Chapter 37 #2
He stops beneath it. “I have waited for a long time for you to come to me. Is there anything you would like to know of your past?”
A knifing sensation stabs my gut. Of course I have questions about my past.
“No,” I say stiffly.
“Not even of your mother?”
I bristle. I’ve been training with Kurosaki for a while, but this is the first time he’s spoken about her.
The yakuza boss pauses underneath a dead tree and presses his hand against the trunk. His tone is so soft I have to lean in to hear.
“Your mother is the one who named you.”
My heartbeat picks up.
“Will you not ask?” Kurosaki taunts me, dangling the promise of answers in the air.
I fight it. With everything in me, I struggle to restrain myself.
But I’ve been searching for so long…
“What’s my name?”
“Keiji,” he says with a smile.
“Key-ji?” I pronounce it the way Kurosaki does. It’s clunky on my tongue. The name doesn’t feel like mine. It doesn’t feel like me at all. “What does it mean?”
“To rule with discretion.” The wind picks up and tugs at his beard. “You were born to lead. Even she knew.”
Keiji.
“Do you know the first lesson a leader must learn?”
Based on the training I’ve done so far, it’s how to survive a knife fight without any weapons.
“Vision.” He watches me closely. “You must believe in a world that doesn’t exist so desperately, so passionately, that you will do anything to create that world, to drag it from nothing into reality. A leader can do this.” He steps forward. “You can do this.”
I step back. “My vision is not the same as yours.”
“We have more in common than you think.”
Is he insane? I glare at him. “Working with Jarod Cross, The Grateful Project—is that your vision of the world?”
“Everything I do, I do to earn what is rightfully mine.” Reaching out, he whispers, “But more importantly, I do what I do so my family can be restored.”
I pull back.
Kurosaki barks out a laugh. “Even now, after all I have done for you, you still look at me as a monster.”
“You’re a criminal.”
“I am your father.”
“You’re a sperm donor,” I growl.
I see his hand coming at me, and I remain in place, waiting for the sting of his palm.
But it never comes.
Kurosaki’s hand stops a breadth away from my cheek. His chest heaves, and he drops his hand slowly while looking at the gnarled tree. “She would not want us to fight. Not here, in front of her.”
My breath escapes faster as chaos roils in my chest. The man has more reverence for the dead than the living.
I press forward, seeing a crack in his armor. “Was my mother kind?”
“A bleeding heart.”
I use the knife he’s given me and plunge it in. “You traded scholarship students to politicians. Would she be pleased by that?”
His back stiffens. At least he has some kind of shame, particularly when it comes to my mother.
She was his conscience.
“Your mother believed in my vision.”
“What kind of vision sacrifices the innocent?”
“Innocent? They were lured by their own greed.”
“They were powerless and you exploited them.”
“Leaders have to make hard choices. When that moment comes, and it will, you will both understand me.” His eyes stray to the tree again.
“That day will never come. You and I are not the same.”
“You think kindness will save you? A heart that bleeds for everyone protects no one.” He pauses and stares at me for a long time. “You are so brilliant, yet so utterly naive.”
“We are all monsters. All of us.” Kurosaki points at me.
“Even you, who feel yourself morally superior. You have everything. Everything! The world at your fingertips and yet there is no joy in your eyes. You have been searching for meaning, searching for purpose. And you hide it. You use your brothers as armor. You shield yourself in indecency and debasement to quiet the cries of your own wasted potential.”
His mouth tightens and his eyes rake over me. “Whether you like it or not, you are my son. Deep inside, something calls you to greatness. Something calls you to action. This life that you’ve built of shallow adoration and ease—it is not enough for you. You long for more. You long to feel alive.”
I shake my head, rejecting his words with everything inside me. But a tiny voice in the darkest, deepest corners of my mind whispers that he’s right. My life as Jarod Cross’s son gave me everything and nothing, all at the same time. Maybe this is the path I need to follow to finally feel alive.
Following Kurosaki means killing and hurting people. Is that the excitement I need?
Kurosaki’s eyes fix on something in the distance. It’s one of his lieutenants.
“Is it ready?” Kurosaki asks.
The man responds in Japanese. I normally don’t understand anything when they speak in a different language, but I immediately recognize the words “Cross.”
“What did he say?” I demand. “Which Cross is he talking about?” My legs are moving before I know what I’m doing, and I’m in front of Kurosaki in a second. “If you touched one of my brothers…”
Kurosaki lifts a hand.
At first, I’m confused until I see his shadow guards standing down. My eyes dart around. Where did the security team come from? He had so many people watching us in secret?
“You’re afraid of me.” I look down into his wrinkled face, realizing that I’m towering over him. Or, more accurately, he’s starting to hunch with age.
He fought for all this power, all this influence, but he’s going to die eventually and leave it behind.
It’s all futile.
“Ignore them.” He points to the path. “Breakfast?”
Rather than follow him, I call Dutch. I’m sure I heard that guy say “Cross” when speaking to Kurosaki. I need to make sure my brothers are okay.
The line rings and rings.
Dutch isn’t answering.
An oily sensation coils around my neck. What if Kurosaki has him? What if my brothers are being tortured? What if they’re already dead?
The line connects.
“Hello?” Dutch whispers.
“Where are you right now?” I growl. “Is Zane with you?”
“Yeah. Dad sent a location pin early this morning, so we’re about to meet him.”
“Where?” I ask desperately. “Tell me what you see.”
“A gazebo and some Japanese style buildings, I think…?”
My stomach rolls to the size of a skipping rope, and bile rises to my throat.
I turn to Kurosaki.
He points, the smile never leaving his lips. “This way.”