Chapter 2
Flee 逃
Bridget
Looking at my husband blissfully asleep, I try the quell the beating in my heart, knowing what I have to do — get the fuck out of here while I still have the chance. While I still have the nerve.
Still, I stand at the edge of the bed, looking down at him for an interminable length of time. Captivated by the way the dark fringe of his lashes shadow his chiseled jaw, the way his jaw hollows and is shaded with a light dusting of new hair growth.
My pussy clenches thinking of how stubble felt when he buried his face between my legs after he chased me down on the property earlier after he took me for a drive.
I should have known he was toying with me.
That is the way of his cruelty. To promise me freedom to only snatch it away.
He takes pleasure in dangling hope, only to snatch it away just as my fingers graze it.
It’s been that way from the start. He will say we made a deal, but it was only one he made because he knew he would be victorious.
“Run, and if you make it off the estate with me not catching and claiming you, then you are free to go. If I catch you, then we dead this shit, and I don’t want to hear another word from your little messy ass, but ‘yes, sensei’ for the rest of our lives.”
I ran like hell. Still, he caught me before I could make it back here to escape him.
I never had a chance tonight, just as I know I never had a chance with him.
I can’t fathom why he wants me when it’s so obvious that he loathes me.
My Alabama southern nature to the way I snap back, kick, punch and never allow him to fully win.
I’m not the girl to ever cower, and coo over a motherfucker, and I never will.
I’m not a spit fire I’m a raging inferno.
Sure, I crushed on him hard, but that was before he kidnapped me in retaliation for Flower running away from Akchiro.
Sure, they are lovey-dovey now, and maybe even Ev is with Riyu, with the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her all night, though that’s not saying anything since all of these Takedas ain’t wrapped too tight.
They have this unhinged quality about them when it comes to the women they are obsessed with.
Flower knows this, that’s why she’s helping us now. She knows there is no way we should settle for the status quo of these marriages.
Turning to the garden, I follow the instructions of the message I literally ate earlier thanks to the cookies that Flower hid them on. Tea. Garden. Butterfly.
When I first saw them, my heart stuttered thinking, we’d get caught.
But everyone was so taken with the gifts they received that no one even batted an eye at me gobbling them up, other than to smirk at my sweet tooth.
Takashi admonished me, “You’ll get a tummy ache.
” He needn’t have worried. I was done after the evidence was gone.
The messages were emblazoned on my memory.
I handled the first part of the instruction giving Takashi the drugged tea as soon as he returned from the meeting he had with his brothers and cousins earlier after getting a message from the Yakuza prince, Tsuyoshi Tatsumoto they’d joined forces with now that he’d taken over the syndicate with patricide.
Whatever the issue was, it left him in a bitter mood.
So much so he didn’t even bother to hide any of his aggression when he returned to the room.
He snatched the tea I offered, drinking the brew before tossing me on the bed and taking me in his ruthlessly efficient manner. Barely moving when I eased from beneath him, I made my way to the shower on shaky, jello-like legs to shower and wash his come away.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t budge when I came back.
I’m barely breathing now. The anxiety about potentially getting caught has me in a chokehold, and that’s saying a lot.
I never hesitate to act. Out of the three of us who’ve been best friends since college, I’m the one who is the first to face the fire of whatever endeavor we have chosen to take on.
I was the one who urged my friends and partners in BITE, our tech firm, to leave the US and try our hands here where they seem to prize innovation and skill over nepotism and perceived pedigree.
Sliding the door open, I step out into the crisp winter night. Looking up I see the bright constellations being this close to heaven affords us being near Mount Fuji.
Chilled morning air makes the flesh on my arm rise, though I can’t be sure which of the emotions I’m feeling — the fear of being caught, or the excited elation of finally having freedom so close.
Traversing the garden, I head to the butterfly sanctuary.
It’s a glass enclosure resembling a crystal orb.
Madam Takeda has an affinity for butterflies that rivals her love her the lush gardens and the species of plants and flowers she propagates in her gardens.
