Chapter 28
Itold myself I wasn’t looking for her.
But I was.
The kitchen drawer she’d been using was empty. The porcelain teacup with the blue cranes was gone. Even the fancy honey she insisted tasted better than mine had disappeared. She took every trace that even suggested she had been with me all these months now.
She didn’t even leave a note.
Was she still in Monticello?
Will I see her at mass?
I stood there longer than I should have, staring at the absence like it might confess something of where she’d run off.
I turned on a Japanese drama for what I told myself was noise, but really it was my only way left to feel close to her. I didn’t know why. Maybe because she used to watch them with me in the evenings, I learned some Japanese, at least enough to follow most conversations.
When we started, it was like gibberish, but now I could tell you everything that was said.
The movie played, and I wiped stupid tears off my face that betrayed me.
The actors were crying about impossible love and betrayal.
I couldn’t handle seeing her favorite scene, kisses in the rain, and promises of forever.
I am not her forever.
I muted it halfway through and didn’t remember doing it. The silence felt heavier, only amplifying her absence.
I told myself she’d done what she came here to do and left peacefully. She had always been halfway out the door the second she entered my life, but now I couldn’t help but wonder what her purpose in our small town had been.
Still, even with thoughts of her peace, there was something inside my chest that felt…hollowed.
When I didn’t know what to do, I prayed.
It was a dumb habit I picked up, maybe following the mold of the priest in one aspect of my life.
I went to the church.
It was my peace. The soft flickering of the candles and the calm silence felt better than the suffocating absence.
The sanctuary was dark except for the red vigil candle near the tabernacle. Rain threatened outside, low thunder rumbling in the distance, as I walked in through the back door and shut it softly. I walked down the aisle slowly, already forming the words I would say.
Then I heard her, a soft voice, broken and desperate.
Her voice was so small.
The words were in Japanese at first, and I tried to follow most of them, but I thought most were too soft for me to understand fully. I caught little fragments, and my curiosity spiked.
“Please. Protect him. Keep him safe.”
I froze in the aisle.
Then she switched to English, and her tears were more audible.
“Please don’t let Kaito take him. Please don’t let my son suffer for my mistakes. I cannot fulfill this task, lord. I can’t hurt a good soul.”
Son?
The words landed like a punch to the face, and I suddenly understood why Miranda’s comments had hurt Sayuri so deeply.
She is a mother.
But…where is her child?
She kept going, her voice cracking open wide with each spoken prayer.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially someone I love. I don’t want to destroy him. Show me how to free him from this. Show me how to fix this without losing my baby boy. Please give me a sign of how I can fight this impossible battle.”
Free him.
Destroy him.
Love him.
Who is she talking about?
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I just listened. Everything I thought I understood about her rearranged in a single breath.
She wasn’t plotting or peaceful.
She was terrified and broken.
I stepped forward carefully, the wood creaking beneath my weight.
“Sayuri.”
She startled as I’d struck her, and her soft scream broke my heart.
“Shhh, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
When she turned, her face was wet, her eyes swollen, her mouth trembling, and her composure gone. Not the controlled, calculated woman who baited me like a confession or met my stare like a challenge.
She was a beautiful woman unraveling.
I crossed the distance without thinking. She broke the second I touched her shoulder, melting into me and her sobs expanding as an echo in the great halls. Her hands fisted in my shirt, and she pressed her face into my chest like she was trying to disappear. She was shaking violently.
“I’m so sorry, Jedidiah. I can’t save anything. I am a mother. I have to save my son. I have to,” she whispered.
The world narrowed.
How had I never seen it?
And where was her baby?
“Kaito is his father,” she choked out. “He’ll hurt him. He’s using him to control me. I don’t have a choice.”
Something hot and old moved through my veins.
New York, alleyway heat.
My past of running from law enforcement when I should have sought their help. I had buried it all beneath Roman collars and sacramental wine.
“Call the police,” I said immediately, because that was the righteous answer.
The right one.
“I can’t. You don’t understand it’s…complicated.”
The way she said it told me there was more to it than fear.
Complication.
History.
Leverage.
