The Queen’s Denial

Chapter 4 Chi

Chapter 4

Chi

Andy is gone for two days. Two full fucking days, while I sit here wondering where he is and what he’s doing. And maybe even if he’s okay. Because I swear, if he’s dead before I get a chance to see what’s underneath his fitted black tee and low-slung black jeans, I’m going to be pissed.

I’m a little upset that I have no way of contacting him. All those times I saw him answering calls from others, and he never thought to give me his number. He’s saved me from a bunch of Italian mafia thugs, brought me to the hospital with a head injury, sat by my side for days to make sure I was okay, but I’m not allowed to have his number?

I don’t really care. Not really. It just feels like he doesn’t trust me. And we need some sort of trust between us, since we’re… well, since he’s my bodyguard at the moment. Cas has transferred the title to Andy, and my father’s top guard, Daiki, is in Japan, so Andy is head of operations here. How can I trust him if I can’t even contact him?

Then again, I’ve never had the number of my bodyguards before. I was only entrusted with Daiki’s emergency line when I turned 18, and that was just because I started going out more and sowing my wild oats. Thinking about it now, I realize that I never actually cared about getting numbers before.

I try to push this out of my head. Who cares? Seriously, with all the shit I have going on in my life, why in the hell would I care about getting a guard’s number? I put it on the back burner to consider when Andy is actually here, and I can do something about it if I choose.

In the meantime, I try Mara’s phone with no luck. I can’t even eavesdrop on Papa’s conversations because he’s not back from the hospital yet. I try talking to any of the Italians Cas and Andy have stationed around the property, but they’re like the King’s Guard, staring straight ahead, giving me one-word answers to all of my questions. I manage to pull out of them that Mara and Cas are okay, but otherwise, I can’t get anything else. One of them even looks strangely nervous to talk to me. While I wonder if he might be a mole, I look down at his Apple watch and realize the last text he received is from Andy. From what I can read, it says, “Don’t even think about it, or I will fucking—” until it cuts off mid-sentence. I don’t need to see the rest, though. I know it’s from Andy, and I know it’s got to do with me.

Of course, I want to be indignant that he’s telling his guards not to talk to me, but I can’t muster up enough anger to even take it out on the innocent young guy in front of me. I can see this shit getting really old really fast, but there’s something strangely thrilling in the fact that Andy is looking out for me. I retreat back into my room with a strange little smirk on my face that even I don’t quite understand.

Finally, a full day later, Andy shows up, as I’m about ready to pass out for the night. I hear the knock on my bedroom door — apparently he has let himself into my suite without knocking. Thank goodness my bedroom has its own lock, or else he’d probably stalk silently past the kitchenette and TV room and barge in on me whenever he felt like it. I yell at him to wait, and then throw on my matching red and pink polka-dot underwear, covering up with just a bathrobe.

As soon as I straighten up to knot my bathrobe, I get a nasty head rush. Suddenly, it feels like I’m underwater again, and I have to hold onto my bedpost to steady myself. I’m tired and, I suppose, still recovering. But I’m not concerned. I pull myself together and answer the door.

“I was just getting ready to go to sleep,” I say in my most seductive voice possible, but I can tell right away that Andy sees something in my eyes as his expression turns from devilish to concerned.

“You okay, Chi?”

I roll my eyes. “I should be asking you that. You need to give me your number. The least you could have done was shoot me a text to tell me you were alive.”

“Well, I’m fine, but you don’t look so great. Take a seat and let me check you out.”

“Yes, having you check me out was the plan.” I go to grab him and lead him to the bed, but to my eternal frustration, I get another dizzy spell and a short but searing pain in my temple. I think I play it off pretty well, but I do wince, and my hand twitches slightly toward my head.

“Okay, what have you been up to all day? Have you been out of bed?”

Andy has always been overbearing, since the very first day that I met him, but I’m starting to get really fucking sick of him ordering me around. I know that “made man” mindset, and I’m not a fan. He may feel responsible for me in some way, but I really don’t need anyone telling me what to do or not to do. I get enough of that shit from the unwritten rules of this life, but I only need to follow those for my father. I don’t intend to follow them for a peer I intend to make into a fuck buddy.