The property holds several gardens and the matriarch takes a special pride in all of them.
Every suite has a matching garden attached for each family member to have moments of reflection.
Most days she takes tea in her garden, which looks out to the butterfly pavilion.
It’s so near dawn I’m certain she’ll see me if I tarry. My slippered feet make soft padding sounds as I near the orb.
Just as I reach the door. I see light bloom in her suite. Quickly, I slip inside. I press a slick hand over my chest. My heart is thudding, almost seeming to want to burst from me.
Inhaling only to expel the breath seconds later in a whoosh, I scan the small building. Butterflies doze on flowers while others flit from flower to flower in a delightful dance of pollination.
The smell of moist soil rises to meet my nose in a sweet, decadent aroma. It’s humid in here but way warmer than just beyond the doors. Hell warmer than the man whose icy rage incinerates just as hot a his passion.
Takashi is like a volcano on the verge of eruption. The most unsettling thing is how he chooses to target those explosions — overwhelming and intense sex that punish, pleasures meant to ruin me on every level from the moment he took me the first time.
More than a year ago…
“I — don’t know where Flower is.” Stammering for what seems like the thousandth time.
“I believe you.” The cruel smile breaking across his face tells me he could give a fuck.
“We do not know where Flower is or when she planned all this.” Speaking truthfully, I feel fear for the first time since knowing the ruthless twin brothers who seem more opposite than anything despite being mirror images of one another.
“See, that is not what my brothers think.” Violence pulses within his aura like an entity ready to burst free and devour everything in its path. The scary thing is that I’m the very thing he’s focused on. “Personally, I don’t care, but I’m sick of chasing after ungrateful women.”
It’s been weeks, and he’s come and gone several times now. The focus has moved from searching for Flower and Asa, the only Takeda heir. Now it’s on me and Evangeline’s possible involvement.
I don’t question why she left the way she did, nearly killing Akchiro. My heart only hurts at the thought of what she must have endured, what she was going through and didn’t think she could share with Ev and me, her best friends in the world aside from her sister, Willow.
“Maybe you should think of what your brother did to make my friend run from his crazy ass, or is abuse not beneath the so-called Takeda honor code?” I sneer up into the onyx, unfathomable gaze of the beautiful man standing before me, looking like he wants to throttle me.
His gaze slides to the side before he turns his rage filled gaze back to me.
Looming over me, he cages me, grasping the arms of the chair I’m sitting in.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Akchiro loved her. He was gone for her from the moment he met her.
Yet. That was never good enough for your friend.
All she’s done is lie and run from my brother.
Now, she’s stolen his son — my nephew.” He rises, his nose flaring as he exhales hard.
Picking up the crystal highball, he swallows the last of his whisky before slamming it down on the hard surface of the table, splintering the glass into a million shards.
How his hand isn’t bleeding, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s the martial arts training he’s been doing for the three weeks I’ve been here.
To actually think the night he showed up at the apartment Ev and I share I thought he actually came to see me.
I feel so fucking dumb now, remembering how my heart tripped over itself.
How I rushed off the phone with Ev only for him to lure me out of my apartment, bringing me to his private estate.
I’d thought that they all lived at the Toranomon Towers but he has a hideaway just outside of Tokyo.
It’s been days. I may have allowed him to bring to another location like a trusting idiot when he claimed, “Akchiro needs you. It’s about Flower and Asa.” It wasn’t a lie. After all three brothers interrogated us, Akchiro left furious after snapping, “Take care of them.”
Tummy cramping in fear, I could do nothing but watch as Riyu hauled Ev away leaving me here with his fellow psychopath twin.
My cycle started immediately after Takashi brought me here, which in some way saved me.
Not that he’s shown anything other than a pulsing undercurrent of rage.
For some reason, I’m drawn to him. I catch myself looking at him — the way his muscles show through the thin material he wears when he comes in the morning after his workout to check on me.
One morning, his eyes flashed when I snatched away after he gripped my chin to make me acknowledge him. “I like that, bishōjo.”