Page 113 of Brutal Union
My gut twists, tight and bitter. She doesn’t look at me. Won’t. And I don’t know what burns worse—that she’s refusing to meet my eye in front of him… or that I don’t know if it’s strategy or surrender. I can only assume she does this to keep Mia and me alive while we’re in my father’s clutches.
Takeda’s smug silence stretches across the room like a shadow. I can feel him gloating without even having to look. The others—those wrinkled, brittle relics who call themselves the Yakuza council—they murmur in approval, like jackals waiting for the weakest of the pack to bleed.
I drag in a breath through my nose. My knees ache against the tatami, but I ignore the pain. I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is the cold that’s spreading through my chest, creeping like rot under my ribs.
Takeda turns to the council, his voice steeped in arrogance. “You see? Even the daughter of the Bratva shows proper deference, after a proper lesson in torture. Unlike the bastard I raised.”
My mind races with the possibility because if Nadia only has the red mark of the knife from a few days ago, that torture lesson must have been done on someone else—hopefully just a threat before he did it to her. A warning before he turned his attention to me or worse, Mia.
I clench my jaw so hard it aches. My nails dig into my palms, biting into the tender skin, and I force myself to keep my head down. Not in respect. Not in defeat. But because I know if I look up—if I so much as twitch—someone’s going to die, and I don’t know if I can afford that right now.
“You have the Bratva, father,” I say through gritted teeth. “You have me in chains. You really need a child as well?”
He inhales sharply, only to exhale in such a boisterous manner, my body shakes as I remember those moments as a child when the last set of lashings hit my spine. I was always good at knowing when he felt his point was made.
“You’re right. I don’t need Mia,” he smiles, all yellow teeth and soulless eyes. “I could sell her to Mori. He loves new toys for target practice."
“No,” Nadia rushes out. “You promised me for her. Release her. A queen’s ransom. That is what you said.”
My father leans forward, spit flying out of his mouth as he speaks. “You think a whore like you is worth the ransom of a queen?”
The room erupts in laughter and I can see the anger rise in Nadia’s body as she sits up on her heels, back straight for the first time since I entered this room.
“What am I worth to you, Takeda-sama?” she asks, her voice so calm it makes the hair on my arms rise. A whisper, yes—but the kind right before a storm levels a city.
He laughs harder, like she’s just proven his point. His face reddens, breath wheezing in from too many years of smoke and sin. When he finally steadies himself, he leans in, grin sickening and smug.
“A nickel,” he says.
The corners of Nadia’s mouth curl, just barely, as she finally turns—just her head—to glance at me over her shoulder. That smile is not sweet. It’s the kind that comes before someone gets ruined.
“Five is a fitting number, don’t you think, Sho?”
“The perfect number, Hime.”
Before the final syllable leaves my lips, five pins gleam in her fingers and vanish—flung like silver fangs across the room.
Three bodies slump forward, blood already blooming across their silk. The laughter dies with them.
“Now, I believe my future husband said he wants your head,” Nadia says to my father as she stands to her feet. “I believe we are here to collect.”
28
SHO
How many timeshave I said I love this woman? Because I swear no number will be enough.
Three bodies collapse in perfect unison, a sickening harmony of choking gasps and slumping silk. Tanabe's eyes are still twitching, lips quivering like they’re trying to form one last insult as the blood pools beneath his chin. Suda falls face-first into his tea, and Hanamura doesn’t even get that dignity—his skull cracks loudly against the corner of the table as he drops like a sack of meat.
Silence punches through the room.
The remaining councilmen freeze, mouths parted in half-spoken protests. The guards, maybe two dozen in all, reach for their weapons. And my father?—
He doesn’t move.
His eyes are locked on Nadia, as if he's trying to decide whether to laugh, scream, or slit her throat.
I move before anyone else can.