“Why?” My voice came out tighter than I meant it to. “Sayuri, if he’s threatening your child—”
“It’s not that simple.” She pulled back just enough to look at me. “You don’t understand the kind of man he is, what he can do, what he has done already. I can’t let anyone else get hurt. I can’t.”
I understood more than she thought.
Rain started hammering against the stained glass, thunder cracking overhead.
She flinched at the sound, and I held her tighter.
“It’s okay, Sayuri.”
Well…it was anything but okay, but soon it would be.
I slid one arm beneath her knees and lifted her up without asking.
She gasped softly. “Jed—”
“You’re not sleeping in a hard pew, Mortifera,” I muttered. “And you’re not walking out of here alone.”
Rain soaked us before we reached the parish house while her fingers clung to my collar, and I felt how small she seemed in my arms.
“You can’t fix this,” she whispered against my shoulder. “Why would you involve yourself in something I told you is dangerous?”
“I don’t care about danger,” I said, pushing through the door with my foot. “I care about you.”
That was the truth of it.
She studied my face like she was searching for doubt.
I leaned down to her soaked lips. I knew this wasn’t the damn time, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had to feel her lips again. I had been so cold for the few hours I missed her, and when I felt like she’d left me, I was left wondering if I’d ever feel this warmth again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away from her and wrapping my jacket around her. “I just…missed you.”
Sayuri’s gorgeous eyes looked curious and sad.
“I missed you, too, Junshin.”
I started to keep my feet moving, but she pulled my face back down to hers, this time kissing me with urgency. She was wincing, and I felt concerned, but she wouldn’t stop kissing me.
“I’d rather have pain if it means your joy, because without you, there is no joy, only the pain,” she said in Japanese.
“Sayuri…” I started to tell her.
I wanted to tell her that I was a fucking fool in love with her, but my fear stopped me. I couldn’t shackle her with my dumb feelings, especially now that I knew she was missing her son and her ‘baby daddy’ was…Kaito of all people.
“It wasn’t consensual, was it?”
I didn’t know what compelled me to ask, but something about her mannerisms told me she had not consented to that barbarian ever.
Her face fell, and she kissed me more gently. “No. I have not given myself to another…like this…I have never had control over things like this…”
I couldn’t help but gasp at her traveling hands. She placed her wet, soft hands inside my pants’ waistband, and I froze, not daring to move.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you more. I just…”
I shook my head so fast I felt like it would fall off. “Don’t you dare, Sayuri. I am so honored to have any part of you. Your lips, your hands, or simply your beautiful presence. I will never ask you for more than you want to give.”
Sayuri smiled a little and kissed me again, letting her hand trace the contours of my abs and hips, to my lower abdomen, and the briefest feather touch right at the base of my dick.
I thought about that damn movie. Pouring rain while the couple chose to hurt each other to be with one another.
I understood their decision. I felt like I would accept torture just to see Sayuri free and smiling.
“You know what?” I said, laughing to myself.
“What?”
“I think I get why Adam ate that apple.”
Sayuri laughed and shook her head. “Yes, we established it was because Eve gave it to him.”
“Yes, but even then, he knew he was going to hell for the decision.”
She looked thoughtful. “You are right. That’s a big commitment. Why did he do that?”
I didn’t need to think about it. I had an answer.
“You do anything for the one you love, even walk through fire.”
So much emotion was in Sayuri’s dark eyes, but she didn’t speak. Instead, she kept kissing me.
I felt every bit of the kiss, felt the rain pouring down as I carried her to our place.
“Why did you want me back here, Jed?”
I kicked open the door and walked inside. “Because.”
“Because why?”
I smirked at her. “Because Sayuri Ayakshi. You are my home.”
“I’ll stay for a few more days,” she said finally, unable to respond to my words. “For a little while. Until I can figure out how to get my son back.”
Where was he?
“How old is he?” I said, mulling over possibilities myself.
“He is only almost three years.”
The fury inside me sharpened into something colder.
He was just a baby.
I set her down gently inside the parish house, closing the door against the storm. The priest in me told me to remain calm. I needed to trust in the process and seek lawful channels.
But the man I had been before Monticello?
He was awakened and listening.
“Kaito won’t touch your son,” I said quietly. “And he won’t fucking lay a hand on you again.”
It wasn’t a prayer.
It was a promise because I was going to kill him.