Ruling Scar (Ruling Love #2)

1. Lennie

Lennie

JANUARY

I t sounds seemingly simple—going to a book club.

But my feet won’t move and I remain on the street, staring into the indie bookstore.

I’ve scoped it out several times, coming in person and double checking both their social media and website for this month’s book and meeting time.

I read the book, placed it in my bag. I even put on my comfy bookish crewneck, excited to wear the item where it will be appreciated.

Going to a book club is easy for most people.

But anxious old me?

Hard, very hard. But I promised my therapist I’d do this and, at my core, I’m a people pleaser.

I can do this. I can go to book club.

But stalking the bookstore’s social media pages is nothing like standing in front of the storefront.

I cannot do this.

There are people. And they’ve already picked out their seats. They clearly all know one another. I can’t go inside and try to insert myself into their club.

So I do what I always do. I run away.

My feet move on their own accord. I leave the bookstore behind, cursing myself for being weak. My sisters would’ve gone in and claimed book club as their own.

I’m walking around New York City like a loser.

There’s nothing like being lonely in a city full of millions.

“You are Leonora Akatov,” I whisper to myself. It suspiciously sounds like my mother but with none of her confidence.

I grew up surrounded by confident, smart people. Admittedly, most of them are killers. My father is Boris Akatov, an important man in the bratva. And my mother, Gia, grew up as a princess of the Italian mafia.

But the killer confidence of my people skipped a generation. Or at least me. Awkward, lonely Lennie.

The thought of joining a book club makes me want to puke.

My anxiety isn’t just a light flutter of butterflies. It’s burning shame crawling over my skin. My stomach is in knots. Don’t get me started on my head.

Just go in , I tell myself. And do what, look like an idiot?

That’s your inner critic, my therapist explained.

After several months of working with her, I can now sort of identify it, but trying to get it to shut up? Impossible.

So here I am, walking the streets of New York City, scared to go to a book club. It’s a complete travesty considering reading is the only thing I’m good at.

I wander aimlessly for several blocks when I spot it.

Fujimori’s.

Most take it as a family-owned restaurant serving Japanese food. The outside’s cute, with blue trim and a bright red door. Wide windows give a snapshot of booths and lush leafy, green plants inside.

From everything I’ve heard, the food is great.

But what most don’t know about Fujimori’s, is that it’s the site of some of the most notorious business deals among the criminal world.

When two crime lords want to meet this is the spot.

Not that it happens often. But lots of other meetings happen here. When someone wants to hire a triggerman, this is where they go.

I don’t need to hire a hitman, but the idea of going home after proudly declaring to my family I’m joining a book club is too sad.

Pushing the doors open, I’m greeted by a petite woman behind a hostess stand. She waves her hand and says, “Pick any booth.”

The restaurant is small despite its larger-than-life stories. The booths are made out of red, the backs high enough that it feels like your own small nook of the restaurant.

I pick a booth at random, passing one person sitting on their own, eating sushi. A family of tourists speaks tiredly to one another.

The hostess comes over, placing a menu on the table. “Something to drink?”

“Uh, water, please.”

She turns, every move quick and sharp. A second later, she plunks a red plastic cup in front of me. “I’ll give you time to look.”

She’s back to the hostess stand, speaking to a newly arrived group.

It’s fascinating, watching the mixture of people come into Fujimori’s without understanding how important it is to the city.

Or maybe they’re just pretending not to know.

I ignore my mother’s voice. Everyone knows about my mother’s kidnapping. It happened after she married my father. She survived for three days after being taken.

She doesn’t talk about it much, but I rarely go anywhere without a guard.

That’s partly why tonight was so important. At nearly twenty-six, I’m much too old to beg my parents to be able to go out without a guard. But nobody messes with Gia’s orders. And so long as my mom orders the guards to follow me, they follow me.

“I can’t go to book club with a weird looking bodyguard,” I told her earlier.

Mom shrugged. “You go to work with them.”

