Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
I ’ve said it before but getting tortured sucks.
Being taken care of by my husband, however, has been the best experience ever.
Is he overbearing? Yes, all the fucking time. The man has taken my personal security to a whole new level. We haven’t spoken about what went down with his mother, but he hasn’t killed her yet. I don’t know if he can or if he ever will. Although, if the hot tea that Hiro is giving me is correct, she’ll be dead of an infection sooner rather than later.
Kenzo refuses to give her any medical care.
He won’t order her death, and he won’t kill her himself, but he will let her rot.
I spent nearly a week in the hospital before the doctors discharged me. They wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t suffer any adverse effects. I think my husband threatened them to keep me there for as long as they could. But they couldn’t keep me forever. I was well enough to go home, and now that is exactly where we are headed.
Home.
“I can walk, you know,” I tease him softly as he carries me up to the penthouse.
“I know,” he tells me. I let out an appeased hum and lean my head against his shoulder, content. This is what I dreamed of. A husband who cares for me.
We won’t talk about love.
Not yet.
I know he loves me, but I also know he might not be able to verbally express that love the same way I can. But he shows it every single day. In the way he runs me a bath and washes my hair. The gentle touches and kisses. The way he stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking.
“What do you want for dinner?” he asks as he sets me down in our bed. The fucker didn’t even let me change into normal attire. Before leaving the hospital, he dressed me in my fluffy rabbit pajamas and said I’d be spending the rest of the day in bed. Full stop.
“Chinese.”
He nods as he pulls out his phone and shoots off a text to one of his men. When I told him about the men who attacked me, he did a full interior sweep of all his men. It turns out there were more than a few who weren’t loyal to him, but most were. Most of the men involved in taking me were outliers. Members of another Yakuza. One that was currently being wiped off the map, apparently.
“Are you…” I pause to find my words. “Are you okay with everything?”
My husband shoots me a questioning look.
I shrug. “It’s just…well, there has been a lot,” I say. “My mom. Your mom. The baby. You never really tell me what you’re thinking or feeling.”
Kenzo runs a hand down his face and sighs before he crawls into bed next to me. “I think that I wish I wouldn’t have blindly trusted her. That I should have known that something was off.”
“She’s your mother.” It seems like a lame excuse, but I know that it is so much more. A mother is supposed to be someone you rely on. Trust. I grew up never relying on my mother or trusting her, while Kenzo grew up thinking his mother loved him and had the best in mind for him. When all she wanted was to take the power he built from under him.
In some ways, I think it is worse for him. Being betrayed by someone you love is never easy.
“I don’t think she was ever my mother,” he tells me honestly. “Like my father, I was nothing more than a stepping stone for her. A power play. I could have done everything right in her eyes, and she probably still would have shot me in the back.”
Can’t argue with that.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I whisper sadly. Kenzo shrugs as if it is no big deal. As if the woman who raised him hasn’t betrayed him.
“That is our world,” he reminds me. “Is it sad? Yes. Dangerous? Of course. But I wouldn’t change the relationships I have for anything in the world. Vitali and Adrian are my brothers. I wouldn’t have them if things had turned out differently. We wouldn’t have the empire we have together, and I wouldn’t have you.”
Forever and always.
“Forever and always,” I murmur. Kenzo leans back, a look of shock on his face at hearing me say those words.
“Where did you hear that?” he asks quietly.
I smile up at him. “In the hospital when I was sedated. Sometimes I would pull out just a little from the fog, and I could hear you talking to me.”
He shakes his head. “Such a little spy,” he teases, leaning in and nipping my bottom lip with his teeth. “What else did you hear?”
Shaking my head, I lower my eyes, a blush spreading across my cheeks.
Kenzo’s hand wraps around my throat, and he pulls me in until we are nose to nose.
“What else did you hear, firecracker?”
I lick my lips; his eyes are drawn to the movement. “That you love me,” I tell him. “But you don’t have to say it again. I know you need time and that?—”
His lips brush mine. “I love you, Evaline Nakamura.” Each word is clear and concise. “So fucking much.”
I coil my arms around his and lift myself onto his lap. “I love you, too, Kenzo Nakamura. Forever and always.”
He smiles at me, his forehead pressing against mine.
“Forever and always.”