“It’s true.” Han cut me off with a hard look. “Every word of it. You should also know I do not do relationships. So do not expect anything more of me. You are lucky to have gotten this.”
I considered his words and straightened, bringing my eyes back up to meet his. “Lucky isn’t how I’d describe having to pay you back the bullshit interest on that bullshit bet with two years of spontaneous service. But if that’s how you want to describe it. Okay.”
Whoever that soft wimp who melted under his kiss had been, she was gone, replaced by the bad-ass surfer who refused to let even the biggest waves intimidate her.
Han scanned my new toughened stance with a glint of amusement in his almost black eyes. “I will also find a ride back to the club. Go home, Jasmine.”
Another command and it made me bristle. Nobody got to order me around. That was half the reason I’d become a surf teacher after shutting down my pro dreams. I’d wanted a career where I called the shots.
But I guess that didn’t count for him. A possession. That was what I was to him until further notice. And as I watched him walk away toward the main road, his half body tattoo rippling over his defined back, and newer, firmer resolution took hold.
I would not play this game with him for the next two years.
I would pay him back. Pay him back and get out of…whatever this was with him.
9
HAN
The surf lesson had the opposite of its intended result. Han hadn't seduced Jasmine and forgotten her as he'd planned. In fact, his reaction to finding her trapped by Kuang Jr. scared him. To the point that he all but ran away after that kiss.
He'd wanted to kill that tsat tou. Had threatened him and almost beat him even though he knew the trouble that would have caused for his triad back at home. And the urge to claim her after her interaction with Kuang Jr. had come on like a train
That kiss…how had she done it?
Her saltwater and sunshine taste had instantly enflamed him. And the way she'd responded... becoming soft in his arms and pressing her body into his raging cock as if she'd been waiting her whole life for him to claim her like this.
He'd plastered her to her car and had only been a few steps away from taking her right there in public before he managed to grab onto his senses and tear himself away.
However, warning her about who he really was and walking off from their second kiss hadn't helped his situation at all. If anything, his thoughts about the not-so-little surfer became even more constant after that.
Thirty-four. That was the answer to her question about his age. And he was thirty-four years old the first time he ever google stalked a woman.
It took minimal effort to look her up. A simple search of "Jazz," her preferred nickname, plus "surfer" produced several articles about Jazz Matapang along with rundowns of her many accomplishments before the age of twenty-five.
She'd never managed to win any of the more significant competitions she'd competed in but had often made impressive enough showings to receive praise and write-ups from local media. After going pro, she'd become a hometown darling that Oahu could root for here and abroad. Plus, she'd been in a relationship with Brad Kaminski, a pro male surfer who'd won many competitions and was the same age as her. Apparently, they'd known each other their entire lives because their fathers were best friends who'd served together in the Army. But they hadn't gotten together until she went.
Jasmine had shown up at Aloha Ballers to pay off her father's debt dressed in jean shorts and a baggy T-shirt. But online, Han found photos of her in an array of bikinis, courtesy of RipSwell, one of her first sponsors.
However, she'd lost all of those sponsors and the famous boyfriend when she decided to return to Hawaii two years ago. Strangely, there was no mention of why in the very few articles that preceded her unexpected retirement from the sport. She must have decided against sharing that information. Perhaps to protect the dying father?
It didn't matter. Han pushed down the grudging respect for the woman he shouldn't be obsessing over and made himself give up his google stalking at that point.
Back to the mission at hand—which was staging the sudden deaths of two more of the men Kuang had paid off. He went about his grim work of permanently crossing possible witnesses off the Hawaii prosecution's list, and he only made a few more appearances at Aloha Ballers.
However, the last week of August, Kuang Jr. burst into Han's designated office without knocking.
"What did you say to that Lam Yibo before he left Hawaii?" he demanded, his face red with outrage.
