by Sienna Blake
Why didn’t Drake say goodbye to me? I looked for him at the airport—I thought he might have at least met me there to see me off. He didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t get to tell him thank you.
Why, after hanging onto me so hard it had become suffocating, did he just let me go?
Was this Jared’s doing? It must be. How did Jared get Drake to release me? How did he convince him? Drake hated Jared. He never would have agreed…
Did he blackmail Drake?
In my haste to pack I forgot to bring my phone. I left it behind, sitting in my boot. I may never know.
The tension in my stomach tightened the farther away from Los Angeles—and Drake—I got. I feared…I feared that I had done something irreversible.
I sat at my father’s bedside in his private room at Osaka University Medical Hospital. The air was chilled, causing goose bumps on my arm, and smelled of hospital-grade disinfectant and the stale must of recycled air. The machine by his bedside beeped in time with his heart. I latched onto that precious sound. My father looked like a child in the bed, so sunken and fragile that I almost couldn’t believe it was him. Someone had stolen my father and replaced him with a shadow.
He mumbled and his lashes flickered. I sat up in my seat. “Papa?”
He blinked several times before his familiar dark brown eyes found me. “Noriko?” he croaked out. It was the sweetest sound.
I shushed him and held up a cup of water with a straw. He drank a few gulps before sagging back onto his pillow. I placed the cup down and took his soft, crinkly hand in both of mine, careful to avoid the IV drip coming out of the back of it. He felt like paper, thin and just as tearable.
His eyes were still hooded from sleep, from the drugs they had him on, things I had no hope of naming. “Nori-chan, is that really you?”
“It’s me, Papa.” Tears marked hot streaks down my cheeks, sliding over my smiling lips. My happiness tasted like salt. The same as sadness.
I embraced him around the wires and tubes coming out of him.
When I pulled back he eyed me, a smile spreading across his cracked lips. “I’m so glad you’re here to say goodbye.”
“I am not here to say goodbye.” How dare he suggest it. “You’re not going anywhere. Neither am I.” My voice vibrated with the force of my will. If only my will was enough.
“Hime, they tried to operate. But…the cancer’s grown around my spine. The surgeon couldn’t get it all out. It’s only a matter of time—”
“No!” Not listening. Not listening. “There must be something we can do.”
“You’ve already done enough.”
My jaw ached from how hard I was clenching my teeth. How dare he. He’d already given up. He couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t let him. He was the one who always told me never to give up. And now he was lying there being the world’s biggest hypocrite. There had to be another treatment. Another surgery. Some kind of drug. I’d go to the university medical library and research it my damn self if I had to.
“Can I get you anything?” I said, changing the subject, my voice betraying the violence of my inner convictions. He would not convince me that it was too late. I would find a way to save him. I cursed myself internally for all those wasted hours I spent at Blackwell Manor. I could have been researching his cancer. I could have been finding new doctors, better doctors. I handed over too much power to the health system here and clung too tightly onto threads of faith. “Food? More drugs?”
Before he could answer, I heard hard, sure footsteps coming up behind me. I spun—for a moment, thinking those footsteps belonged to Drake.
Instead it was a woman, a doctor, I presumed from her white coat, but her skin was fair and her blond hair, pulled back into a neat ponytail, was brushed with silver at the temples. A foreign doctor? An oddity in this Osaka hospital.
The doctor smiled at me and nodded to my father. “Hello, you must be Mr. Akiyama and Mrs. Blackwell,” she said in English.
“Who are you?” I asked, my hackles rising at her use of my married name.
“I’m Dr. Newton, from Johns Hopkins Hospital.”
I blinked as the name sank in. “From the States?”
She flashed me a perfectly white smile as more nurses and orderlies filled up the room. “Yes. I’ve flown in specifically to treat your father.”
“I…” I was too stunned to protest as one of the nurses gently tugged me off my father’s bed and to one side, her gentle touch and warm smile confusing me further. They swarmed around my father. I repressed the urge to yank them all away from him. “Stop. Get off him.” I turned back to the doctor, anger swirling around my body. Nobody was taking my father anywhere until I understood why. “What are you doing to him? What’s going on?”
Her voice was calm despite my outburst. “I don’t want to toot my own horn…well, okay, maybe I do,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ve pioneered a new precision surgery. It’s the first of its kind. I believe we may be able to save him.”
“But… What? How?”
“I agree. It’s completely unorthodox. I usually only operate out of Johns Hopkins. But when a man like that makes me and our hospital an offer like that… Well, I can’t refuse him.”
“A man like…?” I trailed off, my guts twisting.
Dr. Newton gave me a strange look, tilting her head. “Why, your husband, of course.”
A brand new hospital wing?
Drake Blackwell offered Johns Hopkins a brand new cancer research wing if this miracle doctor and her team would fly to Osaka and save my father. An entire wing. Not a room or even a corridor or a large, expensive piece of medical equipment. An entire wing. Kitted out with all the latest medical equipment.
My first reaction was one of disbelief. Why the hell would Drake do this? He had no reason to.
