The Grandmaster’s Legacy: Masters of Love and War (A Taylor Lee HOT Historical Romantic Suspense Collection) (The Grandmaster's Legacy)

by Taylor Lee

  Sarah was angry. She should have known that Lei would be like this. She was a fucking princess after all.

  “Both. That I said it and that I lied about what Wyatt said to me.”

  “Why did you?”

  Sarah was horrified. She had been asking herself the same thing. Ever since Tom had said the things he did, she had tried to figure out why she had gone after Lei the way she did. She knew now. Her only question was if she would say it to Lei.

  Lei waited not speaking.

  Finally Sarah said, “Because I wanted to hurt you.”

  “Why? What did I do to you?”

  Sarah was mortified. She felt like she might cry. Lei continued to look at her without speaking. She saw the range of emotions crossing Sarah’s face and waited to see if she would give in to them and speak honestly.

  “You didn’t do anything. I… I was angry at Tom. I have always been Tom’s right hand person, the one he goes to for everything. Since we have been here, he has excluded me from everything important.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Wyatt only wanted Tom as an adviser – along with you, Chief, and Alono.”

  “It sounds to me like you should be angry with Wyatt, not Tom.”

  “I am!” she blurted out and then blushed.

  “Is there another reason you are angry with Wyatt?”

  Sarah looked at her for a long moment and saw that she wasn’t going to stop.

  “Yes, I am angry that he wouldn’t fuck me.”

  “I see. Do men always fuck you if you want them to?”

  “Yes, they do. But Tom told me I had to stay away from Wyatt because of you. I… I thought I could make him - make Wyatt, that is. But he didn’t want me.”

  Lei was quiet for several minutes.

  “I accept your apology.”

  “Can I keep my job?”

  Lei looked at her in surprise.

  “Wyatt said it was your decision if I would be fired or not.”

  “Hmm. I see. From what you have told me, it doesn’t seem to me that you are happy in your job. You feel dismissed both as Tom’s aide and as a woman. I doubt if I was in your position that I would want to stay. But that would be my decision. Whether you stay or not, Sarah, is up to you.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened in surprise. She waited for the conditions that were sure to come; They didn’t.

  With an enigmatic smile, Lei added, “Two things you should know. Wyatt is the smartest, most strategic man you will ever meet. He sizes people up immediately. He knows within seconds if he needs or wants their input. He has decided that he does not need your advice. Nothing you do or don’t do will change that.

  “The second thing you should know is that I am a Kung fu master warrior. I do not take kindly to women who think they can fuck my man.”

  Sarah stood, still staring at her.

  Lei smiled a slight smile that was reminiscent of Wyatt’s this morning.

  “As I said, it’s up to you if you stay or go. We are finished. You may leave.”

