Chapter 1 #2
“You don’t have to.” Santino stood, leaning only forward enough to rest his fingertips on the desk.
The move maintained his superior height over his older cousin even as it brought him practically within kissing range.
He kept his tone cold and flat, his stare hard.
“That deal is struck, and now the Dragon owes the Guerras a debt in blood. That is all you need to know.” He let his eyes narrow.
“And none of that has a goddamn thing to do with how my businesses are supposed to be operating.”
Danilo’s nostrils flared.
Santino moved one single step back, allowing himself to breathe air that didn’t smell like cheap tobacco and cheaper perfume.
“I don’t want you showing up at my door to criticize my methods again.
We may be family, Danilo, but I am also Boss.
” He swept his suitcoat off the back of his chair and shrugged into it.
“Show me the respect of my title moving forward.”
Danilo opened his mouth, an argument blazing in his eyes.
Santino dropped his thumb to the intercom on the corner of his desk. “Armando.”
A brief round of crackling continued to cut off anything Danilo wanted to say, before Santino’s head of security and longtime bodyguard spoke through the line. “Yes, Boss?”
Santino made no effort to hide the scathing smile that lifted his lips as he stared across at his fuming cousin. “Danilo is leaving. Also, have a car brought around. I need some fresh air.”
The cemetery was bright, almost cheery, with green grass and sprinklings of colorful flower arrangements dotting the landscape in all directions.
Tall, imposing marble crypts and tombstones of various heights and ages gave the sprawling field a detached, fantastical feel.
Reiko was struck by the sensation every time she visited her mother’s grave.
It made her wonder what the cemetery felt like in other seasons, when the landscape itself might be drearier, but she never dared.
She had no idea how often her father or brother were prone to visit and no desire to risk run-ins with either.
She knew her limits. Her boundaries.
Her throat closed as it always did when she reached her destination, and Reiko sank to her knees in front of the familiar marble.
She spared barely a glance for the surely expensive bundle of flowers that rested at the base of the slab.
Emotion burned and twisted through her every time she read her mother’s name, etched in traditional kanji, on the ever-polished, too-wide memorial.
It wasn’t that she and her mother had been close. It was that Reiko could never forget the last true conversation they’d had. She could never forget how she’d disappointed her mother in her own attempt to free herself of her family’s oppression.
She mourned a closeness that had never truly been, while drowning in a guilt that would never recede.
Reiko swallowed hard and sucked in a breath. “Hi, Mom.” After five years, she really ought to have figured out how to talk when she visited. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I … lost my job today.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a spark of memory flashed in her mind.
Youko Matsunaga wore a sad frown as she gazed down at Reiko. The expression was so familiar, Reiko sometimes wondered if her mother knew any other. The words that followed were equally unsurprising. “Your father is very disappointed, Reiko.”
Reiko smoothed her hands across her lap and shoved the memory back.
“I’m sorry, Mom. It looks like Father was right about me, after all.
” The words hurt and her throat constricted once more as she pushed them off her tongue.
But she was the only one there, and more than one of her previous therapists had told her that saying things out loud could be beneficial.
Maybe she hadn’t figured out the secret trick to that yet.
“Well, I have some things to do still. I’ll …
be back next year.” She bent forward in a partial bow, held the position for several seconds, then straightened and pushed to her feet.
Things to do was both a truth and an exaggeration.
She should, certainly, have gone to file for unemployment.
She had at least managed to update her résumé and get it uploaded to a job-hunting site before she’d left to visit the cemetery, but the day had taken its toll.
She had no more emotional energy to spare.
She barely had the energy to stay upright.
So, if she took a small detour on a flaring emotional impulse and wound up with a single scoop of one of her favorite local ice creams, and if she took that sweet treat to a quiet bench on the edge of Lafayette Park, no one could blame her.
Even on the verge of being probably more broke than she’d ever known, she was allowed one singular moment to breathe and not feel like the world was crashing down on her.
She hoped.
Reiko chased the anxious thought and twinge of annoying buyer’s regret with a bite of waffle cone. The purchase was done. She was not going to waste it by letting the delicious treat melt away. She could lecture herself for her frazzled mind and impulsivity later.
“Is this seat taken?”
The unexpected question jarred Reiko from her swirling thoughts and she blinked, absently licking caramel ice cream from her lips as she turned only to see that the man who had to been the source of the question was already claiming the open half of the bench beside her.
For a split-second, she merely stared at him.
Then her eyes blew wide. She was definitely having a strange day.
The man who’d just sat beside her was her now-former employer, Santino Guerra.
She’d never seen him in person before, only on a rare company video and in the photos she’d found online. But there was no mistaking it.
He arched a pale brow, his lips lifting in a grin as he watched her, seemingly waiting for her to speak.
Yet she couldn’t. She was overwhelmed with shock and something else, something she could feel in her blood but absolutely refused to put a name to.
She’d known from his photos that Santino Guerra was handsome with his head full of sun-kissed blond hair over bright blue eyes and a strong jaw.
He was broad-shouldered and neither his cleanly pressed slacks nor the possibly silver button-up shirt successfully concealed the power in his frame.
But it was his size that struck her. She remembered thinking he looked tall in some of the pictures, but sitting directly beside him as she was drove it home.
Even seated, her forehead barely cleared his shoulder.
Not that five-foot-four is exactly tall … here.
