Chapter 21 Chapter Twenty One
KING’S POV
It’s been a week since I got back and slowly, everything has morphed back into what passes for normal around here. I’ve been buried in work from the very night I touched down New York, going straight to Yasuki’s to drop off the recorder. He’d kept me in his office while he’d listened to the whole damn thing, not giving a fuck about the fact that I might be exhausted from the trip and after that, he’d taken me as his security while he’d gone to meet with the other Godfathers in town for a “drink”.
The “drink” took four exhausting hours to come to an end and Yasuki’s face when he stepped out of the room, the head of his cane gripped so tightly his knuckles turned white, told me two things. First, this thing with Martinez and his allies is bigger than I had first given it credit for and it is going to be fucking messy to take care of. Second is that the other Godfathers are skeptical on how best to move forward but not Yasuki, the man wants to bury a bullet in the skull of everyone involved right now, no matter what it takes.
And he will.
I know because I’ve worked for him long enough to know he’s vindictive against traffickers, especially rinks that peddle kids because he’d lost his only daughter to one after she was kidnapped as a warning to his him and his clan back home. Her lifeless body had been found a week later, abused and dehumanizing, tossed like that of an animal at the side of some unnamed dirt road.
It's the only time he’s rumored to have ever cried and the moment he’s said to have lost his mind and his soul because right after, it’s said he’d disappeared for two weeks straight and when he turned back up, there were bodies littered over the streets of Japan and they all had ties to his daughter’s case. It had been a massacre for the books but nobody had had the galls to come at him for it and eventually it’d be swept under.
All that was before the war he never speaks about, before he left his Yakuza clan and came to New York to join the Gambinos and from there branched out to build this syndicate as we know it today.
I respect him, I look up to him, fuck I’d been over the fucking moon when he’d picked me to be his own protégé, but I don’t envy him the pain and the soullessness. I do not envy the emptiness behind his eyes and his barely contained insatiable appetite to mirror his pain in others. Like I mentioned, he’d not hesitate to kill every living thing dear to Matteo if the bastard ever dares to so much as toe out of his line.
I want a slice of life outside this, not stained or tainted by all this dirt and blood, something pure and simple and sweet, something to live for. Something like her.
But I can’t have her and for every time I’m reminded, I’ve tried to work the anger and frustration out on Marlene.
She’s my secretary but she’d made a point of throwing herself at me like a cat in heat ever since I got back and one night after the stress and more than a few shots of whiskey, she’d pushed me one far too many and I’d taken her up on it.
And since then, whenever it gets too much and I find myself slipping and wanting things I can’t have, I call her or any of the other girls looking to tame the bad boy and fuck them so mindlessly it clears the fog a bit. She’s ruined me for anything more and now sex is just something to expel all the pent up anger that I build up on the inside everyday.
Last night had been particularly bad for me. I’d had to execute one of my best men as a warning to the rest. He’d gotten high on our supplies, the one rule they have, and then he’d gotten into a fight with one of the new guys that had confronted him, killing him in the process. For some reason, seeing his brain splattered on the floor, my gun still smoking in my hand, had stayed with me, refusing to be washed under the numbness of alcohol.
I’d called Marlene and poured all that guilt and anger into fucking her raw but even that hadn’t exorcized the red behind my eyes and the darkness in my heart. Frustrated, I’d pulled out mid fuck and sent her out. And the only thing that’d stood between me and Chicago had been my last shred of control hanging precariously in the balance…..
“Did you hear a word of what I’ve just said?” Yasuki’s voice and his cane striking against the floor in front of me jolts me out of my head, snapping me instantly back to reality.
Shit.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
A wave of amusement at my expense crosses over his face, ever so briefly that I might have missed it if I wasn’t paying rapt attention now.
“I said the consigliere is flying in tomorrow. You’ll pick him up from the hangar and bring him straight to me.” He repeats, this time enunciating his every word like I’m slow. “Distractions like that can get you killed, you know. Always keep your head on.”
The advice sinks In but my mind is still stuck on the first thing he just said.
“My dad is coming in tomorrow?”
Yasuki laughs, a small sound that catches me by surprise. He rarely ever laughs.
“You’re finally catching on, good for you.”
“Why?”
“Business.”
Obviously one I’m not supposed to be privy to. Yet.
“You’ve been distracted a lot since you got back from your trip. Is there something you want to tell me?”
I shake my head no. Nothing of my distraction right now is any of his business. This one is mine to deal with as I decide and mine to clean up.
He nods, reaching into the lower drawer on his desk to pull out the fancy, engraved case he keeps his special order Cuban cigars in. He picks one up methodically, lighting it up with the skull lighter I’d gifted him months back before replacing it back. He takes a long drag, holding it in before releasing it, all the while watching me as if to make a statement.
“Go home early King, get rested, tomorrow is going to be a long day. The jet should be in the hangar with your father at exactly six, I need him here in thirty minutes before my appointment with Igor Romanov.”
He stares at me pointedly as he mentions the name, daring me to question him. Everyone old enough in this business knows the name Igor Romanov and the reasons no one goes near him and his business, ever. And that’s who Yasuki is meeting tomorrow?
Things are definitely not good.
I stand from my chair, bowing slightly in respect so that I can leave before I lose my head and tell him exactly what I am thinking.
“I’ll be leaving if you don’t need any other thing, sir.” I tell him as he idly smokes away.
He nods, waving me off dismissively and I take that as my cue to get out while I can. I pull his door open to find my replacement for the evening, River, already at the door. Ignoring him because he’s an annoying piece of shit that I’m only cordial with because of Yasuki, I start to go out the door.
But before I can get out and shut it all behind me, I hear Yasuki’s voice again, this time slow and deliberately dangerous. I pause at the door, turn and to meet his goddamn threatening eyes.
“If you fuck up tomorrow King, I’ll have them kill that girl of yours tucked away in Chicago.” He shrugs. “Get your head in the game or God help me, I’ll help you do it.”
With that, a smirking River shuts the door in my face, shutting me out.
What the fuck!!?