Page 88 of Wrathful King
“You made up for it by killing the bastard.”
She grimaced. “I don’t know if you should be praising me for that.”
I pecked her cheek. “I totally should. You deserve a medal.”
Her gaze turned melancholic and she looked away, lost in her thoughts. Reina was unlike anyone else I’d known. She was strong but also vulnerable. She’d seen horrors, starting with witnessing her mother’s suicide, yet she still saw the beauty in things. I wanted to keep her that way, a sparkle of light in the dark.
After the rescue, she’d shied away from the world, but even at her lowest, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the horizon, watching the sky burst into color every day at sunrise and sunset. It was as if she stopped breathing each time, losing herself in it wholly.
Kind of like how I felt each time I saw her.
“What’s the matter, cinnamon girl?”
A smile pulled at the corners of her lips as she met my eyes. “I was thinking about those floating lanterns. You think your grandpa had a romantic date with your grandma in that garden, hence the painting?”
My forehead creased and she jutted her chin to Ojisan’s Zen garden with floating lanterns over it that I brought along when we left Jolo. As suspected, my cousin never figured out that a fake hung in his office—correction, my office now. I had already started scrubbing the organization clean of assholes who’d supported my cousin’s sick ways.
“That’s a romantic notion, but no. It was where my great-great-grandfather was first elected to be the head of all four Yakuza syndicates, and that night his own father decided he’d marry the woman of his choosing.”
“Wow, all in the same day?”
“He didn’t believe in wasting time.” Romero’s words rushed to the forefront of my mind. My ojisan told him it contained a secret, but what if he literally meant that the legacy of his family was in that painting. Her hand came down to my wrist, tracing the kanji symbol inked there now. “My ojisan was lucky. He got to choose who he married for love.”
Sliding my hands to her ass, I stood up, taking her with me.
“Are we getting freaky?” Heat blossomed in her cheeks and her lids fluttered shut as she wrapped her legs around my waist.
I was tempted to just sayfuck the paintingand take her to our bedroom. Or better yet, bend her over this desk and slide into her tight heat. Except, in the back of my brain, I knew there was something to Ojisan’s words.
“Right after I check one thing,” I told her, brushing the tip of my nose against hers. “Then it’s you and me, my queen. And I have something special in mind.”
Her gaze found mine, sparks of desire burning like blue flames, as her fingers intertwined at the base of my neck. “I can’t wait.”
I set her down on the console table, then unhooked the painting.
“Is this the one you had Raven paint for you?” The curiosity in her voice was unmistakable.
“Not exactly,” I told her. “She painted a replica of it.”
Reina’s eyebrows shot up. “You like it that much, huh?”
I chuckled. “I actually stole the original and left my cousin with the fake.”
“Oh.”
I planted a kiss on top of her head. “You married a criminal.”
She rolled her eyes. “An art thief, apparently.” I grinned at the way her eyes shone with delight. “The painting means a lot to you.”
It wasn’t a question. Reina knew me inside and out. I’d give it another few years before she started to know what I was thinking before I did.
“Yes, it was my ojisan’s. Or maybe it was a reminder of something that should have been mine but was snatched from me,” I admitted as I turned the painting around. I didn’t see anything odd about it. “I’m not sure. But now your papà’s words are making me wonder—”
“What?” she asked excitedly. She scrunched her eyebrows as if trying to recall his words. “Wait, what did he say?”
“That the painting holds the secret to Ojisan’s legacy.”
“Well, that’s not vague at all.”
