Chapter 3
Rei Kurosaki
I woke up with the same heavy pain in my chest that had been there since the day we buried my father and I got dragged across an ocean into this shiny prison.
When I walked into the dining room, Daniel was already sitting at the head of the table. My mother sat to his right, pushing eggs around her plate with that empty smile she had worn since the wedding.
She looked up when I came in and her eyes softened. Then the parasite next to her opened his mouth.
“Rei. Sit. You’re late.”
I didn’t argue. I never won when I did.
I took the seat farthest from both of them, the one that let me see the door. The chef put a plate in front of me. I didn’t think I would eat. I couldn’t stomach anything with Daniel’s face anywhere near me. He made me want to throw up.
“Your mother tells me you’ve been skipping the car service again,” he said. “The driver is paid to take you to school. Use him.”
“I like walking.”
“You like making statements.” He set his coffee cup down. “This family doesn’t need more attention. Especially not after yesterday’s little incident at the academy. I already heard whispers.”
My fork stopped moving.
Of course he had heard.
Daniel had ears everywhere that mattered in this city.
I kept my eyes on my plate.
“It was nothing.”
“It was you putting your hands on Dimitri Morozov in front of half the student body.” His tone stayed calm, but the disappointment was clear. Not that I cared. His opinions meant nothing to me.
“Do you have any idea what that family controls?”
My mother shifted in her seat. “Daniel, maybe we can talk about this later—”
“He needs to understand the world he’s living in now,” Daniel cut her off, still staring at me.
“Your father’s name might open doors in Tokyo, but here the Morozov name opens vaults and buries bodies.
You kneed their heir in the balls like some street thug.
That’s not the kind of attention our family needs right now. ”
I felt the old anger rise, the same anger that had been burning since the first time he touched my mother’s hand at the funeral.
I didn’t say anything. If I argued, my mother would take his side and I would end up grounded for being “disrespectful.”
Thirty minutes later, I walked out. But I still didn’t take the car to school. The driver he had hired was an old friend of his who needed a job, and he also happened to be a freak who looked at me like I was a meal.
No, thank you. I would rather walk than deal with perverts at seven a.m.
Marco was waiting for me at the corner two blocks from the academy like always. His curls were messy under that little black ribbon he always wore, and the second he saw me his whole face lit up.
“You’re late,” he said, falling into step beside me. “I thought maybe you skipped again. After yesterday…”
“I’m here.” I bumped his shoulder gently. “I’m fine, Marco.”
He glanced around like the walls had ears. “Are you sure? They aren’t the type to forget. Especially Dimitri. What if he comes for you?”
“Then let him come. I’m not scared.”
That was a lie.
Yesterday, when those ice-blue eyes locked on mine across the cafeteria, something inside my chest had twisted into a knot I still hadn’t untied. I was pretty sure it was fear mixed with something I couldn’t name yet.
We reached the main doors and then I saw him.
Dimitri was standing at the far end of the hallway with Alexei and Ilya flanking him like shadows. He was in all black again.
When our eyes met across the corridor, everything else disappeared.
He watched me with that same intense stare from yesterday, like he was peeling back every layer I was trying to keep up. My heart slammed against my ribs. Marco made a tiny scared sound beside me and tugged my sleeve.
“Rei, don’t. Please. Let’s just go to class.”
I forced myself to look away. It cost more than I wanted to admit. Marco basically dragged me down the opposite hallway.
“Why did you glare at him again? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Marco asked, panicked.
Was I glaring?
I hadn’t even noticed.
***
I turned toward the row of lockers near the east wing, the ones most students avoided because they were closer to the boxing gym in the basement. The school let them train there because the families who actually ran this place had decided long ago that heirs needed a sanctioned outlet for violence.
Better they broke bones in gloves under supervision than carve each other up in the hallways with the grudges they inherited along with their names.
The Morozov family had pushed hardest for it.
Everyone knew that.
Everyone pretended they didn’t.
My locker was at the very end, half-hidden around the corner. I spun the combination and reached for the handle.
It didn’t open.
The lock was gone. The metal door was hanging slightly open like someone had forced it. For one stupid second I thought maybe it was just a random break-in. Then I looked inside and felt sick.
Right in the center, pinned to the back wall with a small knife, was a flower. The same one I had been wearing when I kneed him. I thought it had fallen when I ran.
Above it, written in thick black marker, was one word big enough to fill the whole space:
BOW DOWN
Below it, in smaller letters: Next time, the flower won’t be the only thing I take from you.
