Epilogue
Dante
It wasn’t a panic attack. It knew it wasn’t. I mean, I had my doubts for a while there when nothing else made sense. But the one thing I had never doubted was Kuroi’s innocents.
Having reached his limits, I put Kuroi to bed and disposed of his sister’s body. Kuroi didn’t want to know what I did with it. She had been betraying him his entire life. He needed time to deal with that. And, what my baby wanted, I was gonna give him.
Storing Yuki’s body instead of burning it like we had Uncle Vinny, I removed all traces that she was at our place including making sure she hadn’t bribed the lobby attendant to get in.
She hadn’t. It was a mystery how she had gotten in undetected. I didn’t like that considering others could probably do the same.
The other thing I did that night was save my toothbrush. I needed to know what it was that she had tried to kill me with.
“Wolfsbane,” I told Kuroi days later when my people finished their analysis.
“Wolfsbane is from a flower. She had a garden at the compound. She was always out there taking care of them.”
“Its poison works within minutes and the symptoms can be mistaken for a heart attack. I guess she underestimated my size when she put it in my wedding drink. The stuff is lethal. I shouldn’t have survived.
What makes wolfsbane the perfect poison is that the small amount needed to kill someone usually goes undetected during an autopsy. But the amount they found on my toothbrush was enough to kill a cow.”
“That’s why she didn’t try to save herself,” Kuroi concluded. “She knew she couldn’t.”
“Probably.”
“I understand why she killed all of those people. At least some of them. I think she might have thought she was rescuing me. But, why did she whisper in that guy’s ear about your brother’s friend? That was what lead to me leaving her. She had killed to get me back. Why initiate something that would take me away?”
“She couldn’t have guessed that I would suggest merging out two families.”
“You suggested that?” Kuroi asked surprised.
“Yeah. Did you think it was Sato?”
“He had traded me away so easily before. I just assumed he had again.”
“No. Not this time.”
“So, she’s dead because she underestimated you,” Kuroi said with the hint of a prideful smile.
“She isn’t the first,” I told him thinking of Uncle Vinny and all of the ones before him.
Regarding my father’s reaction to what I had done, I was still waiting for it. But there was no longer a question about which of us was in charge. And with Uncle Vinny dead, he was out of surprise allies.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t just roll over and take what I had done because it wasn’t his way. But his options were limited. As long I stayed on top of things, I would remain a step ahead.
I was going to Kuroi’s help with that. Yeah, Matteo had made his loyalties clear. But my father’s grip on him had always been strong. As long as Pa was alive, Matteo was a threat. My brother needed our father’s approval too much for him not to be. Kuroi and I would need to keep an eye on Matteo too.
The last person I needed to figure out in all of this was what to do with Sato. He was going to die at my hands. There was no other way that this was gonna end. But his layers of security meant that it would take time. I was willing to wait.
What I hadn’t had to wait long for was for Kuroi to again crave my cock.
“Haven’t I been good lately?”he asked me one night after dinner.
We had just finished a steak that he had implied he cooked, but what I was pretty sure came from Alberto’s, my favorite steak place.
“You have been good. I’ve been impressed,” I told him hoping I knew where this was going.
I had missed feeling his tight ass around my cock. I had even begun imaging the marks various household items would leave on his perfect skin.
“Didn’t you once tell me, if I was good, you would reward me?”
“Do you think you were good enough to earn a reward?” I asked unable to suppress the smile creeping across my face.
“I don’t know. Have I been?” he asked tilting his head and staring at me in a way that made my cock brick hard.
“I think you have,” I confirmed before getting up and crossing the room to a closet.
As he watched me, I reached in and retrieved something I had bought for just this occasion. When I pulled it out and turned, his eyes lit up.
“Do you remember the safe word?” I asked the man I would love until the day I died.
He did. So, I began.