You were his reason, Noriko.
I shook my head. If he still cared, then why didn’t he come and say goodbye to me?
My second reaction was indignation. I was going to find a way to save my father—my love was going to find a way—but Drake had to come along with all his damn money and his “everybody do what I say” power. I bet when he died, he’d demand that God send him back to Earth, and you know what? I bet God would. If only to avoid Drake’s ego taking up most of heaven for another few years.
I watched my father’s frail body disappear between double doors. I felt sick and dizzy, the glaring lights of this ward blinding me. I felt too terrified to hope. Could this surgery actually save him?
I fell into a plastic chair in the waiting room, staring at the linoleum floor—large squares of a sickly green—while the miracle doctor and her team operated on my father. At some point a kind nurse pushed coffee in a Styrofoam cup into my hand.
Once I was able to think a little clearer, I called my sisters and aunt at home to update them on my father’s surgery. I didn’t tell them that my husband was the one to thank.
My sisters were still in Shibetzu with our auntie, still going to school and trying to have some semblance of a normal life. All the money I received from my marriage contract had gone to my father’s treatments. It was almost gone. Until Drake stepped in.
We had no money to spare for a hotel room for my sisters here in Osaka. I wasn’t even sure where I was staying. This waiting room was my home right now, I guessed. I hung up with promises to call them back after the surgery was over.
I needed to call Drake and thank him. As I stared at the keypad, I wasn’t sure I could make myself dial his home number.
What would I say? God, how badly I’d behaved. He did this for my father anyway.
“Noriko Blackwell?”
I hung up the undialed phone and looked around expectantly. The source of the kind voice was a woman wearing a tailored skirt-suit, her hair pulled back into a bun.
“I’m sorry, who are you?”
She smiled at me. “You’ve been up all night. You must be very tired. Your father won’t be out of surgery for at least six hours. Would you
like to rest?”
She must be one of the hospital admin staff. Whoever she was, she was a godsend.
The woman, whose name was Sakuri, escorted me in a black car to a nearby hotel. She checked me into a suite and told me, while I was staring around at this palatial space, that this suite was mine until my father was discharged. She indicated the closet which was filled with brand new clothes, stylish yet comfortable wear, linen pants and cotton blouses, all in my size.
“Mr. Blackwell thought you should be comfortable while you look after your father. The hospital knows to call you here once your father is out of surgery. There’s a car on standby to take you to the hospital or anywhere you’d like.”
She left me, standing stunned, a strange prickling in my eyes.
I must call him now.
I sank into the huge bed and punched in the number to Blackwell Manor in the phone beside it. My heart rate crept up as the calling tone rang in my ear. It crackled when someone picked up and I took in a steadying breath. Drake?
“Hello?” A female voice said.
I sagged.
“Loretta, hi, it’s Noriko.” I asked her how she was, how the manor was and about the herbs she’d planted a few days before I left. I asked about everything other than the one thing I needed to ask…
“So, um,” I rubbed the back of my neck. I couldn’t delay it any longer. “Is…Drake there?”
Loretta cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Drake isn’t home right now.”
“Oh.” I looked at the time and calculated that it was not quite dinnertime there. “When will he be home?”
Loretta paused. “I…er, I don’t know.”
“I’ll call later, then.”
“Maybe you should let me take a message.”
“Oh. Okay. Well…tell him…” thank you, a thousand times thank you for what he did, “…tell him to call me.”
I hung up. I couldn’t express my gratitude through a message, I had to say it to him. It would be better if I could tell him to his face.
52
____________
Drake
“Noriko called,” Loretta said from the doorway behind me.
I winced and rubbed my eyes. I’d been home from the hospital a day and already this place felt empty. I was standing in Noriko’s room—her old bedroom. It wasn’t hers anymore. She was gone—I stared out her window into the night sky. I wondered if she was looking at the same stars. No, it’d be morning already where she was. She was literally on the other side of the world from me; as far as she could get.
I could still smell her perfume in the air. The clothes that I bought her, all hanging in her wardrobe. The books she was reading were stacked up beside her futon bed. And the ghost of her still clung to my heart.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked Loretta without turning around.
“You weren’t in your room. Only one other place you’d come…”
I grunted. Was I really that predictable? I suppose I was. Poor little rich boy. Ruined the only thing that was important to him. Broke it by wanting it too much.
“You miss her, don’t you?”
“Damn you, woman,” I said with no malice in my tone, “can’t you leave me to wallow in peace?”
“If you miss her, go to her.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and allowed myself to feel—really feel—the ache of wanting to do just that. Then I released the ache as I released my breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
“Why not?”
“Why would she want to see her fucked up husband again.”
“You are not f’ed up.”
“I didn’t let her go out without me.”
“You were trying to protect her.”
“I forbid her to call her father.”
“You…had your reasons.”
“I locked her in her goddamn room.”
“Yes, well… We’ve all done stupid things in the name of love.”
I sighed. “I can’t…” I can’t be the man she needs. Or deserves. The best thing I can do is to let her stay there with her family. With her real family.
