Chapter 47
Fuck. Me.
I didn’t die when the bullet tore through me. Some days, healing at the hospital, I wished I had. Her absence hurt worse than the pain.
Even now, outside the sterile walls and into a familiar home of comfort, I couldn’t settle my breaking heart.
Jerry’s house smelled like antiseptic and meat. For six weeks, he forced my ass to heal, but every day without her, that felt more like rotting in a different place.
The church was shuttered closed with crime scene tape, boarded doors, and only silence now where countless prayers used to live.
It seems like God was evicted alongside my exiled ass.
I hadn’t put the collar back on since the shooting and honestly…
I didn’t know if I ever would again.
I can’t stand the weight of it without her there to witness it.
Sayuri vanished the same night I bled out on marble. I tore through every lead I could find on her and The Crimson Carrion that the fucker Kaito not only belonged to but lorded over as the leader.
No matter how many hours I searched for her. It was like chasing a ghost.
Burner phones, old gang contacts, and men who still owed me favors for the lives I spared and pretended were dead to the clan. They were a dead end.
Kaito had taken her to New York. That was where the clan’s main compound was. That much I knew. The Crimson Carrion had her in their clutches...if she was still alive. The lines blurred when power traded hands like currency, and I couldn’t tell who the fuck she was stuck with.
Did Kaito sell her off to my old clan?
Was she even alive?
Weeks of searching turned into an obsession, and the obsession turned into clarity.
Jujiro.
The name kept resurfacing because the little guy was nowhere to be found. A child no one touched because no one knew about him except for Kaito, his father, and Sayuri, his mother.
The boy was a ghost with so much authority, but also…a target.
Jujiro would be killed simply for existing. That happened when bloodlines were involved.
That was when it hit me, and hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs and force me to my ass.
“Oh my fucking god!” I jolted upright from the couch, crashing into books I used for research.
Jujiro wasn’t just being protected by The Crimson Carrion Clan.
He was The Crimson Carrion, the true leader. Hidden but no less the rightful heir.
Sayuri…Christ.
Jerry ran at me like a linebacker from the stairs.
“The fuck? You okay? What happened?”
“Everything she’d done, Jerry. All the fucking torture she’s allowed from that fucker… She wasn’t surviving for herself. She was buying time for him, trying to build walls with her own body to keep him safe.”
I sat bowed up at Jerry, staring at nothing, my hands shaking like they used to when I was starving on the streets.
“Ya lost me,” Jerry said quietly. “Who did what now?”
I shook my head.
“She was protecting him! Her son! All this time, and I was too fucking blind to see why.”
“What do you mean? Protecting him from what, Jed? Kaito?”
“No, you don’t get it. She was protecting that little boy from everyone. He’s the true leader. Not Kaito.”
Jerry rubbed his eyes and helped me to my feet. “No shit. Well, that ain’t good. Imagine if Elias were running the mafia. Everyone would be forced to provide pizza without pineapples. Can you imagine that shit?”
I glared at Jerry. “Pizza? Man, this is her son’s life. Being the leader of an entire mafia branch means he has a target on his head.”
Jerry winced and whistled. “Shit. You’re right. I wasn’t thinkin’. It’s so late, man. Let’s get you to bed.”
“No. I can’t sleep. I am finally close to something!”
Jerry yawned and sat down on the couch across from where I was pacing.
“Black Onyx territory still has roots in New York, too, don’t they? You’re old stomping ground.”
I nodded.
“Old enemies of mine, sure—but they hated The Crimson Carrion more. If I can get them to listen to me, I’ll offer Kaito, who they think is the leader of The Crimson Carrion, in exchange for Sayuri’s safety!
We gotta go there. I will beg them if I have to.
Fuck, I’ll bleed if it means I get her back. ”
“What about her son?”
“That’s the best part. No one will be looking for him. They will assume The Crimson Carrion Clan ends with Kaito’s death. I can save them both.”
Jerry didn’t like my master plan, and he rubbed his head in contemplation.
“They’ll kill you, Jed,” he said. “Or worse. You’re not some priest to them. They won’t take you at your word. You’re a liability at best and a traitor at worst.”
I grabbed my jacket before he finished speaking, pain flaring sharply in my ribs.
“I don’t care, Jerry. If I can’t find her…without her, I don’t want to fucking live anyway.”
That shut him up.
“Fucking hell, Jed!” Jerry called after me, tripping over his boots as he tried to get them on his feet. I was already outside, running to reach the truck.
“Dammit, Jedidiah Franklin, hold your horny horses! You ain’t the only one with bullets livin rent free in your body, and my bones are more fragile than yours!”
I didn’t listen. I was almost to the truck, but a blaring pair of halogens made me wince.
Jerry was halfway out of the house, still trying to get his jacket on, when he reached me.
“Dawn’s gonna have my nuts for this, asshole, and I’m gonna have y—”
He stopped when he saw the black van slowly approach us. It was unmarked, and the engine was idling too smoothly to be accidental.
We waited cautiously.
“They send someone to whack you?” Jerry whispered, but I didn’t answer.
I had prepared for this. A man stepped out, dressed in all black. His demeanor was calm, but everything felt strange. I reached for the gun I brought out of instinct, pain be damned.
“You picked the wrong guy to fuck with,” I warned. “Take one more step, and I will blow your head off. I won’t let you hurt these pe—”
He didn’t flinch at my words, just walked calmly to the back of the van and opened the doors.
“Mama?” The world stopped turning.
Jujiro.
The small toddler was wrapped in a Japanese blanket covered in beautiful artwork. His bright eyes were red from crying.
But he was alive.
The gun slipped from my fingers, hitting the ground, familiarity hitting me like a freight train.
I…knew him.
I’d seen him before, at the Bishop’s side, quiet as a shadow in his chambers. The Bishop told me he was holding him for a friend.
Was Sayuri friends with the Bishop?
Or was this more twisted than I wanted to believe?
The man lifted the toddler out of the van and placed him in my arms, as if he were something sacred to be treasured.
Jujiro clutched my shirt, trembling, and breathed me in as he recognized me, even though I’d only met him one time, months ago.
The man spoke then, his English broken but deliberate.
“Take care of the Yakuza Queen’s heart, don’t let her sacrifice be for naught.”
That was all he said.
He turned his back to us before I could speak a word and climbed back into the van, driving away as if none of this had ever happened.
Like he hadn’t just detonated my soul.
Her sacrifice…
I held Jujiro tighter, guilt flooding in so fast it made me nauseous. I’d been inches from the truth all along…Inches from her son that night.
Inches from understanding the truth, she was desperate to hide even from me.
“Mama…Where’s mama?”
Sayuri had given me her heart. She had left her son with me. She trusted me with the only thing she loved. I looked down at Jujiro and made a vow I didn’t need God to hear, one I kept.
“I’ve got you, little man,” I whispered. “I’ll get your mama back to you.”
My words were true.
I would get Sayuri back, even if it killed me.