And he wanted to end it—with us.
I won’t force Sal into an arranged marriage, regardless of how he feels—because it never should’ve happened in the first place. We weren’t some fate meeting. We were calculated, an appointment for someone else’s agenda.
Cesario hated the idea of the arranged marriage between Sal and me because his father demanded it, and that particular son would always rebel against his father. Simple and basic. Nothing complicated. Just a son’s rebellion. And somewhere in Sal’s soul, regardless of sperm, Cesario will always be Sal’s father.
And I won’t be the reason Sal rebels against his.
The crypt of my mind fills with decay as the plane touches down. The memories of my childhood linger with possibilities as I compare our histories…our stories…our lives. It is never-ending, the mantra beating in my soul.
The trinity is bound, woven and interlaced, and cutting the fibers trespasses on the ancestral graves.
Dishonorable.
And I am a cunt.
I drop Megan off at Juliet, where Oki stands outside of Scarlet House, waiting with Romeo in her arms. Immediately, I call Dr. Lani Johnson to see if she can wedge me in. Her rude receptionist says she is booked for almost three weeks. I know Sal would’ve texted her personally to get me in, but I wasn’t him and didn’t feel comfortable breaking proper etiquette. I have manners and take the first available, right before the boys arrive home.
Home. Boys. Trinity.
Lies. Deceit. Betrayal. Arranged Marriage. A baby out of wedlock. The Four “new” Horsemen—Marcello Campanelli, Cesario Raniero, Wendy Cruz, and Gage Boudreaux—will eventually carry out the heinous rule of no offspring. They’ve been lax, and it will be my luck, Baby Nakamura will serve as a lesson.
And I will lose…my baby.
I plan on staying at Scarlet House with Anna, who returned home from her emergency trip to the hospital while I was on the jet. Her cardiologist had changed her heart medications, and she had a bit of a spell. She will recover with rest.
Apparently, I am just paranoid about everything.
Read: hormonal as fuck.
I run a few errands—including dropping the letter to Quinn in a box outside of Tom & Dick’s Hardware Store. It will likely arrive tomorrow, and I’ll be long gone.
I order a salad to go from Mario’s and drive to the park where Sal and I liked to go. I sit alone in the Raptor, crying my eyes out and praying for answers when Jaid finally calls back. “Sorry, I couldn’t get back with you until now.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not busy.”
“We’ve been staying with Henney since Sal pulled Diablo away, and I forgot my phone. Call it pregnancy brain…”
Thinking, I squint. “Are you scared without him there?”
“No,” she quips. “I’m scared of what happens when he returns.”
“Is that a thing?” I segue the conversation. “Pregnancy brain?”
“Some people think it is,” she says. “Not everyone gets it. Pregnancy tends to exacerbate things.”
Tell me, I know.
“As long as you are okay.”
“We’re fine,” she happily says. “You asked me to do some digging, and I have some interesting results.”
“Give it to me,” I urge, strumming my fingers on the steering wheel. I miss my car, but it is still in Nola. “… Priscilla?”
“Noah doesn’t belong to Eric Henderson,” she mutters. “And I ran Sal’s DNA against Noah’s.”
“… And?”
“He doesn’t belong to Sal, either.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “I never thought he did.”
“I know, neither did I,” she hesitates. “He would never have done that. He isn’t a rapist, but when I ran Noah, I got a complete match on the father’s DNA against someone else.”
“… What do you mean?” I ask, feeling the fog.
“Merritt and Noah share the same father.”
I gasp speechless. “It’s not Deacon.”
“No, I can 100% tell you, Deacon Cruz is not the father of Noah or Merritt Cruz.”
With a trembling voice, I ask, “Did you run him against Diablo?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “I did.”
“… And?”
“An absolute match.”
