Chapter 32 Leo
LEO
Adrenaline courses through my veins. It feels like an enormous weight has lifted from my shoulders as I head back to our quarters to find Sora.
Now that I’ve cast off the shackles of my inheritance, the burden of my father’s expectations, I feel bold and fierce and finally free. All I can think about is collecting Sora and getting out of here.
But the doors to our apartment are already open when I reach them, and I step inside, frowning. She never leaves them open, and I know I didn’t when I left. The room is quiet, still.
“Sora?” I call, heading into the bedroom.
The bed is empty, the sheets rumpled from our passionate night together, and my chest swells to think of Sora and me wrapped up in each other’s arms, the intimacy after confessing our love.
I can’t wait to start a life with her—a new one, away from all the deception and lies, the blood and violence.
We’ve never talked about something so drastic as leaving Chicago altogether, but I know Sora.
She might be loyal to her family, but she doesn’t want this life any more than I do.
I make a quick sweep of the rooms, just to confirm Sora’s not here, then head toward the breakfast room.
The house is empty, my brothers likely going about their business for the day, the staff invisible as they perform their tasks. Entering the dining area, I find it vacant too.
Where the hell is she?
My impatience is entirely due to the restless energy building inside me as my desire to leave this hellhole behind continues to grow.
Finally, I cross paths with Alfonzo and stop him.
“Have you seen Sora today?”
“The signora left not long ago,” he says, his graying eyebrows rising as he glances toward the front door.
“Left? Where did she go?” Sora rarely leaves the house—and never without telling me.
“I… believe to visit her parents, Signore,” Alfonzo answers, his voice halting. “She called for a car.”
My heart sinks. But I can hardly fault her for wanting to see them.
After yesterday, Sora likely wants to show her family that she’s okay—maybe not Kenji, but her parents.
I was not entirely cordial about the way I sent them away, refusing to let them come into the yacht’s bedroom in case they might wake her.
“Thank you, Alfonzo,” I say, and with a nod, I turn away. I’m surprised by Sora’s spontaneous plans, but I don’t want to get in her way.
I’ll just have to wait.
We can talk about it when she gets home, but I need to tell somebody—and Miko’s the first person who comes to mind.
I take a sharp left and head toward the stairs that lead to Miko’s wing of the house.
I find him halfway down the hallway, wearing his usual crisp black suit, his eyes on his phone as he reads something and walks.
I know tucked beneath his jacket are at least four different knives, another two strapped to his ankles and a gun holstered near his chest.
That’s Miko for you, always ready for a fight—and still, he looks dressed to impress, like our father taught us.
Before I can say anything, Miko’s eyes flash up to meet mine, and his eyebrows lift.
I don’t normally come looking for my brother.
Usually, it’s the other way around—usually because the don has tasked Miko with wrangling me so he can give me a lecture.
“You lost, Brother?” he teases, slipping his phone into his pocket as he closes the distance between us.
I snort. “Hardly. For the first time, I feel like I’ve found myself. But I can’t find Sora, and I needed to tell somebody, so you’re my lucky number two.”
“I’m honored,” he says flatly. “But where’s your wife? You run her off already?”
“Ha. If I were capable of that, she would have been long gone by now.”
“She is a resilient one, isn’t she?”
“Hmm.”
The hum of amusement sounds dangerously affectionate, even to me, and Miko casts me a curious look.
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?” he observes.
“She is my wife,” I point out.
“Yeah, but this is something else. I’ve seen you around a lot of girls. I know when you have something physical going on. But with Sora, you’re different. You’re protective of her.”
I huff, but the skepticism fades quickly when I think about my behavior over the past few weeks.
My irrational jealousy when I heard Gio making her laugh, jumping into the water when I saw she’d gone overboard, even this morning, giving up my inheritance and walking away after my father suggested I should get rid of her—every rash decision I’ve made has been to keep her close.
Miko stops to face me as the silence stretches between us, and I turn to look at my adopted brother.
“What’s going on, Leo?” he presses.
Sighing, I rub the back of my neck, knowing I’m about to drop a bomb on my brother. “I—”
A massive boom ripples across the grounds, shaking the foundations of the house, and I turn my head to look for the source of the unexpected noise.
