Rei
Rei set aside his work, his head aching.
He’d spent the last four hours untangling a web of agreements, comments, manifests, shipment requests, and documented appearances, amongst other data, to nail down exactly who was covering for Merchari activities in San Paulo.
At the rate he was going, he was adding Spanish and Portuguese to his list of languages.
But he didn’t have time to learn two new languages, hence hours of carefully translating texts using digital translating apps.
There were certainly some words and phrases that he was starting to recognize.
He did, however, have a list of texts he did not understand.
And he also had a set of documents that he hoped Ellisandre could translate.
If they couldn’t, perhaps they could get émeric to translate them without revealing why.
Everything would be easier if they were actually working together.
He’d already started sorting information into sections and marking them in code for who he thought could handle which parts.
What they didn’t have was anyone with deep ties to South American governments.
Not in the Residency, and not in Ellisandre’s contacts. At least not that Rei was aware of.
The Residency would help. After spending the day with them filming, he trusted his sense of safety around the men at the core of their community, and the people they were keeping close.
It was time to bring them in. Except he didn’t know how to convince Sevastyan to make a move.
He’d only brought Ellisandre and Lisa in when Dirk had forced his hand.
Rei pulled his knees up to his chest and pressed himself into a ball in the corner of the couch.
Lisa and Sevastyan were training in the one bedroom they weren’t using for sleeping or for the secret room.
They wouldn’t be out for at least another hour.
Now that Lisa’s leg was more than half healed, Sevastyan was training in earnest.
Mostly forms, proper walking, kneeling, holding posture.
The details that separated an artist from an amateur in the criminal underground of masters.
Rei balled his fists up and rubbed his eyes.
He’d been following the fallout inside the Merchari over Sevastyan’s execution of Dirk.
For the most part, it had been positive.
Dirk had made enemies and left bad will, especially amongst the European sections.
Alexi’s casual remarks two days later about how badly the men had injured two well-behaved slaves had also gone far.
Plenty of the upper level members of the Merchari had witnessed both Alexi and Sevastyan’s slaves in public settings and considered them a credit to the power of the organization.
The fact that Dirk’s men had needed to rough up compliant slaves was the equivalent of dropping an expensive painting and ruining it while trying to steal it.
They would have cared less if Dirk had abducted the slaves.
But the chatter in South Korea continued.
Rei bit his knuckle and then immediately stopped, remembering to not mark himself.
The wife of the client Jun had killed was not giving up on revenge, and the Merchari agents interfacing with her and the Yadro and whatever other shadow parties were involved were fanning the flames.
There was a great deal of money at stake.
The debts Jun had been sold for were large.
Jun’s sale price would only have covered part of the interest that Bak Gyeong owed the Merchari.
The Yadro and others wanted their money back.
The wife of the dead client wanted blood and satisfaction.
She was well aware that her husband had bought Jun against his will, but remained outraged that he had gotten away with resistance.
In one Yadro report she was quoted as describing Jun’s self-defense as “murderous disrespect and impertinence to authority, age, and those above his station in all ways”.
She had also called him a whore and a low class entertainer.
If anything, her arrogance exceeded that of her dead husband’s, despite the fact he had bought and attempted to use another human against their will.
They had only days before something significant moved, but Sevastyan had done nothing other than attend two very public functions, take some calls, and post dates for an art exhibition he was preparing in the city for that summer, his current public reason for being in Chicago.
He’d just announced the event the day before, a flag waving in the face of anyone else who wanted to come after him as Dirk had done.
He’d even managed to get on the mayor’s calendar for a one-on-one meeting the next month.
It was a display of arrogance that was attracting attention.
He needed to trust Sevastyan, to trust that Sevastyan had a purpose in why he hadn’t yet approached Jun and Damian, and the rest of The Residency.
But a part of him didn’t. And that was worse, somehow.
It was easier when he could empty his head and tell himself that his master had everything under control.
Sevastyan did not have everything under control.
Had never had everything under control. Rei pulled his fists away from his eyes and sat up, forcing himself to breathe deep.
It was his fault Sevastyan was playing safe.
It was his fault Sevastyan was hesitating when he had been ready to push Anton to move against the Merchari in January. Without Rei, Sevastyan could do little.
But if his life was on the line, Sevastyan choked up. And since Dirk, Rei’s life was on the line. Had nearly been already lost.
He needed to prove to his master that they were safer with friends. But that had never been true for Sevastyan. How did you make someone believe something that they had real evidence to not believe?
The feeling of warmth and security that Rei had experienced during the taping of the music video with 5N and The Residency all moving and working around him, welled up inside Rei’s chest.
He hugged himself, sinking into that sensation.
It was one he’d grown up with. Even if Bak Gyeong had been an ever-present terror above them, he’d had Jun and Yoihei and later Jaewoong and Geun.
It had been a hard feeling to draw up and remember but the day Ellisandre had gifted him, even masked and under a pseudonym, had brought those memories back to the surface from the deep dark place he’d left them.
How could he gift the same feeling to his master?
Rei blinked away tears. It seemed like he was always fighting the need to cry these past years and it was getting worse. Like there was so much inside that it was always trying to break free from his bones. He brushed them away and pushed the soft, full feeling down.
If Sevastyan couldn’t do it on trust, maybe he would do it for Rei.
For Jun. And for Lisa. Maybe he could make Sevastyan do what needed to be done.
Rei stared at his hands. He’d never, in all their years together, made Sevastyan do anything.
It went against the foundation of their dynamic.
And yet deep in his belly, there was a sense that he could do this.
He grabbed his computer again, mentally sorting out how he would deploy each person, from himself to Richard, and Ellisandre and all the rest, their webs of influence and contacts spreading out in his mind’s eye like a map.
Even if he could push Sevastyan forward, though, they needed more time. Taking down the Merchari all at once was going to take longer than Jun had left. And that was not a problem Rei had a solution to. Yet.