Chapter 1
Brax
“Tōsan, we couldn’t have met somewhere else?
” I ask, staring around our family’s restaurant—her restaurant.
The traditional tearoom has an open view of the chef cooking on an industrialized kamado grill.
The wabi-inspired minimalistic style, while still celebrating the rich traditions of the ōshiro family.
It’s why I loathe coming here.
Instead of seeing the bright, youthful smile of my baby sister, who once graced this space, I’m now forced to watch her former sous chef assume the role of head chef.
I’m startled out of my thoughts at the sound of my younger brother shouting my name. “Brax… Brax… Braxton.”
“Huh,” I finally reply, realizing I completely zoned out.
The stern look on my father’s face lets me know I missed something of great importance. But the softening in his honey-brown eyes tells me he knows where my head has been.
Emi.
This place will never feel as vibrant as it was when she was alive, but we made an oath as a family that any significant decisions that impact the family must be made here, where she can be included.
“It’s time for you to get married,” my father announces, and I nearly choke on a piece of steak.
Clearing my throat, I rasp, “It’s time for me to what?”
It’s my mother who answers. “You’re thirty-two, Braxton ōshiro.
You’re not getting any younger.” I meet her gaze, and I know she’s about to begin the same old argument.
“All of my friends have grandchildren. Why can’t I have them too?
Are you trying to wait until I’m too old to run around with them? ”
“Okaasan,” I begin, but she’s far from finished.
“You need a wife. It’s well past time that you get one. Do you want the ōshiro line to end with you?”
I swear there must be a class parents take to guilt their children into bending to their will. This is the equivalent of me asking ‘why’ and their response of ‘because I said so’.
Her lips twist into her famous pout, and I know I’ve lost this battle without even knowing I was waging war.
My siblings snicker around the table, and I make a mental note to deduct a million dollars from their monthly allowances.
Suckers. When will they learn that I always get the last laugh?
“It’s time,” my dad adds. “Your role as the heir and future leader of this family requires you to be married and have children. There is no escaping this rule.”
Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I shake my head and expel the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
My father spent decades cleaning up our family business, delving into more legitimate endeavors. Are we still the top Ninkyō Danti? Yes. However, we’d be hit with some white-collar or RICO charges and not drug and skin trade charges like the Gordons.
The mention of that family’s name is enough to incinerate my appetite. Dropping my steak knife and fork, I wipe my mouth and my hands before discarding my linen napkin.
“I made a promise to a friend who saved your mother and Akio’s life that once his daughter was of age, you’d marry her, and the time has long since passed.”
With the amount of favors owed for lives being saved, I’m surprised all of my siblings don’t have arranged marriages. I mean, my name is after an army buddy who took a bullet for him. Braxton Paige. It’s one of the only reasons I don’t have a traditional Japanese first name.
“Who is she?” I ask, hoping to placate him by pretending to take the bait.
“You’ll know when it’s time,” my father replies. “For now, just know that your wedding is scheduled for May 30th, six months after her twenty-seventh birthday.
It’s not that I’m against getting married or having kids. It just has to be her. No one else will carry my name. Talia al Adil. I refuse to use the poisonous name of her adopted family. The Gordon last name is steeped in blood, and not in the same way the ōshiro family’s is.
My gut clenches as the memory of how and why we met surfaces.
Three years ago…
“How are things at the firm?” my father asks before he takes a seat across from me.
Placing the files down on the desk, I clear my throat and then reply, “We didn’t get as much out of the last deal as we should’ve, but I’m meeting with the client after this to see if we can’t renegotiate more favorable terms.”
He nods, looking for the first time like a man with the world on his shoulders. A far cry from the man nothing could touch—Tetsumenki. The ever-present vein bulges between his furrowed brows.
“It’s been too long with no word,” he snaps, dropping all pretenses of our former conversation. “Emi has been missing for too long.” His jaw tenses. I count each tick of his pulse, focusing on him instead of the unbridled rage festering inside me.
Th-um… um… um-p… p… p.
“Someone took her from her home. In our fucking territory, Braxton.”
Th-um-p… p… p.
“They spat in our face and stole watashi no kawaii musume-chan.”
Thump… thump… thump.
I clench my teeth, fisting my hands at my sides as I manage to rein in the errant slip in control when my father’s words switch from English to Japanese.
“On my honor, I will find and eviscerate everyone involved with Emi’s disappearance,” I vow, choosing my words carefully.
In this world, a missing person not found immediately is a dead person, but I don’t want to think of my sister in the past tense.
Barely twenty-three, her life is just beginning.
Three successive taps at the door cut our conversation short. Our gazes lock before my father nods his approval.
“Come in,” I order, and a woman I’ve never seen before strides into the room with such lethal precision, I know she’s a reaper. Her sleek black pantsuit is tailored to conceal weapons to the untrained eye. Even the hair sticks used to hold her hair in a neat bun—deadly.
I want to study her for longer, but she bows in my father’s direction, then pivots to bow in mine. Then, she drops a flash drive on the desk. “Nyx sends her regards,” is all she says before bowing and turning to exit the room.
