Chapter 7 #2
“You’ve kept your strength.”
“I had hoped that would be obvious.”
“Your ego remains healthy too. Good.”
I exhaled once through my nose, circling him again.
We went on like that for another ten minutes, the old rhythm coming back in bruising exchanges. Pain. Adjustment. Timing. My body always protested first and adapted second. Hoka had built half my fighting style around forcing that adaptation faster than felt possible.
Eventually he stepped back and tilted his head toward the weapons wall.
“Blade.”
I glanced at the racks, then back at him. “I have a gun, Uncle.”
“I know.” His eyes dropped pointedly to my cane. “You also have a katana blade hidden in there, and there was a time you were lethal with it. Perhaps you are slipping, boy.”
I drew the cane in front of me and pressed the release. The sound of steel leaving its sheath was soft and unmistakable, the slender blade catching the overhead light in one clean line.
Hoka reached for a training blade and tossed it once between his hands. “Show me.”
We moved again, slower at first, testing range. The cane changed everything. It always had. Balance, reach, deception in one package. Most men saw support before they saw weapon, and by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late.
Hoka did not have that problem.
He came in sharp and precise. I caught the first strike, deflected the second, but nearly missed the third because my mind had wandered for a fraction of a second.
Emily.
Hoka’s blade stopped at my throat.
He said nothing.
I said, “That’s irritating.”
“That,” he replied, “was avoidable.”
I stepped back, reset my grip, and made myself breathe.
“Again.”
I let the blade become extension rather than object, let instinct take over where thought had failed me, and when he came in hard from the left I pivoted, locked, twisted, and had my cane blade at his chest before he could recover his footing.
For one suspended beat, neither of us moved.
Then Hoka smiled.
It was a rare enough sight that it still had the power to unsettle me.
“Better,” he said.
I lowered the blade. “You seem surprised.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I’m checking.”
“For what?”
“If a woman has made you stupid.”
That got my attention.
I stared at him.
He rested the training blade loosely against his shoulder. “So far, the answer appears to be only intermittently.”
I barked a short laugh.
I lowered the blade fully and slid it back into the cane with a quiet click.
Hoka set his training weapon aside and waited, which was worse than if he had simply started asking questions.
Silence was one of his favorite tactics.
Let the room breathe long enough and the truth usually crawled out on its own.
I lasted perhaps ten seconds.
“I need you to look into someone.”
One dark brow lifted. “Oh?” Hoka reached for a towel and draped it around the back of his neck. “Don’t you have your own hacker for that? I’m disappointed.”
“I do.”
“And?”
I exhaled, already irritated by how this sounded. “He refused to look further.”
That actually made Hoka pause. “Refused?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Why?”
“He said he didn’t want someone’s death on his conscience.”
For one beat Hoka simply looked at me then he gave a low hum. “Smart man.”
“Well, if your teams had that type of moral compunction, they would be dead.”
Hoka laughed softly. “Indeed.”
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck, annoyed with myself for even being in this position.
“She changed her surname from Gallagher to Hart. Derek found the change but wouldn’t go further.
There’s something off about it. And she’s wary in ways that don’t match the answers she gives.
She says she wants to stay in Boston for the break because of work, but I don’t believe that’s the whole reason. ”
Hoka’s expression did not change, but his attention sharpened.
“And you are not fooled.”
“No.”
“Because you are perceptive,” he said mildly, “or because you are already looking for reasons she belongs to your future life?”
I looked at him flatly. “That’s not funny.”
“I didn’t say it to be funny.”
That was, regrettably, true.
He folded the towel once and set it aside. “Fine. I’ll have someone look into it.”
Relief came too quickly, which irritated me further.
But then he looked at me in a way I knew too well, calm and penetrating and already five steps ahead of where I wanted him to be.
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It is never nothing.”
“It rarely is,” he agreed.
I waited.
He crossed his arms. “Your father and I are not the most ethical men who’ve ever lived. I trust that by now this has not escaped you. But we have both learned from our mistakes, and you are far too bright for me to pretend you don’t understand what I’m about to say.”
I braced for his next words.
“Our life,” he went on, “is not for the faint of heart. If you bring a woman into it, truly bring her in, she needs more than your desire. More even than your certainty. Getting her tangled up in you while keeping her blind is not protection. It is selfishness.”
“I’m not doing that.”
I went at him harder than I should have, anger making me careless. Hoka shifted smoothly aside, and I hit the mat a second later with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
He looked down at me, unimpressed.
“At least give her something,” he said. “You cannot only take. It doesn’t work one way.”
I pushed myself back up, heat climbing my spine for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion. “Oh yes, because you’re an expert.”
“I am.”
The answer came without hesitation.
I stilled.
Hoka picked up the training blade again and turned it once in his hand, his voice quieter now, less mocking.
“I almost lost Violet because of the life I lead,” he said. “Not just physically. Mentally too. Fear does damage in ways bullets cannot. Suspicion does. Silence does. You think you are shielding someone when really you are only deciding, alone, what they are strong enough to bear.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then added, “If she matters, you do not get to build this alone in your head and call it love.”
The words landed harder than the fall had.
I pursed my lips. “I’m not trying to trap her.”
“I know.” His gaze dropped briefly to the cane in my hand, then lifted again. “But you are already thinking too far ahead. I can see it on you.”
That, more than anything, was irksome because it was true.
I looked away first.
Hoka let the silence sit for a moment before stepping back into stance. “Again.”
I frowned. “That is your answer?”
“It is the only one you’re going to get tonight.”
I exhaled once through my nose and reset my grip.
But even as I moved, even as steel met steel again under the harsh white lights of the training room, his words stayed with me.
At least give her something.
It was a simple thing to say and a far more difficult thing to do.
Because there was a part of me that doubted I was worth it.
I had never lacked confidence in what I could do, in what I could survive, in what I could become.
I knew my own value in the world I had been born into.
I knew what men saw when they looked at me now.
Strength. Control. A mind sharp enough to be useful and a name heavy enough to matter.
But Emily was not a negotiation, a strategy, or a war to be won.
She was a woman with soft green eyes and a careful heart, and if I gave her the truth of my life, I could not pretend the cost would be light.
Men like me did not come without blood on our hands and darkness at our heels. We did not offer simple lives. We did not offer ease.
And maybe that was what unsettled me most.
But for the first time in my life, I wanted to be enough for someone outside the role I was built for.
Hoka came at me again, fast enough that instinct took over before thought could. I blocked, turned, drove him back a step, and heard the sharp ring of steel echo through the room.
Still, the doubt remained.
Because if I gave Emily even one real piece of me, there would be no taking it back.
And if she looked at what I truly was and chose to walk away, I was not entirely certain I would survive that.
“Focus,” Hoka said.
I tightened my grip on the cane’s handle and forced my mind back to the task at hand.
But even then, with sweat at my back and my uncle trying to beat the hesitation out of me the way he always had, one thought stayed fixed at the center of everything: what I could give her before I asked her to give me anything at all.