"Why do you ask?" Han replied without bothering to let Kuang Jr. know that he not only hadn't talked to Lam Yibo since that unexpected run-in but had also avoided Aloha Ballers until his men assured him the Golden Triangle snakehead was gone.
But he found out in the next moment that his avoidance measures hadn't worked.
"My father's saying, he wants you to handle this deal now," Kuang Jr. informed him with an angry glare. "Lam Yibo's saying he only wants to work with you, and it's worth a couple million a year, so my father wasn't left with any choice but to say yes."
Sure, he had no choice.
Han wondered how long it would take for Kuang's entitled son to figure out that his father wasn't making these "choices" out of desperation but because of his son's sheer incompetence.
"That deal was mine!" Kuang Jr. practically whined. "Your brother sent him to me. Not you!"
Cold fury erupted inside of Han at the mention of his father's other son. Perhaps that was why he didn't call Kuang in private and remind the 24K Dragon that he couldn't possibly take on this deal—that he had deals and a life of his own to get back to on the East Coast.
Instead, he leveled Kuang Jr. with a cool look and said, "Please thank your father for entrusting me with this business opportunity. I'm sure I'll make it quite lucrative for both of us."
He smirked when Kuang Jr. flipped over one of the guest chairs and stormed out of his office.
However, that superior feeling didn't last long. One-upping Kuang Jr. meant he'd be the one talking to the local growers, making arrangements with Golden Circle, that he'd have to stay here for longer than initially planned. Months longer for a deal that big.
"Sorry to leave you in a lurch," he said when he called Phantom the next day. "But I was texting with Victor, and he said it might be a good way to establish another port for The Silent Triad. Plus, I'd get home in time to handle the Delaware deal."
"Yeah, we were talking about it at breakfast," Phantom answered. "And, no worries, man. We're holding it down up here, and I guess I needed to start learning this diplomacy shit. I can't handle that Delaware deal for shit sure. But by the time you get back, maybe I'll have learned to keep my mouth shut in meetings with Victor."
Han highly doubted that. If Han was the grease who kept things running smoothly under the hood of their organization, Phantom was the grumpy garage mechanic you called in to rip out parts and replace them when they refused to perform. They were both playing roles they weren't entirely familiar with right now, but somehow Phantom pretending to be polite seemed like way more difficult of a task than Han ending the lives of anyone who could be the key witness in the case against the 24K.
"By the way, I got a lead on that last package of yours. Turns out it got sent to a Middle Eastern billionaire's house instead. I'll get you all the details before you wake up."
So Phantom had tracked down the last witness, Han translated. How ironic that he should receive a new assignment just as he got the details to close out his original mission.
He didn't necessarily believe in the existence of the Western God, but if there was such a deity, he did believe the part about him laughing in the face of well-laid plans.
True to his word, Han found a message from Phantom waiting when he woke up late in the afternoon. Unreadable, of course, as it was heavily coded.
However, Han didn't rush to translate it. He considered himself a hard man, but the thought of killing an
innocent woman still refused to sit right in his stomach. And staying in Hawaii after he did it…
Perhaps he would call the 24K dragon after all. Thank him for his consideration but insist that he was urgently needed back on the East Coast—even if that was the opposite of what Phantom had assured him.
If he did that, he could go back to Rhode Island after this final kill. Rhode Island, a place central to the spider web of deals he was overseeing all over the East Coast.
And, sure, he couldn't help but feel a little charmed by Hawaii's weather, and he'd gotten used to falling asleep to the sound of the ocean. But his whole life was back in Rhode Island, not to mention Victor and Phantom, the only family he truly cared about.
Victor was his chosen brother. And though Phantom wasn't his cousin, either by blood or covenant, they were the closest thing Han had to a family. And weird, but true, this was the longest the three of them had been apart since the founding of their triad.
"Good work," he texted back to Phantom before going to the kitchen to make himself some coffee.