“Yes, Andy, I’ve been out of bed. Of course I’ve been out of bed. I’m not terminal. I got smacked on the head a week ago, and now I’m better.”

“Five days ago, Chi. Five days.”

I roll my eyes but stay quiet while he looks at me. To my utter frustration, a headache is starting to form behind my eyes, and the late hour is really getting to me.

Andy sighs. “You need to get some sleep, Chi.” He sounds disappointed, but again tells me what to do, and it makes my blood boil.

“Andy, get over yourself.” I grab his shoulders and look into his eyes while I say it, my gaze simmering into his, making him feel every ounce of my desire for him. “I can decide…” I close my eyes against another pain in my temple, and when I open them, he looks at me with his eyebrow cocked and a knowing gaze.

I roll my eyes again, and he grabs my waist and returns my adamant stare. “If you don’t stop rolling your eyes at me, I’ll give them a new reason to roll. Now get in bed.”

I can go toe to toe with the best of them, but for whatever reason — possibly because he’s right — I decide to break our showdown. “Fine,” I whisper harshly. I’m not used to the men I fuck being so goddamn bossy. Then again, I’m not used to them taking care of me either. Usually, when the going gets tough, the other guys want nothing to do with it and slide away to the next fun, pretty target they find dancing on the bar.

I get into bed, but I won’t go quietly. “You’re really pushing it, dude,” I mumble petulantly.

He tsks me. “We’re going to have to do something about that smart mouth of yours.”

I really hate how I seem to be responding to his bossy tone. It appears that although my brain is telling me to put him in his place, my body is absolutely loving this. My chest constricts every time he gives me an order. It’s hard to deny my climbing desire for him, even past the pain in my head and the fact that he keeps telling me what to fucking do.

There’s no way I’ll let him know I like it, though. “What are you gonna do to me? Make it painfully obvious that you want to fuck me, push me into bed, and then not follow through with it?”

Suddenly, he’s on me, and I’m flat on my back, his face in mine, the clean scent of citrusy soap washing over me. “No, Chee-chee,” he says, his mouth so close to my ear, minty breath hot on my neck. “You have no idea what I’m going to do to you. Not until I want you to know. I’m not sure if you’ll like it once you do, though.” He licks my neck, slowly trailing the tip of his tongue up the underside of my chin, and I can’t even attempt to hide the full body shiver the action elicits from deep inside of me.

I have no words. I swallow hard, pushing my legs together as a cramp of painful desire overtakes me. I try to find my voice but come up with nothing. I can’t believe this man has made me clam up like this. No one has this effect on me.

He backs up, looking directly into my eyes. “Nothing to say now, huh?” His cocky gaze doesn’t do what I want it to do. It makes my belly clench and my brain blank. I’ve never had stage fright, but I imagine this must be what it feels like. The inability to speak or form any coherent words in the face of unbearable tension. That’s what this is.

And then suddenly, the tension is gone as he stands up from the bed and whips the large, weighted comforter over me.

“Wait!” I yell at him. “That’s it? What am I, five years old? You’re just going to tuck me in and leave?”

I see a flash of confusion on his face. “What do you mean? What am I supposed to stay in here for?”

I’m actually not sure what I meant by that. It’s just that, at the hospital, I had gotten used to him sitting by me while I slept. If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that the last two nights were long and difficult because he wasn’t here, and I’ve been waiting for him all day because… I missed his presence.

He sees my indecision, and it seems to click for him. Instead of embarrassing me or making me ask him to stay, he narrows his eyes and looks around the room, taking his jacket off and draping it across the chair.

“Okay, I’ll hang out for a bit. But I don’t want to be a distraction. I want you well rested and ready to… enjoy your activities tomorrow.”

“Well, I just wanted to know how my best friend was doing.” I shoot him a dire look. “I know you’ve been telling your guys not to discuss it with me.”

He doesn’t even bother trying to deny it. “I wanted to tell you myself. Didn’t want to freak you out.”

“What happened?” I know something did now, just by the way he says it.

He moves to my dresser — the same dresser I’ve had since I was a teenager. “Mara was held for a short period of time by Derrick’s father, Anton, the underboss of the Rhode Island bratva. You know him, I’m guessing?” My eyes widen and I nod.

