Chapter fifty three
Dion
My father didn’t answer his phone for three days after Nadia disappeared. Not unusual. Naoya Hattori treated communication like warfare. Information was leverage. Silence was control. Half the Kingsmen spent their lives trying to guess what the fuck he was thinking because he liked it that way.
But this? This felt different. The North side had gone dead quiet. That was worse. No races. No public meetings. No visible movement around Kingsmen territory. Like everybody was waiting for instructions. Or punishment.
I sat in my car outside one of the old South Side warehouses watching rain slide down the windshield while my phone buzzed for the fourth time. Riven. Again. Ignored it. Not because I didn’t care. But because I didn’t know what the hell to say to him anymore.
Sorry your wife got kidnapped by a secret organization my father works for? Bit awkward. The warehouse lights finally flicked on around midnight. About fucking time. I got out immediately. The guards near the entrance stiffened when they saw me approaching. Neither stopped me. They knew better.
Being Naoya’s son still meant something around here.
Even now. Inside, the warehouse smelled like oil, smoke, and wet concrete.
Kingsmen soldiers moved between shipment crates with their heads down, avoiding eye contact.
Wrong. Everybody looked nervous. Scared, almost. That never happened.
One of the older captains, Minho, intercepted me halfway across the floor.
“You shouldn’t be here tonight.” I kept walking.
“Move.”
“Dion.” His voice lowered carefully.
“Your father’s busy.”
“I didn’t ask.” His jaw tightened.
“There’s a meeting.” That got my attention. Kingsmen leadership didn’t hold meetings at midnight unless somebody was about to die. I slowed slightly.
“With who?” Minho hesitated. My stomach twisted.
“Olympus?” His silence answered enough.
Chills spread slowly through my chest, because that meant one thing: Whatever happened after Nadia’s kidnapping escalated fast. I pushed past him immediately.
“Dion-”
“Move before I break your fucking nose.” He moved. Smart choice.
The meeting room sat above the warehouse floor behind thick black doors usually reserved for Kingsmen leadership only. Voices echoed faintly from inside when I approached. One belonged to Naoya. Calm, controlled, dangerous.
The other voices I didn’t recognize. I pushed the doors open anyway, and the room went silent instantly.
Five men sat around the table. Expensive suits.
Older and cold-eyed. Members of Olympus, no question about it.
And at the head of the table sat my father, looking completely unsurprised to see me.
Of course he wasn’t. Naoya folded his hands calmly.
“Leave us.” The Olympus men looked irritated immediately. One of them, older, silver-haired, spoke first.
“This discussion does not involve him.” Naoya’s eyes flicked toward the man slowly.
“It does now.”
The tension in the room shifted instantly. Interesting. Even Olympus members seemed careful around my father. I stayed near the doorway. Didn’t sit, didn’t speak. Naoya watched me for several long seconds before finally asking,
“You’ve been helping them.” Not a question. I shrugged.
“You kidnapped a girl in a coma.” One of the older men scoffed softly.
“Girl?”
Something ugly moved behind Naoya’s eyes immediately. The room noticed too. Because silence followed instantly. Nobody corrected me. Nobody diminished Nadia again. Not in front of him. That realization lodged uncomfortably beneath my ribs. What the fuck was she to them really? Naoya finally stood.
“Walk with me.” I almost refused out of spite.
Instead, I followed him out onto the warehouse catwalk overlooking the shipments below. Rain hammered the metal roof overhead. For a while, neither of us spoke.
“You disappoint me.” There it was. Classic father. I laughed bitterly.
“Was wondering how long it’d take.” Naoya rested both hands on the railing.
“You continue choosing emotion over purpose.”
“Yeah, because purpose apparently means human trafficking.” His expression didn’t change. That used to bother me as a kid. Now it just made me tired.
“You understand very little about the structure preserving this town.” I stared at him.
“Preserving?” The word actually made me angry. Not explosive anger, worse. The slow kind.
“Stonebridge is a graveyard,” I said quietly.
“And Olympus profits from everybody buried in it.” Naoya looked out across the warehouse floor calmly.
“The gangs created their own violence.”
“No,” I snapped.
“You fed it.” Silence. The catwalk creaked softly beneath us.
“Nadia Slade destabilized delicate systems.” I laughed once in disbelief.
“You mean she found out the truth.”
“That truth is larger than you understand.”
“There it is.” I stepped closer.
“That bullshit superiority complex all you people have.”
Naoya looked at me then. Actually looked at me. And suddenly I felt twelve years old again, standing in a dojo bleeding from a split lip while he told me weakness embarrassed the family.
“You mistake control for cruelty.” He said.
“No.” My voice sharpened.
“I think you mistake cruelty for necessity.”
That landed. Barely, but enough. Because for the first time all night, irritation cracked through his composure.
“You have no understanding of sacrifice.”
The words hit strangely. Because beneath the anger, something else sat there. Conviction. Naoya genuinely believed this. Olympus. Stonebridge. The gangs. He believed all of it served a greater purpose. That terrified me more than if he’d just been evil.
“You know what your problem is?” I asked quietly. His expression cooled.
“You think love makes people weak.” A long silence followed. Then Naoya said something that made my blood run cold.
“It makes them predictable.”
Riven and Nadia. Pop and Cordelia, as I’ve recently figured out. Guess I’m not totally fucking useless. Every tragedy in this town suddenly clicked
together differently. Olympus exploited attachment. Every single time. My jaw tightened.
“Where is she?” Naoya didn’t answer. I stepped closer again.
“Where’s Nadia?”
“She is where she belongs.” The words nearly made me swing on him.
“She’s not property.”
“No.” He agreed calmly.
“She is legacy.” His eyes took on a reverent glint.
The rain sounded deafening suddenly. Legacy. Not heir, not replacement. Something older. Something worse. I stared at my father, trying to understand what the fuck that meant. Then my phone buzzed again in my pocket. Riven. Naoya noticed instantly.
“Answer it.” That caught me off guard.
“What?”
“You are going to continue helping him regardless.”
Naoya’s expression hardened slightly.
“So answer the phone.”
Something about that felt wrong. Calculated, like he wanted something. Still, I answered. Riven picked up immediately.
“Where are you?” Straight to the point. Typical.
“North side.”
“Did you talk to him?” I looked directly at Naoya.
“Yeah.”
“And?” I hesitated.
Because how the fuck was I supposed to explain this conversation? Is your wife apparently part of some psychotic legacy system run by rich cult leaders pretending they’re gods? Easy. Before I could answer, Naoya spoke loudly enough for the phone to catch it.
“Tell Riven grief is making him reckless.” A murderous silence emanated from the other end of the line.
“…Did he just fucking say my name?” My stomach dropped.
Because suddenly I understood exactly what this was. Naoya wanted Riven angry. Wanted him unstable. Obsessive. Emotional. Predictable. The realization made me feel sick. I looked at my father carefully. And for the first time in my life?
I genuinely wondered if there was anything human left inside him at all.