“This means Deacon isn’t a father at all.” I realize as tears build in my eyes. “She was such a…”
“Wait,” she warns. “Iris…listen to me. The whole thing set off alarms about my conniving sister, and I decided to go out of the box, for shits and gigs, and run Raine’s paternity.”
Lowering my head, I sigh, “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Romeo has a sister.”
“She fucking framed both of them!” I rapidly lean back to the headrest. “Fucking bitch!”
“You got it!”
“God, I would kill her now if she weren’t already dead,” I threaten, full of vengeance. “She was…”
“A monster,” she interjects “I would help you kill her, even pregnant with Abel’s child, and I’d like to mention, I do know with absolute certainty this child is his.”
“I don’t know who the father is of mine.”
“… Are you pregnant?”
“According to the four pregnancy tests I took at the coffee shop,” I say, glancing at the sticks in my purse sitting in the passenger seat. “I am.”
“Oh, my God! Iris!”
“Thank you!” I want to be thrilled, but really, I am mortified. Opening the salad and sucking a tomato into my mouth, I mumble, “Why do you think Kaci did it?”
“I’ve spent the last two days thinking about this,” she says with a snicker. “First, I don’t think there was any way she didn’t know about Noah. They had to have taken Emily to the doctor and inseminated her with Diablo’s sperm.”
“… But why?”
“To test a v2.0 outcome,” she conveys her theory. “And she tried again with Raine, but she couldn’t keep her grubby hands-off Dom and fucked that up.”
“Do you think Sal knows?”
“I don’t,” she says.
“Even though he has avoided Raine?”
“He avoids anything Kaci-related,” she points out. “It is his number one trigger—if Kaci starts talking to him, he goes haywire.”
Cautiously, I ask, “What are you going to do?”
“As Kaci’s only living full blood sister?” she quizzes, thinking. “I’m going to try and get custody of both Merritt and Noah.”
I laugh, “You’re going to have three boys…”
“I am,” she says, giggling. “And it will be crazy and wonderful if I can persuade Merritt not to be demon spawn.”
“Makes sense.”
“Perfect,” she says. “And as for Raine, I already spoke with Dom. She’ll be in Sugargrove with Romeo by the end of the month, but it sucks because I’m finally getting her to trust me.”
“Kaci left such a mess,” I gripe, knowing how many people have been affected by her callously constructed manipulations. “It’s awful for the children…and the adults because we were all innocent. We were all played. Hopefully, Megan will be awesome with Raine.”
“Iris, there is one more thing.”
“What, babe?”
“I’m thinking about coming home to Sugargrove with Abel being gone so much of the year. I know Sal, and I had a thing,” she reminds as I tense up. “But I have no interest in resuming that because I’m totally smitten with my husband. However, I need to make sure you are going to be okay because I don’t want you to feel like I am intruding.”
Tears spring from my eyes. “I’m so honored you even thought to consider my feelings.”
“I love you, Iris.”
“I need to go to Boston,” I say.
“Why?”
“I need to make sure my premonitions are mere paranoia.” A sudden knock on my window jars my attention. “Can I help you?”
“… Iris?” Jaid asks on
the phone. “Are you okay?”
“Just checking on you, Miss Nakamura,” Officer Cameron says. “You’ve been sitting here a while.”
“Sal said he beat the crap out of Skeeter,” she whispers in my ear. “He saw pictures. I’m recording the call now just in case.”
“It’s four in the afternoon,” I politely reply. “The park is open. Broad daylight. No drug deals. No butt sex. Nothing is going on here.”
He smiles at me. “You want there to be something going on?”
“Are you asking if I want to hook-up in my fiancé’s truck, Cody?”
“Yeah, I am,” he snarls. “A little afternoon delight with the geisha doll of Juliet.”
He reaches in the window and cups my breast as my hand hastily reaches in my purse and grabs the gun. Shaking, I point it at him. “Get your hand off of me! Get away from me! Not a word about this to anyone!”
“Heh,” he says. “We’ll see—another time and place. I’ll be watching. And waiting.”
