Chapter 49
Ileft Jerry with Jujiro, entrusting no one but my best friend with the most important part of Sayuri’s soul.
“Keep him safe,” I said.
“You’re gonna get your damn self killed, Jed.”
I didn’t care. Not then, and not now that I was staring at The Black Onyx Clan’s doors.
The child I’ve cared for as my own for a week, my best friend, and my entire life was left in Monticello. My soul focus narrowed to a single point: Kaito Kayuzi. All the scars, memories, and hatred pulled me forward.
I needed to find him.
I needed answers.
I needed blood.
I needed my Mortifera.
The ass stain that was New York greeted me with wet streets coated in god knows what and harsh neon lights that reminded me of the club.
The city had not gotten better.
If anything, it was worse. I didn’t stop to watch the people mindlessly walk to nowhere. I didn’t need to see the victims of the gang passing by. All of their faces blurred into insignificance. There was only one target and one problem remaining.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I should have been alerted that the doors were opening to me, and I should have been escorted immediately, without question.
The Onyx Clan’s headquarters was brutal and quiet, unlike The Crimson Carrion, who chose a war house and stayed secret. The Black Onyx worked out of a cathedral made into fear and violence. Their men watched from shadows as I walked with the ogre bodyguards. Their expressions were empty.
The leader sat at the far end of the long, cold room, his hands folded on the table, and his eyes sharper than knives.
He did not rise when I approached. He did not speak immediately either, just stared at me expectantly.
I couldn’t see any discernible features that would inform me who he was. His entire body was covered from head to toe in black—even his face and hair. The only thing visible was his ring—a black onyx gemstone.
“I…I need to know where Kaito Kayuzi is,” I said, my voice tight. “Please. I—”
He lifted a hand, slow and deliberate, to silence me. “You’ve come to beg, traitor?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll do anything. Tell me what you want. Just…please, I need this. Allow me to kill Kaito and end this war, and I will willfully return if you wish to punish me for my treason ten years ago.”
The leader leaned back, tilting his head as if he were examining a broken object, not a man. “You’ve come knowing full well the cost we seek. You understand the price of your request, yes?”
“I do.”
“So be it. But rest assured that you will not hide from us again, false prophet.”
The threat made me ill.
They knew.
A flicker of the lights made the room unsteady, and then it began.
Boom.
A barrage of shadows came at me from all sides, brutal strikes knocking into my sore ribs and back.
Every blow was precise and meant to break me without killing me outright.
Pain exploded in my body, burning and shattering but not fatal.
I fell to the ground in the small pools of my blood.
It coated the stone floor. My teeth were clenched to accept the blows, and my nerves screamed to fight back.
“You do not defend yourself?” a man hissed in my ear. “Do you know whom you are standing in front of, traitor?”
“Yes,” I said through cracked lips. “My…clan.”
“Why have you come back here?”
“Because I want him,” I spat blood in the direction of the speaker. “I want Kaito Kayuzi dead. I will take whatever punishment if it means I can kill him.”
Another strike slammed into me, and my knees fell out from underneath my body. My stomach crumpled flat to the ground, air leaving my lungs in a hiss and a grunt.
I tasted the flooding copper, warm and bitter on my tongue. My body begged for mercy as my mind raced. The Onyx men circled, all of them silent predators, measuring my will and testing me for my breaking point.
“You will not leave this room whole,” the leader said. “You want blood? You pay with it.”
“I don’t care,” I whispered. “I’ll take the pain. I’ll take everything. Just tell me where he is!”
“That’s enough, men. Take him downstairs.”
“No! We had a deal!” I screamed as my body was picked up and dragged toward a set of steps.
“Deal? I don’t make a deal with traitors, Father.”
No. No. No.
A bag was thrown over my head, and cold, icy water made me freeze. Filthy and merciless. They held my head down on some kind of board while hands opened my mouth and forced water into my lungs. I was drowning over and over until I felt like I was dying.
My body screamed for air, and my vision blurred. Every inhale became agony, and every exhale was my desperate plea to stop.
I kicked and thrashed, clawing at the basin’s edge, but as the onslaught continued, I stopped fighting. I never met the leader of The Black Onyx, but he was a man of honor and old blood. He spoke a language of reciprocation and respect of sacrifice, the irony that I understood it all now.
“I submit! I…Jedidiah…Franklin belongs….to The Black Onyx…”
I heard a laugh that echoed around the cavern-like area.
“Ah. Finally, you understand,” the leader said. “We grant your request to reveal your enemy, but not before giving you a taste of what awaits you in the end.”
“Yes,” I gasped, choking, accepting when the water poured over me again. “I understand. I…I…will do anything to kill him.”
Another hour of the relentless punishment followed the leader's departure.
Fists, kicks, punches, water, every method was created to break, every action designed to strip me bare and watch me surrender again and again. I bled for them, I puked for them, and by the end of the torment, I wanted to collapse and cry.
But I didn’t.
“That’s enough. Let him go and give him the information on Kaito Kayuzi’s compound. Oh, and do make sure our brand is visible on his skin so he needn’t forget again who he belongs to.”
The bag was ripped off my head, and I thought it was over, but the men flipped me over on my stomach and held me down by a hot stove.
“Agh!”
The blaze of suns seared through my skin as the brand on the back of my neck was made fresh, again, until I was panting, near passing out.
Silence filled the air in place of my breathing. I lay on the floor, soaked, bloodied, my ribs screaming, and my vision spinning out of control. My arms felt like lead, and my nerves felt scraped raw.
I did this for you, Mortifera.
Please.
Be safe.
I’m coming.
The leader leaned in close, and there was something familiar in his eyes I couldn’t place.
“Enjoy your gift, while you can.”
I could barely move, but I felt the steel when it was placed in my hand.
It was a knife.
The very same knife I used to kill Jayce Kayuzi.
“You want Kaito,” he said. “Why not do so with a little reminder of the past?”
“Yes.”
“You have proven your desperation, false prophet. Your obsession outweighs your cowardice for once. Your willingness to bleed for this blood lust. That is useful for us.”
He paused, and it was calm and terrifying.
“He’s at the compound warehouse on 14th and 9th. Alone. Unprotected. For now. My men would keep him busy as a token of this honored arrangement between us. But understand this, Jedidiah, I do not forget or forgive.”
I nodded and let the pain become a second heartbeat. Survival instinct roared, and the steel in my grip fed my hunger. My body was a cage of agony, and every breath burned, but I had the information.
I had the map to Kaito, and he would lead me to her.
I staggered to my feet, barely able to breathe. Blood ran down my face and soaked into my clothes. My hands were steady on the knife. My mind was clear. I had chosen pain, humiliation, and torture to find Kaito…to find her.
I couldn’t stop now.
The Onyx Clan was all but thrown out of the cathedral. And the night outside stank like piss and blood. Every step I took across the slick pavement reminded me that I had been broken—and yet, somehow, not destroyed.
I would find Kaito.
And when I did…
I would make him pay for every second he had stolen from me. The scars that littered my body, and the marks left on hers…I would carve them into him one by one, and finally free Sayuri.