see if I had killed him. I didn’t want to see any of it.
“Well, here I am to rescue you and I find that you’re not in need of my help after all,” a voice said lightly. I gasped and lifted my head. It was Dominic. He gazed back at me, clearly amused at the scene behind me. Just seeing him reminded me to pull myself together.
After taking a deep breath, I shrugged.
“He was asking for it,” I responded with a smirk.
The businessman screeched and squawked with wild abandon. He went in and out of English and Japanese, almost like he couldn’t decide on one language over the other. He prayed and screamed for help, but no one was coming for him.
“Did he put his hands on you?” Dominic asked.
I rubbed my wrist, still feeling the man’s dirty fingers on my skin. I nodded and turned away just as Dominic lifted his arm. He was holding a gun with a long silencer on it. Without pause, he pulled the trigger and the yelling stopped abruptly. I didn’t look to see the result.
Dominic took my hand and led me back through the hallway.
“Let’s go,” he said softly.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“Shinobu’s most expensive brothel, The Golden Coin. It’s in the center of Tokyo’s business district, disguised as a high-end hostess restaurant. The girls are paraded as company you can buy for a period of time, only what’s included can be a whole lot more and extraordinarily expensive. You have to be invited to be a client, which means that Shinobu has to approve each and every man that walks into this place,” he replied.