I roll up the window as Jaid asks, “Are you okay?”
“I’m getting back on the jet,” I say as my body shakes. “I need away from here. Please don’t send the recording to the boys.”
“Too late, honey.”
Fuck.
96
ABS (Alpha Bromance Shakedown)
The Master
Three weeks later at the Lotus Palace
Gifu Prefecture in the Chūbu region, Japan
Death chases the unholy.
We can’t stop it. We can’t eliminate it. We’re lost causes, and the best we can hope for is to break the cycle of violence from infecting our children.
Our savage attack in the ring had long-lasting ramifications that none of us could’ve foreseen. One, we were feared, even without a weapon in our hands. And two, The Chairman believed there was no greater company for his beloved granddaughter to be keeping because she was untamed.
We located the bodies of Kali Ose and Ho Hardone. I didn’t know why she did it, but I had a fairly strong hypothesis. She wanted what I always maintained. I had been given bodyguard after bodyguard—Dale, Swain, and the occasional pick-up. I eschewed them all.
And I taught her to do the same.
I bore a huge brunt of the guilt because if I was her shining example, then she was going to turn Lotus into a slaughterhouse. The notion got me thinking about what she said at the church shooting— “slaughter the horses and bury the innocent.”
She didn’t aim for bad guys. She left the dirty work for the boys. She killed their methods and offered passage into her cellar for the innocent. Under the wings of the butterfly, souls found grace. Everyone else needed to worry, but not because she would kill them, only deplete their resources and stores.
I cut Cinco’s resources off with one call to Gabe.
I happened to know Gabriel Herrera, Muerte’s son because he was a v1.0 endowed with a dick, which meant one thing—Iris didn’t give a shit who he was.
In her Lotus world, there were two kinds of men:
… those she loved and fucked.
… and those she fucked over, only to feast upon.
Thankfully, at least for now, I am in the upper category. I didn’t know how long that would last because she was off the rails. If Amber Rosen declared the Lotus cunt crazy, I knew we had a problem because that bitch was certifiable.
What did I do?
Twenty-one days of cold chambers with Cruz.
And it was fucking heaven.
We were like monks in heavy robes during the day, studying in the quiet library, and learning the secrets of their family translated by Masa. At night, we were savages with katanas, shurikens, and rope. And even later, Cruz would pillage what remaining energy I had while I was face down on a tatami mat.
Damn vampires, I swear.
Fucking Cruz was like some sort of bo staff Master, which I guess was fitting, considering. I dropped the damn thing a lot and preferred anything sharp over blunt.
I played with practice balisongs and perfected tricks until I did a choker fan and cut the shit out of my hand. I could carousel and scissor all day, but one wrong move landed my ass…or at least my hand with sixteen stitches in the palm.
But I didn’t let it extinguish my excitement.
I had two hands. Grins.
And I ignored the left, wrapped in the bandage.
We made no secret about our relationship. Iris might have been saying yes to one, but she received a bonus in a Saint to keep her parading with a holy beat.
The Chairman understood where we were at and where we longed to be—a nirvana of paradise free from the bloodshed stifling our lives. I spent hours talking with Keishi. We even went golfing.
He also acknowledged it would take time to achieve the higher goal and that the road wouldn’t always be paved with good intentions. And sometimes, women like Petra Soryn needed to suffer in their final hours.
Luckily, the beautiful Aki was at home during our stay, and I got the pleasure of cooking with her, not that she did so often, but she made the exception for the two new boys she called her sons. Her English was remarkably clear, unlike Keishi, who often shifted—as my Old Poppa had—between two native tongues.
I accepted that I had two native tongues as well. One language naturally breathed from my upbringing. I was born and bred to be a mafioso. But I also treasured another language; one evolved that spoke of love, kink, and profound gratitude and grace.
I even did morning radio calisthenics with Aki.