“Careful, beautiful,” Guerra said, his grin expanding and shining in his eyes. “Keep staring at me like that and I might misunderstand.” His unwavering expression didn’t leave a lot of options for how he would feel about such a circumstance.
His words also finally snapped Reiko back to herself and she sucked in a breath, her shoulders drawing together in a reflexively defensive move.
She wetted her mouth when she found it had gone dry and turned bodily away, bowing her head without thought.
“My apologies, Mr. Guerra.” She winced at the sound of her own words.
Did she really need to be so respectful?
Then again, he’d likely never known she existed before this moment. He was the owner of the company she’d spent the past several years working for, but she had been one of literally hundreds of employees. They’d never had cause to interact.
Unfamiliar male chuckling drew her out of her reflection and Reiko felt heat burn her cheeks.
“Mr. Guerra, huh?” He adjusted to rest an elbow on the back of the bench between them.
“Awfully formal for the first time we’ve met.
Although you do seem familiar somehow.” He paused only a moment and she swore she could hear the grin lingering in his voice, though she didn’t look.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name? ”
She bought herself a moment by popping the last bit of her waffle cone into her mouth. It was perhaps one of the boldest, rudest things she’d deliberately done in years, and it didn’t feel nearly as gratifying as she wished it had. But at least she hadn’t wasted her treat.
Reiko curled her fingers in her lap as her stalling tactic quite literally sank into her belly.
She quietly licked her lips and said, “I do apologize for staring. I know you’re a busy man.
Please don’t be concerned with someone as inconsequential as myself.
” Without glancing his way again, she pushed back to her tired feet.
He made a sound of surprise as she stood.
She had no intention of waiting for a response or looking back, feeling comfortable in the knowledge that a man as wealthy and influential as Santino Guerra would forget her by hours’ end.
She made it about three steps before his voice called out to her and strong fingers curled—loosely—around her forearm. “Wait.”
She halted immediately, too stunned to turn and look.
He didn’t make her, stepping directly into her line of sight and simultaneously proving her earlier theory right in every way.
The man towered over her. She had to crane her neck up to find his gaze, forcing her in the process to take in the full, impressive sight of him.
He wasn’t overflowing with muscle like those men who seemed to live at the gym, but it was undeniably there.
Up close, face-to-face, he was somehow more intimidating than she’d imagined.
“Your name,” Guerra said. “I insist.”
She swallowed awkwardly and found herself having to consciously remember which name to say first, as if she hadn’t introduced herself the Western way most of her life. “Reiko Matsunaga.”
He smiled, pearly white teeth and all, his eyes seeming to burn in the sunlight as he stared back at her. “Reiko,” he repeated. “Would it be inappropriate of me to take you to dinner?”
She jerked back, her head spinning. Was he mocking her?
Was this some kind of joke? “Yes,” she said.
When his smile seemed to lift, she hurried to clarify her meaning.
“It would be terribly inappropriate. I don’t go to meals with men I’ve just met, let alone men who only this morning saw fit to upend my life without warning.
” She hiked her purse higher on her shoulder and raised her chin in a pointless attempt to stand even such an untouchable man. “Have a good day, Mr. Guerra.”
Santino watched the obviously agitated, nonetheless captivating, Japanese woman stride away so swiftly her mostly loose, dark hair trailed in her wake.
He’d thought his arrival had made her uncomfortable, but her reaction when he’d asked her out had made it clear that discomfort stemmed from something else. Something more personal.
Upend her life?
He was generally aware of people whose lives he ruined, and he had no idea what she was talking about.
Though her face had struck him as faintly familiar, he was certain they’d never met.
He couldn’t have forgotten her if he’d ever had such a pleasure.
She was nearly a foot shorter than his six-foot, four-inch height, with curves he’d barely been able to identify beneath her unremarkable clothing.
Her appearance suggested she was trying to hide herself for some unfathomable reason.
But there was no disguising that kind of natural beauty.
Santino blew out a breath, adjusted his pants, and tugged his phone from a pocket.
Standing and staring wouldn’t accomplish anything, not unless he was trying to paint a sparkly target on his back.
If he wanted to learn more about that mysterious beauty, he had to get to work.
“Bring the car around,” he said when the line connected.
“I’ll be working from home today.” He waited only for the acknowledgment before disconnecting.
The device buzzed a moment later. Santino debated pointedly ignoring it, but he pushed the juvenile urge aside. This was what he got for leaving his Bluetooth in the car. “Yes?”
“Should we grab the woman, Boss?” Armando’s gruff voice asked without preamble.
Santino frowned. “No one touches her.” The words pulled from him before he could properly debate the option.
Or the response. If he allowed his men to apprehend Reiko, he could see her that much sooner.
Speak to her that much sooner. But the woman he’d spoken so briefly to wasn’t the type who would appreciate that tactic.
To say nothing for how he felt at the thought of his men putting their hands on her, tying her up, or throwing her around. No. That was a terrible idea altogether.
“Boss?”
Santino tucked his free hand into his pocket and turned to approach the curb. “There are a couple of things that need to be looked into,” he said, keeping his tone neutral. “I’ll find her when I’m ready.” And he would find her.
One look at the solemn-faced woman sitting by herself on that park bench, had compelled Santino to alter his whole trajectory. Beautiful, guarded Reiko Matsunaga had not seen the last of him.
But he did also have some wayward department managers to straighten up, so he would have to pace himself. Just a little.