  Sarah walked out and went back to her desk. She was astonished. She sat at her desk trying to decide if that slender young woman had truly threatened her. She realized with a start that she had.

  ~~~

  That night Alono slept with the children in the adjoining room to give Lei and Wyatt privacy. Wyatt heard from Tom how Lei had let Sarah decide if she wanted to stay or go.

  “That was brilliant, honey. Strikes me that this wasn’t the first time you had to deal with staff issues. When did your father first make you his strong arm fixer?”

  “When I was about eleven,” she said with a sly smile.

  “At about the same time he started taking you to whorehouses where as you nicely put it ‘he had his daily fuck’?” he asked with a wolfish grin.

  She blushed, remembering what she had said to Wyatt and Chief.

  He smiled at her embarrassment. “That reminds me, I brought you a present.”

  He handed her a large box with a big red bow. He turned to go in the bathroom, but looked over his shoulder to watch her open it. She looked startled when she unwrapped it and saw that it was a fancy leather covered paddle with a carved wooden handle. He caught her eye and grinned. She blushed and sank down in the bed, pulling the blanket up to hide her face, but not before he saw her smile.

  He came back to the bed and said, “Turn over, baby. Pull down your pants and show me your beautiful ass. I wanna see if you need a touch up or if you are still nice and pink. I think your new paddle will do the trick to keep you looking the way I like you.”

  She twisted away from him with a gleam in her eye.

  “I should tell you what else I told Sarah today. After I told her how smart and strategic you are and that you are unlikely to want or need her advice.”

  “Yeah, Tom told me that as well. Smart, honey, and true. What else did you say?”

  “I mentioned in passing that I am a Kung fu master warrior and that I don’t take kindly to women who think they can fuck my man.”

  Wyatt was startled. Even though he tried to keep a straight face, he burst out laughing, so hard, tears ran down his face.

  “Jesus Christ, Lei. You threatened one of our staff members? Physically?”

  “Uh huh. And just so you know, black belt Kung fu masters also don’t take kindly to men who think they can spank my ass anytime they feel like it.”

  “I see,” he said, trying to be serious, but unable to stop either the twinkle in his eyes or the grin that threatened to become open laughter. “I’ll try to remember that. Like Sarah, I have been warned. And, honey, I will make you a promise. The only times I will spank you are when you need it or are asking for it. Hell, that doesn’t happen more than every other day or so!”

  He leaned down and pulled her up tight to him, his big hands cupping her ass. He said in a husky whisper, “Yeah, sweetheart, I’ve discovered that even Kung fu masters sometimes act up. Depending how feisty they are, their grandmasters have to step in to keep them in line.”

  Chapter 17

  “That goddamn son of a bitch! Have you read this? Can you believe this? They are calling me a woman hater!? A sexual deviant! Christ, next they’ll say I fuck goats! Goddamn it, I don’t fucking believe this!”

  Grant’s face was florid, streaked with purple. He paced up and down the room for over an hour ranting, tossing one paper after another on the table. Each scandal sheet or newspaper article elicited a new round of obscene protests. Their full campaign team sat around the table reading the various papers. They were as surprised as Grant at Wyatt’s response to the fliers they had circulated. None of them believed he took them on directly.

  “You’re right, Grant. Goddamn, who’d think that fuckin half-breed would respond to those pictures the way he did?” Will asked in disbelief. “Christ, I could barely look at those ones of the Chink, they were so disgusting. And, hell, we created them! God, if someone put out pictures like that of the woman I was shaggin’, the last thing I’d do is go to the newspapers and make it an even bigger story!”

  “Don’t you see, Will? That is what makes his response so brilliant.” John shook his head as he finished the article in the Laramie Gazette. “Of course, we thought he would lay low, not respond. Hope that people wouldn’t believe the pictures or that they would forget about them. We knew people wouldn’t forget them. We knew they would all be thinking about why they don’t want a savage Indian for governor. Hell, we planned a worse round of pictures right before Election Day. But, Christ, that goddamn ‘breed’ not only responded, he snatched the issue away from us.”

  “Admit it, John,” Clarence said, “he did more than that. He took our best line of attack and not only turned it against us, he made it into a positive for him.”

  John nodded in rueful agreement. “We all knew the asshole was smart. Hell, every candidate he’s ever backed has won, not because the candidate was all that good, but because Wyatt managed his campaign. But, goddamn, who would have thought tha