“That sounded like it came from the front gate,” Miko observes, and I nod.
What would cause that kind of racket? And why?
Another resounding crash echoes around us, the vibrations raising the hair on the back of my neck, and the following screech of metal on metal sets my teeth on edge.
Then sharp footsteps rush across the marble floor below us. Miko and I share a glance and bolt for the stairs, racing to find the cause of the disturbance.
Staff members race back and forth across the entry, their expressions frightened, their movements harried.
Several of the guards stationed around our property come barreling through the front door, nearly knocking Alfonzo off his feet as they burst inside.
“What’s going on?” I demand, striding purposefully toward them.
“We’re under attack,” one man gasps, his face pale, his brow sweaty. “They’ve battered through the front gates, sir—they’re already inside the property lines.”
“Who is?” I ask, as I reach the front door.
“From what I can tell? The Irish, the Russians… the Japanese.”
“What?” I growl, tossing the man a furious scowl.
Glass shatters to my left, and someone screams as a Molotov cocktail flies through the window, exploding in a liquid burst of flame against the wall. Miko pushes past me, storming fearlessly outside to assess the situation as the staff flinch around me, ducking for cover.
There’s no gunfire—not yet, at least—which tells me that, as much as I don’t want to believe it, the Yakuza are leading the charge.
Their skill with close combat and blades means they’ve probably killed the rest of the men stationed at the front gate. That’s why they managed to batter it down without starting a firefight.
And as I step out onto the front porch, I can see the hell storm coming down on us.
Pyotr Novikov and his men are responsible for the homemade bombs bursting through our windows at an alarming rate, setting fires to every flammable surface on the front of the house.
It would seem the Murrays have entered the fray as well—those bastards who entice my brother Sandro into their fighting pits every week like we’re friends. They’re pounding anyone they can get their hands on.
And leading the charge is Kenji.
He leans out of the open door of his SUV, flat palm pounding on the roof as he shouts in Japanese, and the Escalade comes screeching to a stop at the foot of our front steps, spraying gravel far enough to reach me.
“Get back inside,” Miko commands, reappearing at my side. He plants a massive palm against my chest and pushes me back.
“Not a chance. I’m going to kill that bastard,” I snarl. If I hadn’t been so concerned for Sora, I would have strangled the life out of Kenji yesterday, right there on our yacht.
But now that he’s delivered himself to my front door, shattering our alliance in one fell swoop, I refuse to let him take another breath.
“Do you have a gun?” Miko demands, continuing to shove me back, and when my behemoth of an adopted brother chooses to use his full strength of force, I can’t stand my ground.
“I don’t need a gun. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
“Yeah, well he has a gun, so you’re going to need more than that to get close to him.” Miko gives me another shove, and this time I don’t resist, because he’s right. I can’t kill Kenji if I’m dead.
With a snarl, I turn back towa
rd the entry and race for my office—where I keep my closest gun. The house is in chaos, some of the staff trying to put out the rapidly spreading fires while others seem more concerned with finding a way to stay alive.
“What the hell is going on?” my father demands as he bursts from his study, storming toward the front entrance.
“We’re under attack,” I growl. “Your puppets managed to cut their strings, and now Kenji’s on our front lawn with a convoy of guns.”
I don’t bother explaining further as I race the last few yards to the door into my home office and throw it open, making my way to the desk.
That’s when the gunfire starts.
I suspect they were trying to keep the attack quiet for as long as possible to avoid police interference. But by now, our remaining guards have been alerted, and no doubt Miko has taken charge of killing as many traitorous snakes as he can find.
Snagging several guns from the safe in my desk, I holster three, checking each to make sure they’re loaded.
But as I grab the fourth, I catch the distinct sound of a gun cocking from the doorway.
“Too slow, Chiaroscuro.”
I know it’s Kenji before I straighten to meet him in the eye, and my stomach knots because the fact that he made it past Miko likely means my brother is dead. Fury boils inside me, turning my blood to molten lava.
“You fucking traitor,” I snarl, my hand twitching with the desire to shoot him, but I know that I won’t be able to raise my gun, cock it, and fire in the time that it would take for him to kill me. “I knew you would do something this stupid. You’re a disgrace to the Tanaka name.”