“She was hurt, and Derrick was actually helping her out while his father contemplated whether to present her to Maxim or get rid of her. Seemed like he wanted to…” He trails off while he tinkers with a Chewbacca bobble-head under my vanity mirror. “Why do you have all these toys?”

“It’s a collector’s item,” I respond, swatting the question away as quickly as possible. “His father what? Wanted to kill her?” I’m guessing Andy’s trying to change the subject, but I’m having none of that. And it seems that everyone wants to kill Mara these days, so it’s more than an educated guess on my part.

Andy is clearly preoccupied with the Star Wars paraphernalia I have lined up along my dresser but answers anyway, “That’s what it sounded like.”

“Oh my God. Can I see her?” I ask, my head twinging again with pain.

Andy sees my flinch out of the corner of his eye and looks at me sternly. “Your head hurts because you’re stressing over something that you don’t need to stress over. This is why I didn’t want to talk to you about it. It’s not really something you should be worrying about. Cas has it handled, Chi. He can take care of Mara.”

I shake my head. “I’m sure he’s railing her up against the fucking headboard right now, but that’s not necessarily taking care of her.”

“I doubt that, since she got shot,” Andy says, picking up my Darth Vader helmet and studying it. “Can you actually wear this?”

“She got fucking shot? Put that down and look at me!” I’m a little upset, probably taking it out on Andy more than I should be, but he needs to stop fucking around and answer my questions.

Andy stays calm, as he always does, and finally shoots me a smirk and some eye contact. “Yes, Chee-chee, she got fucking shot. A decent chunk of her thigh got blown off. Like I said, Cas will take care of her.” He picks up my Baby Yoda plushie. “Okay. What’s the story with this guy?”

“Um, he’s the cutest fucking thing in the world; that’s the story. Why don’t you want to talk to me about this? You can’t be this blatantly unconcerned about a good friend.”

Andy sighs, dropping the doll and moving on down my dresser. “I know chicks dwell on this shit, but none of our guys do, Chi. Of course I care if Mara’s okay, but I’m not gonna sit here worrying about it when Cas has it covered, just like Cas didn’t worry about it when you got hurt. And you shouldn’t, either.”

“Fine,” I grumble, begrudgingly accepting his shit logic for the moment. “I want to see her ASAP, though.”

Andy doesn’t answer as he studies the few pictures on my dresser. “Who is this?” he asks, squinting at one of the smaller frames. “You and your dad… is this your whole family?”

I know what he’s looking at and don’t really feel like talking about it, because… I don’t ever really feel like talking about it. It’s always a weird conversation, but only because family dynamics like the ones mine have make everyone else uncomfortable. For me, it’s just my life. Just normal, everyday business as usual.

“It’s my mom and my brother, yeah.”

He peeks at me and then back at the picture. “Nice braces,” he says, lip tilting up slightly.

I roll my eyes and appreciate the fact that he hasn’t immediately asked me about them, like everyone else. But I know it’s coming, and I’m right.

“I’ve never seen a picture of him.”

I sigh and pull my covers around myself, feeling tired already over the conversation we’ve barely begun. “Lives in Japan with my mother. Parents are estranged from each other. Barely ever see them, which is fine because we decided a long time ago that I’d stay here with dad and mom would stay in Japan with Akihito. That’s his name, after my father, of course.” I raise an eyebrow at him, certain that he knows all this already, but I continue when he says nothing.

“I haven’t seen them since that picture was taken years ago for a publicity thing in Japan. Looks bad for my mom to live without my dad, so she kind of hides away with my brother, but it works just fine for my dad to live here and play the bachelor type, so that’s what we do.”

Andy gives me a side-long glance, as uncertain as he can ever really look, and I have the urge to roll my eyes yet again. I know what he’s thinking; it’s the same thing everyone else thinks about me when they hear this story. He feels bad for me because I never get to see my mom. He thinks I’m sad about it or something. But I truly don’t know her, so how can I care? She and my father parted ways a long time ago when she took my brother to Japan to establish a presence there.