What’s more intriguing is the way my father nods, unfazed, picking up the flash drive and plugging it into the laptop. I have so many questions, but those all evaporate when the video begins and a blood-curdling scream ping-pongs off the walls.
“I swear that’s all I know,” a very familiar face pleads.
My eyes double in size at the sight of my cousin, Masamune’s, arm in a commercial-sized automatic dough roller up to his elbow. Fragments of his bones stick out of whatever is left of his forearm.
“I don’t think radius and ulna bones are supposed to be twisted like that,” I mumble, angling my head to get a better look. Blood pulsates as it pumps out of a vein that doesn’t realize it’s no longer connected.
“Wrong fucking answer,” a sultry rasp hisses while flicking a switch and whirring the machine back to life.
A woman? I don’t want to assume the interrogator is a woman based solely on a voice. I’ve seen greater tactics used to mislead.
“Who did he piss off this time?” I ask my father without looking away.
“I honestly don’t know,” he replies.
After Masamune was exiled from the family—from the Asian continent, no one has heard from or seen him. After helping that fucking skin peddling pedo, Serge Volkov, traffic kids as young as five from Kyushu, Masamune is lucky even to be alive.
The crunch of bone as Masamune’s arm is torn from its socket pales in comparison to his shrieking wails.
“Shall we continue to play this game, Masamune, because I can think of one place in particular you wouldn’t want to go through, Patty?”
I snort at the name when a small gloved hand pats the roller. Whoever they are, the Patty Cake spin on the name is a chef’s kiss. Pun absolutely intended.
“Plthhese, I sw-w-wear it,” Masamune chokes out, determined to keep this secret. It’s only then that I realize, I’m not even sure what he’s hiding. The video started after the interrogation had obviously begun.
“Your time’s up, Masamune. This is the final time I’ll ask you where. You know from very personal experience that what comes after this will be far worse,” they state, finger ready to flip on the machine again.
There’s the longest moment of silence before I watch the switch flipped.
And like a madman, my cousin tries to pull away, using everything in his power to fight an at least four-hundred-pound machine.
Just as his collarbone is about to be crushed, he shouts, “Perth, Vermont. They took them to Perth.”
The roller’s stopped. “And your cousin was one of the girls?”
Sitting up straighter, I process the question at least a dozen times before Masamune answers. “Yes, Emi ōshiro, my cousin, was in the batch delivered last Halloween. It’s their hunting ground. Over 200 acres of rural farmland,” he wheezes.
Red—is all I see when his response reaches the part of my brain that’s supposed to accept what’s being remitted, but it rejects it.
White noise—is all I hear until he brags, “And she’s dead.
” My eye twitches at the sick satisfaction in my cousin’s voice.
“I saw the video, you know.” His eyes shift to where he knows one of the cameras is located.
“I saw her, Ossan—Your precious daughter. The way she cried as they tore through her hymen with an electric drill before ha—”
The smug smile melts from his face as he’s yanked through the roller at warped speed. I don’t think he even has a chance to register his death.
“Anata no shi wa amarini mo kantandatta—” Your death came too easily, I spit out through clenched teeth.
Standing, I walk around my father’s desk, and as I wipe the errant tears from his eyes, I witness part of his soul shatter.
I’ve been scouting this rural estate for weeks, and the only things of any particular interest are the fawns who are currently fighting to prance in the large pile of leaves, and the only structure on this property that is not in a state of disrepair.
Looking away from the deer, I refocus my attention on the behemoth of a building that I’ve deduced is the hunting ground, confirming that whoever Nyx is, they know how to wring an answer out of a person. Literally.
If it were any other circumstance, I would find the lame pun funny, but I lost the joy in my “Dad jokes,” as Emi would call them.
My ears perk up when one of my cameras picks up the distinct sound of a motorcycle engine.
“What do we have here?” I mutter as I watch a lean, curvy body hop off an all-black BMW R 1250 GS with matte red trim.
“Fucking beauty.” Whoever this is knows their stuff.
With this terrain, a bike that can take a beating and still kick ass on the highway, that baby right there would be one of my top choices.
Sitting up from my perch, I give my undivided attention to the new arrival, trusting the rest of my equipment to alert me if there’s any action.
With smooth fluidity, she stashes her bike out of sight, but she makes the rookie mistake of not hiding her face when she takes her helmet off.
“Shame on you—”
My words get caught in my throat when hazel-green eyes that are more green than hazel land exactly where I’m tucked away. I know she can’t see me, but I feel like she’s stripped me bare. High cheekbones, pouty, plush, bow lips, and long, flowing onyx hair. She’s fucking stunning.
Mouth agape, with I’m sure some drool, I can only look on as she fixes her hair into the back of her black jacket before putting on a balaclava. Then I watch as she checks her surroundings once more before disappearing into the woods.
From camera to camera, I watch in awe of her efficiency. “So, you’re not new to this,” I mutter to myself.
Thirty minutes later, she’s on her own perch on the opposite side of the barn, higher and closer to the same building I’ve been staking out. The rifle-like bag I missed hangs hidden.
“But what are you up to out here, little fox?” No sooner than the words pass my lips, five sensors go off.
It looks like I’ll have my answer soon.