“Oh? And what makes you think my family doesn’t fully support what I’m doing right now?” he asks, taking another step into the room as he keeps his gun aimed at me. “You think I would risk destroying your family without my father’s blessing? Without Sora’s blessing?”
It feels like a punch to the gut when Kenji says her name, and for a moment, I can’t make sense of his words. “Sora wouldn’t…” I start, but I don’t even know what I’m trying to say because the thought of Sora betraying me is beyond my comprehension.
“Sora wouldn’t what? Choose her family over you? She wouldn’t want us to kill the man who humiliated her on numerous occasions?”
Guilt knots in my chest as my stomach sinks like a stone. I was a complete ass in the beginning. I can own up to that. But I truly thought we were past it. “She’s my wife. She wouldn’t deceive me like that,” I growl, my heart hammering.
“That’s just cute if you thought my sister was ever loyal to you,” Kenji sneers.
“Did you think she would stay with you forever? That she was just a good little Yakuza wife who would show you the luxury of a civilized existence? You baka. Sora’s safely back at the Tanaka estate, eagerly waiting for me to come tell her I killed you. ”
Kenji slowly stalks closer, getting in a better position, but I can’t seem to move.
It’s all I can do to force breaths in and out of my lungs. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, the details start to come together, and I know he isn’t lying.
Alfonzo did say that Sora went home to visit her family. She did so without warning and while I wasn’t around to ask questions.
Did she know? Was she getting out before the attack?
The timing is too perfect to mean anything else, and the realization is like a dagger to the heart.
It feels as though the ground has fallen out from under me, the one truth that drove my choice to abandon my family like sand shifting beneath my feet.
If I knew how this would end, I never would have abandoned my position as don. I never would have left my brothers to sort out this mess alone.
With Sora, I could finally see a different path for my future. Without her, the world suddenly feels cold and empty of meaning.
“On your knees, Don Leonardo,” Kenji sneers, dragging my thoughts from my pit of despair back to my harsh reality. “And hands where I can see them.”
It won’t matter that Sora ripped my heart out if I’m dead.
It won’t matter that I’ve completely failed my family.
They’ll suffer all the same. The thought awakens a fury inside me that fills me with the burning desire to destroy Kenji—whatever it takes.
I don’t need to survive what comes next. I only need him dead.
Releasing the gun sitting in the open drawer of my desk, I lower myself to do as he says.
My hands hover near my shoulders, my knees finding the floor as cold steel meets my temple.
The survival instinct is a powerful one, and the fresh rush of adrenaline that floods my veins only stokes the burning desire to spill Kenji’s blood.
Sora’s brother lets out an amused hum as he stands over me.
“I don’t know how the Chiaroscuro family has stayed on top for so long.
The other families took a lot more convincing than I thought they would because they’re all scared of you, scared of the violence you could bring down on their heads.
But your family has grown weak, lulled into a false sense of security after too many years on top.
And now it’s my pleasure to inform you that your time is over, hotshot. It’s my turn now.”
The words echo strangely in my mind, too similar to what I said to my father this morning for comfort.
And once again, it reminds me of the never-ending violent cycle that makes the wheels of our world turn. There will never be a final resolution.
But I refuse to let Kenji win.
“I’ll tell my sister you said goodbye,” he says coldly.
And with the split-second warning that this is the end, I move like lightning, spinning on my knees, dropping my head, and bringing my hands up against Kenji’s wrists to redirect his gun.
A deafening report fills the room as the gun goes off mere inches from me.
The bullet lodges itself in the ceiling of my study as I slam my shoulder into Kenji’s solar plexus, knocking him off his feet.
I can see the flash of fear in his eyes as my hands close around the gun to wrestle it from his hands. But he’s not letting go that easily.
We roll across the ground, slamming into furniture as we trade the upper hand in rapid succession.
Implementing all my years of combat training, I use my elbows, knees, and even my head to target any weak points on his body, but Kenji’s a skilled fighter as well.
Blow after blow, we fight, the gun pinned between us as I work to keep it aimed away from me.
I know if I give him even an inch, I’ll be dead. But if I can shift its position—even a little—all I’ll have to do is pull the trigger.
“Kusotare, die!” Kenji snarls, his composure gone, his face red as a vein pulses in his temple.
Then the gun fires.