t we could put out pictures of the guy’s cunt like the ones we did of Lei, and he would go out to the world, cold eyed, and discuss them?”

  Grant whirled in fury. He stormed back to the table, pounding on it.

  “Okay, okay! Can we all agree that he is Jesus fuckin’ Christ come down from the cross? That he’s the smartest son of a bitch that ever walked the earth? Then is it possible that we can stop talking about how they have skunked us, made fools of us, and begin to talk about what we are going to do about it? Is that possible? Or are all of you recommending that I walk down the middle of Main Street with my bare ass hanging out with a sign on it saying, ‘Kick me’. I’m the stupid asshole who has the backing of three quarters of the investors in four territories and three states who thought he could beat a fucking red-skinned Indian for governor of the State of Wyoming?”

  Grant’s face was purple. He shook with rage. His cohorts eyeballed the table, not meeting his fury. No one was ready to say what all of them were thinking. That he was mighty close to summing up where they were in the campaign. And they hadn’t even had the first debate.

  Clarence, the most sophisticated member of the team, took a deep breath. He nodded at Grant in agreement.

  “Grant is right. We all know that this is a bump in the road. Yeah, the guy did something unexpected. Hell, the unexpected is what we should expect from Wyatt McManus. The fundamentals of our campaign remain the same. Wyatt IS an Indian; he IS shacked up with a Chink; her father IS the goddamn Chinese mafia, and the son of a bitch kills people with his bare hands. Oh, and, occasionally for fun, he scalps them. Plus, as Grant said, we have the backing of every major moneyman who has run up against Wyatt and would love to see him put down.”

  Grant saw what Clarence was trying to do. He knew he needed to regain his composure. He saw the concern on the faces of his team. As their leader, he needed to get hold of himself, show confidence. He made an effort to shake off his anger and turned his best campaign face to them.

  “Clarence hit it right. Nothing has changed. Yeah, we misread how we thought they would act. They actually thought the pictures of Wyatt were funny—at least in the beginning. But Charlie’s girls in their campaign told us they were devastated by the pictures of Lei. Hell, Wan Chang brought his whole god damned militia to their office when the pictures came out. Wyatt warned everyone not to let Lei see them. That Indian half brother of his – or whatever he is – apparently was in tears for two days. How they went from that response – which is what we assumed they would do - to this,” he said, pointing at the newspaper articles, “is a mystery to me. But we can’t sit here with our thumbs up our ass and cry about it. Hell, I have to debate the guy tomorrow afternoon in Casper. We gotta be ready to respond. You know that prick is going to make sure this comes up in the debate.”

  Will allowed a little of his uneasiness show.

  “Are you ready for that debate, Grant? We didn’t have to agree to do them. We could come up with a good excuse, if you think you’d rather not. You know, if nothing else, the prick does come off looking good.”

  He should have known better than to question Grant’s judgment. The idea of backing down from a confrontation with Wyatt was anathema to Grant. Will thought to himself—if nothing else, Grant a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of Wyatt. His hatred blinded him to the fact that any one of them could have told him. The physical difference between the two did not favor Grant, but Grant didn’t see it that way.

  “Sure, Will. Wyatt is good looking. He is a mite taller than me and maybe not as heavy. Hell, so are a lot of other people. And there are a lot more who look like me than look like him. But I don’t think that is what people see when they see him and me.

  “Look, Will. Let’s not be afraid to say it, no matter how he turned things around with the pictures. The first thing people see when they see me compared to him is that, like them, I am a white man. It’s as simple as that. We have to keep making that point over and over again. That is exactly what I am going to do tomorrow in that debate. Everyone who leaves there is going to be thinking one thing. They can have a white governor or an Indian who shacks up with a Chink. We keep making that the choice and, by god, we will run away with this election.”

  He shook his head with a satisfied smile, thinking about the debate. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: from the first time I met him and every time I’ve seen him since, the first thing I see is an Indian. The same with Lei. First and foremost she is a Chink cunt. And fellas, I’m staking this election on the fact that at least a majority of the white people in Wyoming agree with me.”