That was another thing that was better about Rhode Island. He shared a coastal mansion there with Victor and Phantom. A personal chef made them whatever breakfast foods they wanted, and one of the maids set out a freshly brewed pot of coffee in a silver carafe for them every morning. Here, he only had a sad little Keurig.
Usually, Han went downstairs to the building's gym to get in a workout after his first coffee of the day. But that late afternoon, he found himself on his lanai, looking out at the gold coast ocean view he'd paid so much for…
Yes, he decided, he'd called the 24K dragon and beg off the assignment. And if he was going to be leaving soon anyway, perhaps he should revisit that plan to seduce Jasmine as opposed to internet stalking her like a sad schoolboy with a crush.
With that new plan in mind, he brought out his phone and texted Jasmine.
It's time for another surfing lesson. You can come to my place this time.
She had answered him in just a few seconds on the last two occasions he contacted her, but this time minutes went by without any answering text.
Then an hour. There still wasn't a message waiting from her after he showered and threw a tank top over some board shorts before eating a Hawaiian BBQ breakfast burrito Chen brought up for him—courtesy of some food truck Chen liked, not their award-winning chef.
Han didn't want to keep on checking his phone after his afternoon breakfast. He had better things to do. Like calling the 24K Dragon. He also needed to decode that message from Phantom.
Instead, he closed out of the messaging app and opened the Find My app that he'd turned on before gifting his phone to Jasmine.
She was somewhere in Diamond Head, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Oahu.
Han's brow scrunched. She'd mentioned in the jeep ride over that she always taught classes at hotel beaches. But according to the map, her dot wasn't anywhere close to a hotel.
So what was she doing there?
10
JAZZ
“You know, we needn’t stop our lessons simply because your sister and nephew are going home,” Faizan told me that afternoon. We were carrying our boards out of the ocean in front of the villa where he and my sister lived and worked.
I grinned up at the guy my nephew Albie had introduced me to earlier in the summer. My sister had landed a job as a caretaker for this wheelchair-bound, crazy rich dude who lived in Diamond Head, and Faizan was his—actually, I wasn’t sure what Faizan did.
He seemed to be his security guard—he was former Pakistani SSG, so he was a vet just like my dad. But he also ran errands and drove my sister around, and he’d somehow appointed himself Albie’s babysitter during the hours Mika was working.
Albie, whose father died when he was just a baby, seemed to love having a guy with a whole bunch of free time to talk to and go swimming with—both in the ocean and in the lanai’s sweet infinity pool. But he couldn’t bear the fact that his new friend couldn’t surf, so he’d begged me to teach him.
It hadn’t taken much arm-twisting. The house that he and my sister lived and worked in was located on a prime piece of beach. The view was gorgeous, and my new student wasn’t hard on the eyes either.
Faizan might have been twice my age with graying hair, but he was easy to talk to and an all-around good guy.
When I told him why I had given up a pro-surfing career to come back to Hawaii, he’d called me a good daughter. He hadn’t made me feel like an idiot for being so loyal to someone who didn’t have that long to live.
We’d been low-key flirting all summer. And up until a few weeks ago, I might’ve squealed like a little girl on the inside at his invitation. But now…
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, clocking the hesitant look on my face. He stuck the surfboard I’d loaned him fin side up in the sand. “I thought perhaps there were some growing feelings between you and me. But if you don’t want that…”
Growing feelings. Could his voice be any richer and more melodic? It was like honey poured over chocolate. And I loved the poetic way he said stuff. It made me feel sophisticated. The opposite of a broke surfer who could barely afford wax for her board these days…and who had somehow got herself caught up in a two-year ownership deal.
“No, I’d like to keep on teaching you,” I rushed to tell him, pushing that weird guilty feeling aside. “And you know…maybe see you outside of the ocean.”
Faizan’s face lit up at my suggestion. “I would like that too. Very much.”
His direct and authentic answer made me regret hesitating even for a moment.