I would never admit it to Loretta, but I was terrified of Noriko. Terrified of loving her so much, I’d turn back into a monster. Only now, with her far away, her hold over me stretched thin. I was able to control the hideous thing inside of me that coveted her, that wanted to keep her all for myself. If she returned, I’d only turn back into a beast. Even if I tried not to, it would only be a matter of time until he reared his ugly head.
Every time I couldn’t take being without Noriko anymore, every time the entitled creature inside of me demanded that I go retrieve her, bring her back here where she belonged, all I had to do was look at the thousand paper cranes she made, all so she could wish herself away from me. The beast was silenced once more.
I cringed when I remembered the possessive, jealous creature I became. No wonder she didn’t love me.
Like father, like son.
That was why I couldn’t bring her back. I couldn’t become him again. Better to wait here alone until my heart succeeded in killing me.
“She called,” Loretta said. “She wants to talk to you.”
My heart panged. “I don’t want to talk to her,” I lied. I had no idea what hearing her voice would do to my willpower.
“Is this really what you’re going to do? Stand there and do nothing? Let her slip through your fingers?”
“I’m glad you understand the plan.”
“Ingenious.”
I let out a sigh. “Just let this go, Loretta. She’ll never forgive me.”
53
____________
Noriko
My father and I returned home from the hospital six weeks later. The surgery was deemed a success and radiation seemed to have gone well. He had to keep returning regularly to do tests to make sure, but for now he was in remission.
Remission!
Drake saved my father’s life.
He still hadn’t called back.
Now I knew why.
My sisters came to Osaka a few weeks ago to visit Papa and me while he was still in the hospital. It felt so good to have them with me in that giant bed in the suite, our feet touching, their warmth on either side of me as we sat huddled together in bed.
“We heard your husband wouldn’t let you speak to us, Nori-chan,” Emi said in a breathless tone, her eyes wide in the glow of the bedside lamp.
“Yeah,” added Tatsumi. “We heard he locked you up in a dungeon like a princess in the tower of his castle.”
“What?” I cried out in shock. “Who told you this?”
They glanced at each other before training their eyes back on me. On the hotel room tablet, they showed me the articles in English and in Japanese. It seemed that the Japanese media latched onto this “news” from the States concerning one of their own. Headline after headline drove like nails into my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Japanese Beauty and the American Beast
The Beast and His Japanese Bride
Billionaire Beast Locks Away His Japanese Wife
As I read article after article, my blood drained from my limbs.
Oh my God.
Jared played me. He used what I told him, what he swore he’d keep secret, to make Drake look bad. Publicly.
I betrayed Drake. In the worst possible way.
I imagined this news hitting Drake. I felt every throb of his pain, his anguish, when he found out that the woman he desperately loved had done this to him. The knife that would have twisted in his heart now twisted in mine, his blood still warm on the blade.
Drake hated me.
I had his love and I destroyed it.
No wonder he sent me back without saying goodbye. No wonder he wouldn’t speak to me. I remembered his words from our fight.
“It doesn’t have to be a fucking reporter. Anyone with a fucking camera phone can sell pictures of you. Anyone can twist anything you say into a story
. I fucking told you they’re all vultures. Now they know. Now they have a juicy story to run with. Now they’ve got somewhere to dig. Oh yes, and dig, dig, dig they will, those little worms. They’ll dig and they’ll use whatever they find to try to tear me down.”
Drake knew the public was waiting to turn on him. It was what he feared. I had played into it perfectly, my careless, angry words spinning a flawed man into the nightmare creature of fairy tales right before the public’s eyes.
This could not get any worse.
I spotted this article… And realized it very well could.
Billionaire Drake Blackwell Forced to Resign as CEO
54
____________
Noriko
I felt sick. I felt like my insides had been ripped out. What had I done? Blackwell Industries was his life. I destroyed it. With one careless slip of my tongue.
I kept reading the article.
After the public outcry over the negative press concerning his alleged horrific treatment of his Japanese mail-order bride, Drake Blackwell, CEO of Blackwell Industries, has been forced to step down. It seems these allegations have been a fatal blow to his already cold and calculating reputation in the business world. It has been reported that Mr. Blackwell has sent his wife back to Japan to avoid the local media from getting her side of this fairy-tale-turned-nightmare. Sources say that she is being paid to keep quiet.
My insides twisted into knots. This was why he paid for my father’s surgery. Not because he still loved me. He thought it would keep me quiet.
Oh, Drake, I wouldn’t have said anything. You didn’t have to pay for my silence, you just had to ask.
“God, Nori-chan, you were lucky to get away from him,” Emi said.
“How did you?” asked Tatsumi.
“Yes, how did you get away from the beast?”
“He’s not a beast!” I cried.
My two sisters blinked at me before trading looks.
“But the articles—”
“I don’t care what the newspapers say. They don’t know anything.” I flung myself out of the bed and rushed out onto the balcony, the cool breeze whipping around outside. I didn’t stop running until I’d slammed my hands along the railing, heaving in breath.