  ~~~

  Later Grant, Clarence, John, and Will met privately to discuss finances. They bragged about having investor support, but wanted to take as little of it as they could. Better than anyone, they knew what a politician owed their financial backers after they won election. Grant summed it up.

  “Hell, fellas, the four of us got rich off the payback from the guys we put in office. I don’t believe there is a better investment than buying a guy’s balls and keeping them where you can reach up and give em a good squeeze when you need cash. You gotta admit, the money we wrung out of those poor bastards once we got ‘em elected has been well spent.”

  Clarence smiled rapaciously. “I agree, Grant. Don’t you think it is at least a little ironic that our most lucrative “investment” to date has been our Chinese enterprise?”

  Will guffawed. “So now it is an enterprise? That is a mighty fancy word for buying and selling a bunch of young Chink whores. Sure as hell, you are right about it being a good investment. Christ, sometimes I feel like someone is printing money for us, there is so much rolling in.”

  “I agree with you both,” said Grant. “Yes, Clarence, it is ironic. As much as I hate to say it, I have never done business with anyone smarter or more dependable than those Chinks in China. Now we all know they would slit our throats as soon as look at us if we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain. Or if we tried to stiff them out of the agreed upon percentage. Hell, the demand for barely used yellow cunt is the strongest I’ve ever seen. It’s a perfect match. They’ve got an inexhaustible supply of little girls and we have an inexhaustible supply of men who will pay top dollar for what are we calling them—’exotic virgins.’ Hell, as young as we’re getting them, they probably are virgins.”

  “I just wish those Chinese guys would help out with dirt on Wan Chang. There seems to be some kind of honor among thieves – or at least a loyalty to their fellow yellow man,” John mused. “It would help if we could tie Chang directly to the violence in San Francisco. Damnit, even opposing Tongs won’t give us ammunition.”

  Grant responded impatiently. “Hell, John, all we have to do is start a few underground rumors. The newspapers love this stuff. ‘Yellow peril’ and all that shit. They eat it up. When we get ready to string Wan Chang tight around Wyatt’s neck, all we’ll have to do is pay a couple of the press guys in our pocket a little more than we usually do and the story will take care of itself.”

  Grant turned to Clarence, who was making calculations on a financial balance sheet.

  “Okay, Clarence, you’re our treasurer. What’s the verdict? Do we have enough money coming in from our “enterprise” that we don’t have to get more than minimal contributions from outside investors?”

  “Grant, we are literally printing money with those young whores. We have a hundred plus brothels in twenty two cities and we’re ready to open a dozen more by the fall. The demand continues to grow. And we have built an organization to manage them. We are hiring knowledgeable men – many of them Chinese, to act as intermediaries. They don’t seem to give a fuck that they are helping us sell young Chink pussy to white men.

  “However, two things we cannot forget and that I keep emphasizing. First, we have to take in enough contributions from investors that no one gets suspicious and our investor friends believe that they have a role in taking down Wyatt. More important, we have to guard our source of funds l
ike it’s a vault with every one of our dicks in it. If it ever became public where our funds are coming from, the campaign is dead. And so are we.”

  Grant puffed on his unlit cigar. “Don’t forget, Clarence, the high level political cover we have in place. As many Senators and Congressmen as we have, getting a piece of this there is no way that any of this could go public. It would get shut down faster than a raid on the U.S. Mint.

  ~~~

  Lei looked at Wyatt with tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, honey, do I look that bad?”

  “Wyatt, stop it. You know how beautiful you are. Every once in a while I see you the way I do now and realize that you truly are the most handsome man I have ever seen.”

  “Thanks, Lei. I know you are prejudiced. Hell, I have to admit, I do look damn good. I think Tom now agrees that it was smart to let go of the rugged cowboy look for the debate, right, Tom?”

  Tom chuckled, “Oh, hell, Wyatt. As usual, you are absolutely right. I didn’t think it was possible for you to look any better than you usually do, but this is perfect. It’s exactly the right look for a prospective governor of the state.”

  Wyatt stood next tot Lei, then pulled her into his arms. “I wish you were coming with us, Lei. This is the part of the campaign I hate—not having you on that platform with me. It runs against everything I believe in. Don’t bother to explain, Tom. I conceded to your argument. I don’t agree, but at least for now I also don’t want to subject Lei to the campaign trail.

  “Goddamnit, Lei,” he said, lifting her chin to look in her eyes, “I am going to miss you and the children.”

  Lei reached up and stroked his cheek. “I know, honey. We will see you in a couple of days. I only wish I could see you take Grant apart. I almost feel sorry for him, Wyatt. He really doesn’t know what he is up against. You are right. From the beginning, he underestimated you. Amazingly, he continues to do so.”

  Wyatt nodded as a dismissive frown crossed his brow. “I promise you, he will do it again today. He’ll give me an advantage he can never regain. Poor bastard. He can’t get by his blind spot. I hope to hell he never does. It makes him so predictable.”