“In the middle of the city.” Where guys in suits don’t cause warning bells to go off. Plus, I know my mom checked the building my office works out of and made them hire guards on our payroll. That way they have eyes on me everywhere.

“It’s weird,” I argued, “if I show up to an indie bookstore with some beefy, bald guy, silently lurking behind me.”

Mom continued to cut vegetables, unbothered. But I wore her down, which turned out to be a good thing. They didn’t witness my pathetic attempt which saw me turning tail.

They would’ve never let me come into Fujimori’s on my own.

Not that anyone in my family’s ever mentioned it’s off-limits. It just seemed like a given since despite my last name, I have no need of hiring a triggerman.

A guy comes out from the kitchen, yelling over his shoulder. He stops short in front of my table. “You wanna order something?”

I stare dumbly at the menu. I rarely eat Japanese food and I don’t want to admit I don’t know what to order.

He guesses anyway, sighing. “Look, just tell me what you’re craving and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’m not. . . I’ll just take some fried rice please.” I can’t quite meet his eye.

But I know he appears disappointed until a loud bang from the kitchen draws his attention.

“Abe,” a voice calls out to him. Not from the kitchen, but a booth tucked a few feet away.

I know Ren Callahan by name only, but the moment I set eyes on the pretty, put-together woman I know it’s her.

Glossy brown hair falls around her shoulders and her sharp black suit could’ve been styled by the Vogue editorial team.

Her stiletto bobs up and down under her table and a cigarette hangs from her mouth.

The hostess doesn’t strike me as a woman who’d allow someone to smoke in the restaurant, but no one says a thing.

Ren holds up a menu.

It strikes me as odd that she’d actually eat despite knowing her business meetings are almost exclusively done out of Fujimori’s. She must not be self-conscious about eating in front of others.

She taps a picture. “Can I have this please.”

“No,” Abe replies.

“What, why not?”

“You’re going to eat two bites of it and then complain.”

“I will not!”

“Then you’ll feel bad for complaining so you’ll refuse to order something else and I’m going to find out later you stopped for pizza on the way home ’cause you were hungry.”

“I would never.”

“You’re a liar, Ren Callahan.”

“A lesser man would be dead for saying such a thing to me.”

He smirks. “Good thing I’m not a lesser man.”

He punctuates the sentence by banging through the door that leads to the kitchen. It doesn’t stop the conversation, though, since there’s a narrow cut-out along the wall, allowing the dining room to see a snapshot into the kitchen.

“You seem a little on edge, Abe.”

I keep my head down, my hair falling into my face, as I listen.

“I do not know what you’re talking about.” A pot clatters and there’s a flurry of what I think is Japanese.

The door opens and I feel the movement without looking up.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” A thick British accent asks. Peeking sideways, I see a blonde girl in a sweatsuit sitting down next to Ren.

“Abe’s mad.”

“Oh wow,” she sarcastically replies.

Ren snorts, chewing the end of her pen.

“And what the fuck’s going on with this?”

“Oh, you noticed the Akatov too?”

And to think for a second, my nerves had fizzled into the background. When I look up I spot both Ren and her friend openly staring at me.

The blonde wears a wary expression.

“Um. . .”

Ren nibbles her pen. “You okay over there, Akatov?”

“I had book club,” I mumble.

The blonde’s eyebrows are almost invisible, the hair is so light. She nods, her lips pursing in a funny way. Like she doesn’t believe a single thing I say. “Really?”

I crumble immediately. “I was too afraid to go in.”

They’re nice enough not to call me out for being a loser.

“Right.” Ren raises her voice. “Abe!”

Something crashes and his face pops up in the cutout. “What?”

“Get Akatov a beer.”

“Does she look like a fucking beer person?”

“Then get her a vodka.”

The blonde shakes her head. “I don’t think she’s a vodka type of girl.”

“Well then get her whatever type of alcohol you think she’s going to like,” Ren says, throwing a hand up in the air.