My father still goes back and forth once in a while and speaks to her here and there, but they are like platonic friends at best. To me, she’s like a nice, if somewhat terse, acquaintance. I get generic birthday cards with luxury gift bags for my birthday each year. The last time I saw her, she smiled curtly, positioned me for our family picture as if she were one of the camera crew, and then told me to smile. We sat at a long table and barely spoke, and the one time I tried to have a conversation with her, she excused herself so that she could grab the ridiculously expensive, albeit delicious, black watermelon slices.

“You’re telling me they just… hide away? And they’re fine with that?”

I shrug. “I guess. I don’t really know anything about them.”

He studies the picture again. “He’s a lot older than you. I’m just surprised. In this business…”

I sigh. “It’s pretty obvious that I’m taking over after my father. From what I know, my brother has been in some kind of trouble or something, so I’m the next — and only — one in line. Lucky me.”

I say this like I’m not lucky, but I know I am. I love the fact that I’ll be the Yakuza queen one day. I plan to wear my favorite Halloween costume ever — a red and gold Medusa dress from a few years ago — to greet the masses the day after my arranged wedding, whenever it comes. I might have to lose the snake crown, though.

Andy’s eyebrows shoot up at my candor. “I guess I kind of knew that, but I thought your brother must be banished or in prison or something. I’m just surprised, Chi. He wants nothing to do with the business?”

I shrug again. “That’s what Papa says. I’ve spoken to him even less than I’ve spoken to my mom. And I can only remember about eight sentences that I’ve ever said to her, so… I don’t know; maybe I’ve said some ‘Hi, brother’s’ a few times in my life. He gave us a few sentences of description about his sparring room in Japan. That’s about it.”

Andy looks like he can’t possibly begin to understand how this works, and that’s just fine. I have always found traditional American families uncomfortably open and talkative with one another.

I remember watching TV one day when I was a teenager, and the young mother on the sitcom told her daughter that she was her best friend. My father gave a rare chuckle, and I knew why without even having to ask, because that chuckle was always reserved for things he found completely ridiculous. And really, I thought it was, too.

There is a critical line between generations in my family. We treat our parents with distant but unquestioning respect, and our parents in turn teach us and mold us into who we need to be to survive in this world. This relationship simply doesn’t work if we are constantly cuddling on the couch for movie nights and gossip. That stuff is reserved for friends and younger family members.

“So they’re just completely removed from everything here?” Andy asks, jolting me out of my thoughts.

I sigh into my covers and close my eyes, just about finished with this conversation and ready for him to stop talking. “My dad’s most trusted bodyguard lives in Japan. I think you know Daiki. He comes back and forth a bit, but he’s mostly there. He stays with them. I mean, we don’t hate them or anything.” I let out a huge yawn, but Andy continues to stand in pensive silence, so I continue when I’m done. “And like I said, it works for both of us. They live their little life there, and we live our big one here. It’s just how it’s always been.”

“Yeah, but they’re still just… not a part of any of this? No one even questions it? How does your dad keep his affairs out of the press?” He’s come to my Star Trek action figures now and is again preoccupied, which is likely why he asks the question so bluntly. He realizes what it sounded like a second after he says it and shoots me another side-long glance, but I don’t really mind bluntness. It’s my favorite mode of communication.

I raise an eyebrow. “I’m sure by ‘affairs’ you mean his personal business. My dad keeps his affairs from me, and we’ve lived together my entire life.” I decide to give him what he was obviously getting at. “Also, I’ve never seen him with another woman.”

Andy’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Damn. He can’t be that good at hiding it.” His eyes widen in thought. “You’re 24, right? It makes so much sense now.”

My nose scrunches up in thought. “What does?”

His mouth twitches, and I know he’s fucking with me before he even speaks. “Well, anyone would have a stick up their ass if they hadn’t had sex in over 24 years.”

I pick up the book I’ve been trying to read for the past two nights off my side table and throw it at him, but he catches it easily, and his gaze sweeps over the cover. “Where do you think I can buy a loincloth like this guy has? I’ve been looking around, but this one has great coverage while maintaining that shaggy-chic appearance.”

“Okay, maybe I should have let you leave before,” I mumble, throwing my covers over my head. “You can go now.”

He peels the covers off my face and gazes down at me. His smile has become charming, and I hate the way it melts a tiny fraction of my frozen heart. “I think I’ll stay for a while.”