Chapter 35 Rafael
RAFAEL
The room smells like smoke, Irish whiskey, and sharp determination.
Maps cover every inch of the table, corners curling from too many hands, too many nights pouring over the streets and businesses that stand in the way of our victory.
Red lines carve through neighborhoods. Circles mark warehouses, docks, and compounds.
Names are written and crossed out, rewritten heavier, angrier.
We’re close. I feel it in my bones, the way I can feel a storm before the sky darkens.
The Tanakas have been sloppy lately, loud, desperate. Their shipments are getting rerouted at the last second.
Their soldiers are overextended, snapping at every shadow like a wounded animal that’s been cornered.
Without Kenji, they’re hemorrhaging from a lack of leadership. Tatsuo might have built his empire, but then he sat back on his throne and watched, convinced that his bloodline alone made him untouchable.
He let his son become the blade.
And now the blade is gone, and the old man is exposed.
Miko taps the map with two fingers. “We take their home,” he says. “It’s traditional, symbolic—too symbolic.”
“Meaning?” Cillian asks.
“Meaning Tatsuo won’t abandon it,” Sandro says calmly. “Men like him would rather die in the ruins of their legacy than run.”
I nod. “And we make sure those ruins are ashes.”
There’s a moment of silence, heavy with memory. They burned our home.
The Chiaroscuro house wasn’t just brick and marble.
It was history.
It was my brothers’ laughter echoing down hallways, our father’s study smelling like leather and ink.
It was the place Genevieve used to walk barefoot, humming to herself.
They tried to erase us, so we erase them.
“We hit the supply lines first,” I say. “Cut communications. Make him think it’s isolated. Then we take the house.”
“And burn it to the ground,” Sandro adds, eyes dark.
“Yes,” I agree.
The Murray men exchange glances, grim satisfaction tightening their mouths. They understand vengeance. It’s written into them as deeply as it is into us.
Miko straightens, businesslike. “Once the house falls, Tatsuo won’t have anywhere to hide. He’ll come out.”
“And when he does,” I say, voice flat, “he doesn’t walk away.”
No one argues.
“We should do it under the cover of night. Two days from now. That will give us enough time to coordinate the men and not enough time for the plan to be leaked.”
We finalize times, contingencies, escape routes. It’s clean, brutal, and effective—war refined. And in a few days’ time, this will all be over. We’ll have won.
As the meeting breaks apart, chairs scrape softly against the floor.
Sandro claps a hand on my shoulder. “We’re nearly there,” he says.
I nod, but my mind is already drifting somewhere else.
To the quieter war I’ve been waging in my home, with myself.
Aisling.
The distance between us these past few days has been deliberate, controlled.
Necessary, I tell myself. It’s also been agonizing, and I’m slowly but surely losing my mind.
Which is why as everyone starts to filter out, I check my phone, though I know I’ll find no relief in its blank screen.
My blood goes cold. I have six missed calls, all from Aisling.
My chest tightens painfully.
She wouldn’t call that many times unless something was wrong. She might be fiery, but she’s not dramatic.
She doesn’t beg for attention.
If she’s called me six times, it means the ground has cracked open beneath her feet. She needs me.
I step away from the table immediately, thumb already hitting the call button.
She answers on the first ring. “Raf,” she gasps.
The sound of her voice—panicked, thin—cuts straight through me.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
“They took her,” she sobs. “They took Riley.”
The world tilts violently around me, and I brace against the table to keep my feet. “Who?” I ask, but I already know.
“The Yakuza,” she says, words tumbling over each other. “They took her from her school. They said…” Her breath catches. “They said they’ll kill her unless my family delivers your head to Tatsuo.”
Something feral tears loose in my chest. “I’m coming,” I say immediately. “Where are you?”
“At my parents’ house now,” she whispers. “Raf, please. I can’t lose her. I… we can’t let them hurt our daughter.”
My jaw locks as rage surges through me, hot and blinding. “We’ll crush them into the ground before they even have the chance,” I vow. “I’m on my way.”
I move fast, signaling to Sandro and Miko as I hang up the phone. They see my face and know instantly that something’s wrong.
“The Tanakas took Riley,” I say.
Sandro’s eyes darken. Miko swears softly under his breath.
But there’s no hesitation in my twin’s eyes when Sandro asks, “What do we do?”
“You’re going to get every last Chiaroscuro and Lombardi man ready for battle,” I state flatly, then turn to Miko. “I want the entire Novikov force ready to have our backs within the hour. We’re moving up our plan of action. Meet me at the Tanaka estate in an hour.”
“Wait. What will you be doing in the meantime?” Sandro demands, noting my lack of leadership in the plan.
“I’m going to get my daughter back.”
“I’m sorry, your what?” Miko grabs me by the collar of my suit jacket—just like he used to when we were kids—as he hauls me back into the room, depositing me against the table.
Sandro doesn’t look all that surprised when our eyes meet, but I realize Miko is entirely out of the loop when it comes to my personal life by now and probably has no clue what I’m talking about.
None of that matters right now, though.
All that matters is Riley.
“Look, we don’t have time for this,” I snarl.
“The SparkNotes version is that Aisling and I have history. We met at Portentia’s five years ago and messed around a few times before I found out who she was.
Turns out I knocked her up before ending things, okay?
You can ask questions later, but right now, Tatsuo has our daughter, and we need to get her back.
I need to get her back, Miko,” I repeat, my voice dropping with the vehemence of my emotion.
I can’t lose someone else I love.
I can’t lose Riley.
It means nothing that I found out only a few days ago that she’s my flesh and blood.
She is the air I breathe, the sun in my sky, and if something happens to her, I won’t survive.
“Okay,” Miko says, his brilliant blue gaze intense but unquestioning as he reads my face. “We’ll be there. I have your back.”
Relief surges through me, and we’re on our way out the door, several minutes behind the Murrays—who are hopefully heading straight home.
“So, what the hell happened?” Sandro asks as we reach the car.
I slide behind the wheel, unwilling to let anyone else set the pace to get to the Murray house. “They took Riley from her preschool, told the Murrays to bring Tatsuo my head if they ever want to see her again.”
“And Aisling called you to tell you that?” A hint of shock filters into my brother’s tone.
“I know.”
Aisling could have called her brothers.
She could have turned on me without blinking.
She could have asked them to bring her my head on a platter if it meant guaranteeing Riley’s safety.
She didn’t.
She called me.
That choice lodges deep in my chest, heavy and humbling.
Sandro gives a low whistle, his gaze turning to peer through the windshield from the passenger seat.
“If that doesn’t tell you how she feels about you, I don’t know what does.
” When I don’t respond, his eyes cast back in my direction, studying me closely as the seconds tick by.
“You’re going to give Tatsuo what he wants,” Sandro says.
It’s not a question, because my twin knows me better than anybody.
The plan is already mapped out in my head, sharp and deadly.
“He wants me,” I say. “That means we can control the tempo.”
“This was an emotional move,” Sandro says. “That means he’s unpredictable. Desperate.”
“And we’re going to use that to our advantage,” I finish.
My mind races, assembling angles, probabilities, blood.
But beneath it all, under every calculation, only one truth pounds through me, louder than anything else.
They took my daughter.
And I will burn the world down to get her back.