Her grandparents loved Iris like their daughter, and I became the son-in-law.
I spent hours deep in thought in Iris’ Japan, held within the walls of the Lotus Palace. It was strange—the parallels Iris and I kept. She wasn’t just my best friend, but oddly—my sister in the journey—and not in a Hannah and Deacon kind of way either. I learned respect for her as a soul and a human during my spiritual sabbatical at the Nakamura household.
In the end, I imagined we’d both say our grandparents meant more to us than our parents, biological or otherwise. We each lost our first spouse, though it didn’t seem to matter to anyone. Our relationship was viewed as the first by her family, and that was all that mattered to me.
Hours wasted away with my head in the journal, but I had to sometimes scribble with my right hand. The letters were all boxy, unlike my left-hand script. Aki said I had “beautiful handwriting.”
I told her it was because of the nuns in elementary school. She asked why I switched from Catholic school to public, and I stumbled to find the words.
My father…Cesario…he was a bad man.
And he pissed off the wrong priest.
Not Altromessa.
With a deep breath, Deacon buckles over, sweating as I sip my tea on the bench and stare at him. “What are you doing?”
“I just ran five miles.”
“You should do this in the morning or late in the evening, not at three in the afternoon.” He slams back my tea. “What the fuck, man?”
“I’m thirsty,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Tell me,” I banter. “We’ve got two days left, and I am dreading going home.”
“You’re never going to make it through six months without Iris and me,” he randomly points out.
“I plan on taking you both with me,” I say, knowing we’ve talked about this several times. Maybe he sweat out the memory. “Do you remember?”
“Don’t be an ass. Of course, I remember.” He pulls a smoke from my pack, and I light it. “But I was thinking as I was running to your rap playlist...”
“See!” I interrupt. “All those words with rhythm are good for your brain. It’s like fucking mind candy.”
He blankly stares at me. “Can I finish?”
“Ya.”
“… You sure, honey?”
I scowl. “Yes!”
“If you’re going to take this assignment in Europe, then we have to be there, or your nasal passages will be shot.�
��
I laugh. “Yes. I know this. I can’t leave either wife behind.”
Slugging my bicep, he says, “Bastard.”
“What, the bruises are gone now, so it’s time for round two?”
“Hardly,” he replies, putting on my Bollés. I move the book, the journal, and the teacup to the other side.
“Come on,” I offer, patting my thigh. “Get over here, slut.”
Stripping off his wet shirt, he lays his head back to my thigh. “Do you think Keishi and Aki wonder about the two weirdos out in the garden?”
“Aki knows,” I reply, stroking his hair. “I told her.”
He shifts his gaze to me. “What do you mean?”
“She knows we’re heavily involved,” I say, threading his damp hair through my fingers. “It’s so blonde.”
“Sun…what do you mean heavily involved? I need more.”
“She mentioned one morning that if we needed any products that I could add them to the market list, and one of the servants would leave them in the room.”
“Fucking hell!”
Lighting a smoke, I snicker, “It’s okay, babe. Keishi is too old to care. Aki is enchanted. And Masa is as queer as the day is long.”
“Do I want to know how you know that?”
“Not the reason you’re thinking,” I say, handing the cigarette to him. “More a vibe I pick up from him.”
“… You’ve got gaydar now?”
“I’ve always had it,” I snap. “Which is why I knew not to be concerned with Massimiliano. He was using my lust-filled wants to satisfy his business needs.”
“You knew?”
“I know you encouraged him to do it,” I reply, peering down. “When your Master is a raging disabled bisexual, and he hands you over to the golden boy he has been drooling over, something shifts in your thinking. You have to question why.”
“Do you ever wonder why Dom didn’t keep me?”
“He knew the likelihood of him being able to hold onto you was close to nil.”
“What does that say about you?”
“I’m crazier than Dom,” I admit. “He knew I’d chase your ass.”
Diary of a Submissive (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 4) Page 82