I reached in without thinking and pulled the ruined flower free. The knife clattered to the floor. The petals crumbled in my hand. I felt something rise in my chest. Grief for the small, stupid thing that used to be mine, and rage at how easily they had reached into my space and torn it apart.
Then I heard footsteps.
I spun around. My shoulder hit the open locker door.
Dimitri stood three feet away, alone this time.
Alexei and Ilya weren’t with him, but I could feel them somewhere close.
He looked at the destroyed flower in my hand, then at the word carved into my locker.
I saw the satisfaction on his face and I wanted to punch it off him.
God, he made me so fucking aggressive.
And I was never aggressive. Unless it was about Daniel, the parasite at home.
I closed my fist around the petals.
“You did this.”
He took one step closer. I took one back. But there was nowhere else to go unless I tried to climb inside the locker.
Dimitri stopped right in my space, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to keep eye contact. Up close he was even taller than I remembered. He was blocking my entire view.
“You put your knee between my legs in front of half the school,” he said. “What did you expect, little fairy?”
I lifted my chin the same way I had the day before. I wouldn’t bow to him. I refused.
“So you’re pulling these pranks because I hurt your ego?” I asked, trying to sound bored.
He smiled. “You don’t know the rules yet. So I’m teaching you the first one.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I hated how close he was.
Couldn’t he talk from farther away?
I wanted to shove him. I wanted to knee him again just to hear that sound he had made. But I stayed still, because moving felt like signing my own death warrant.
And while I might have been depressed, I didn’t actually want to die.
Dimitri leaned in until his mouth was near my ear. It made me shiver.
Has this guy never heard of personal space?
“You had your moment yesterday. It won’t happen again. From now on, when I look at you in the hallway, you lower your eyes. When I speak, you answer. And when I tell you to get on your knees, you do it without making me ask twice. Understood?”
The arrogance on this guy was insane.
Unfortunately for him, my pride was the only thing I had left that hadn’t been ripped apart, and I wasn’t giving it to him.
“No.”
He pulled back and looked into my eyes. There was no surprise on his face. He actually looked satisfied, like he had been hoping I would say exactly that.
His hand moved up to the side of my neck, thumb resting over my pulse, feeling how fast it was racing.
“Then we do this the hard way,” he said softly.
He turned and walked away down the corridor. I watched him go until he disappeared around the corner.
My legs were shaking. The word carved into the metal behind me felt like a brand already sinking under my skin.
I forced myself to move before someone else saw me like this. I shoved what was left of my books into my bag, slammed the ruined locker shut, and walked fast.
The insults started before I even reached the main hallway. Two seniors I didn’t know passed me and one muttered, “There goes the idiot.”
The other laughed under his breath and added, “Wonder how long before they drag him out in pieces.”
I kept my face blank the way I had learned to do in Tokyo after the funeral, but the words still stung.
By the time I slipped into the narrow alcove with its single stone bench and the high window, my hands were shaking.
I sat cross-legged on the bench and tried to eat the sandwich I had grabbed from the cafeteria earlier.
It tasted like nothing.
I couldn’t pretend all of this wasn’t getting to me.
People who used to ignore me now stared too long or not at all.
The ones who stared whispered to their friends, and the whispers all said the same thing: I was the idiot who had kneed Dimitri Morozov in the balls and now I belonged to whatever game he decided to play.
No one wanted to be near me because being near me meant being near his attention. And his attention was the kind that could get you killed.
I was halfway through forcing down another bite when I heard footsteps stop at the entrance.
Marco stood there, curls messy, the little black ribbon in his hair slightly crooked like he had been running his hands through it all morning.
He did that when he was stressed. His hazel eyes were wide and scared, but he still stepped inside anyway and slid onto the bench beside me without asking.
He didn’t touch the sandwich. He just sat close enough that our shoulders touched.
“Rei, I’m scared for you.”
I looked at him, at the way his fingers twisted in the strap of his bag the same way they had the day before. The only light in this whole concrete nightmare. “Maybe you should stop hanging around me. Go eat in the cafeteria with the normal people. I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t.” He shook his head. “And I’m not leaving you alone in this.”
I had never met anyone who got as scared as Marco did, yet he was still choosing to stay by my side. He was so loyal.
We sat like that for a while. He told me how people were avoiding the east wing now that word had spread I was seen with Dimitri here. I listened and nodded and tried to keep my own fear off my face, because if Marco saw how badly I was shaken he would only worry more.
Anyway, it didn’t matter that I was scared. I would still kick back.