“Okay, well, give me your phone then, and I’ll put in my number,” I said, grinning up at him.
Faizan grinned back at me, and he went to fetch his phone from the steps leading up to the house just as Mika and Albie came over to join me. Each of them carried an end of the longboard they’d shared for today’s surfing session, which made for a super cute mother and son picture.
“That was amazing!” Mika said with her usual good cheer on steroids. “Faizan, you’re getting really good!”
“Well, he had an awesome teacher,” I pointed out with a teasing tone.
But instead of co-signing my claim, Faizan frowned down at his phone.
“Everything all right?” I asked, even though I already knew what that particular frowny face meant after a summer of coming over here.
The Broken Billionaire wanted something. I cast my eyes up to the luxurious lanai at the top of the steps. Sure enough, there he was, sitting in his wheelchair on the other side of the pool, watching us like he did whenever we all went down to the ocean.
If he groomed his beard or bothered to comb his tangled black hair or treated my sister a little better, I might have classified him as hot too. But all his attractiveness was pretty much lost under that blanket of torture, and I didn’t like how his eyes followed my sister wherever she went. Like she was his possession and only on loan to me.
“I must go,” Faizan said to us. “His Excellency wishes to speak to me.”
His Excellency is what Faizan called his tortured, high-needs boss. But after seeing how he treated my sister all summer while pretty much pretending that Albie didn’t exist, I took great pleasure in calling him the Broken Billionaire. That’s probably why Mika still hasn’t invited me up to the house to meet him.
“Okay, see you later,” I answered Faizan. “Maybe Albie can…”
I trailed off because Faizan raced away before I even had a chance to tell him he could get my number from Albie.
Leaving me to observe to my sister, “For someone who supposedly doesn’t want us anywhere near his house, the Broken Billionaire sure does watch us a lot.”
“In all fairness, he just said that Albie couldn’t be noisy in the pool,” Mika said, defending her boss for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand. “He never said he didn’t want us near the house.”
“I think he just likes sitting on the lanai when he
takes his breaks,” Albie said like he’d drunk the same Kool-Aid as his mom.
“And what exactly is he doing in that office again?” I asked them since apparently, it was all on me to point out that Mika’s boss was totally weird.
Albie and Mika exchanged a guilty look. Just like I suspected, neither of them knew.
“If you ask me, that’s choke creepy,” I told them. “Don’t you think it’s weird the way he watches us from his house? And did you see the way he beckoned Faizan earlier? Like he’s his manservant or something?”
“He is his manservant,” Albie pointed out. “And mom’s his momservant.”
Mika laughed, but I frowned up the steps at Faizan, who was now crouched next to the Broken Billionaire’s chair, receiving whatever command that just hadn’t been able to wait until he was done having fun with us. It reminded me a little too much of my own status of basically being indentured to the Chinese mafia version of a Fae King.
“I just don’t understand why he puts up with his bullshit,” I grumbled to Mika. “I mean, he’s a former commando. He deserves better than being at that surly dude’s beck and call. I don’t care how rich he is.”
Mika side-eyed me with a suspicious look. “Okay, are you saying this because you’re honestly mad about Faizan’s work sitch? Or are you mad because you like Faizan and he left without saying goodbye?”
I smiled and rolled my eyes, refusing to confirm or deny.
“Eww, you like Faizan?” Albie asked. “He’s, like, old!”
I pursed my lips at my nephew. “You need to C your way out of your aunt’s and my A-B conversation.”
I playfully shoved his shoulder. “And didn’t you promise you’d go straight up to your room and pack if I went surfing with you?”
“Aw, Mom…” he started to whine to my way-too-soft-on-him sister.
“A deal’s a deal,” I cut in before she could even think about caving. “And if you don’t do it, she’s not going to let you come hang with me at the North Shore tomorrow.”
HAN: Her Ruthless Mistake: 50 Loving States, Delaware (Ruthless Triad Book 4) Page 7