They bicker, hardly paying any attention to me. I sit back, red-faced, but not on fire like normal.

Abe whirls out of the kitchen, plunking a bottle of cider on my table.

“Can I have one of those?” Ren asks his passing figure.

A fire breaks out in the kitchen, though, it’s debatable if Abe would’ve brought her one anyway.

“What are you doing here?” the blonde asks.

“Don’t be rude,” Ren warns.

“That’s not rude, that’s factual.” She stares at me, waiting for a response.

“I don’t know.”

She nods, like that made sense.

“No offense,” Ren says, scribbling something into a planner. “Because I know you’re a grown ass woman, but your dad kinda seems like the type to lose his shit if he found out you came to dine at this fine establishment.”

More like my mom, but the point stands.

“I just. . . ” don’t want to be a loser, hiding away in my room.

Luckily, I’m saved from having to try to explain by a new arrival. A guy drops into the booth beside Ren, running a hand through floppy brown hair. “What’s with the Akatov?”

“She was too scared to go to book club so she came here instead.” Ren doesn’t look up from her work.

“Oh, that bookstore down the street.” The man meets my eye, nodding. “They’ve got a good selection of thrillers.”

“And here I swore you could only read picture books.”

“I went to law school, you asshole.”

Abe brings my food out and I sit there, eating all by myself. Normally, I might try to read, but considering they know I’ve failed at my book club ambitions, it seems like a bad idea.

“You want another one?” Abe asks, appearing out of nowhere. He nods at the empty cider.

“No, thank you.”

As weird, but fun as this has been, I’m ready to go home and introvert.

“This one’s on us,” he says, picking up my empty dish.

“No,” I say quickly. “Thank you, but I’ll pay.”

Abe stares at me, his dark eyes unreadable. I think he might take my offer but the woman behind the hostess desk, who I’m starting to suspect is his mother, says something in Japanese.

He shakes his head. “Nah, not this time. Thanks for coming by, though.”

“How did book club go?” Janis, my therapist, asks a day later.

I ball up the ends of my sweater sleeves. “Yeah, it was good. . . it was, yeah.”

She does that annoying thing, where she just stares at me.

“I didn’t go.” It’s the first homework assignment she’s given me that I’ve failed.

And worse, she doesn’t appear mad. She leans her head to the side, blinking in wonder. “What happened?”

I explain everything. How I had an upset stomach all day just at the thought of going, but how I forced myself to go anyway. How fear paralyzed me and I couldn’t force myself inside.

“I ended up at this little restaurant around the corner.” I play with a loose thread on my sweater. “Got dinner by myself.”

“That’s very brave in some ways.”

Is it? Only losers eat alone.

“It wasn’t what you were hoping,” she admits, “but you still pushed yourself outside your comfort zone. What happened while you were there?”

I shrug.

“Did you eat and leave?”

“Yeah, I mean everyone was friendly at least.”

“Friendly?” Her eyes narrow as she latches onto the word.

Crap. I swear Janis reads into things that aren’t there.

“Well, just the people there.”

“People?”

“Other customers.”

Going to therapy is interesting. I know you’re not supposed to lie to your therapist but explaining about my family’s lifestyle is off limits. As far as Janis knows, Fujimori’s is just another Japanese restaurant.

“Huh.”

I bite my lip at the way she’s acting.

“So, you talked to a few people?”

I squirm in my seat, messing with my balled-up sleeves. “Not really.”

A wolfish smile grows on her face. Double crap. “Go back.”

“What?”

“Go back to this restaurant again. Make friends there.”

Make friends with Ren Callahan and Abe Fujimori? They’re not exactly random people, which in some ways should make this challenge easier. But it doesn’t feel like it.

Besides, they’re all friends already. I was the weirdo lurking in a booth nearby.

Janis doesn’t care. “That’s your homework for this session. Go back to this restaurant and be open to whatever happens.”

And that’s how I end up going to Fujimori’s every week.