His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington

by Theodora Taylor

  As guilty as she felt about Ruby missing out on the big trip back to Japan, Lilli was grateful for the company—even if she got the feeling the girl was constantly reporting back to No, whose many texts Lilli had been ignoring.

  But other than that, life was pretty boring. No more contractions. No more drama, outside of the kind happening on the small Naka 4K TV Dallas had mounted to the wall for her.

  That is, until one night, a few days into No’s trip, when Ruby suddenly shook her awake.

  “Ruby,” Lilli mumbled. “What time is it?”

  “Aunt Ana, I need you to come with me. Right now. Okay? Can you come with me?”

  “What time is it?” Lilli asked again, glancing at the bedside clock. 2:00 AM. “Jesus, Ruby. Whatever it is, can’t it wait until morning?”

  “I’m sorry, but it really can’t. Please come with me. I really need you to get up.”

  “Okay, okay, just give me a minute…

  “Iie, Aunt Ana, right now!” Ruby insisted, tugging on her arm.

  Which was how she ended up sleepily shuffling across the first floor in Ruby’s wake, wondering what could possibly be so important that—

  She stopped short when she saw the large shadow at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. But wait, it wasn’t a shadow. Lilli squinted in the darkness, realizing…it was a body! A man she recognized. And even in low light, she could see his throat had been slit. There was so much blood on his purposefully low-cut V-neck now…

  A hand clapped over her mouth before the scream could escape. “Ssh, Aunt Ana,” Ruby whispered in the darkness. “Dal-san tried his best, but he could not stop the bad men. And they are still here, upstairs looking for you, so we must be very quiet.”

  Ruby stopped speaking and her eyes rose sharply to the floor above them, obviously hearing or sensing something Lilli could not.

  “They’re coming!” Ruby whispered. “We must get to the dojo now. Quickly!”

  She pushed Lilli down the sub-basement stairs. And Lilli was so confused she ended up doing exactly as her niece instructed, though she’d later wonder why she so blindly followed instructions. Why she didn’t try to get her bearings before rushing down the stairs as fast as she could with her heavy stomach, and across the dojo’s threshold. Only to have a metal door, which Lilli wasn’t even aware the dojo had, suddenly slam shut behind her.

  “Wait, Ruby!” she called out, turning to the now blocked entrance.

  But no, her niece hadn’t followed her inside. And across the room, the mirrored wall suddenly began to sink into the floor, revealing…

  Lilli’s breath caught.

  Revealing what looked like a small apartment. Neat and mostly gray, it had the stillness of a long unused room. As if it had been waiting for someone to finally occupy it. It would almost feel inviting, if not for the wall of CCTV screens taking up the entire back wall.

  What the…!

  “It’s okay, Aunt Ana!” a voice suddenly said.

  Lilli started and looked up to see that her niece’s face was now filling one of the screens.

  “Don’t be scared, Aunt Ana. But I need you to look at the rest of the screens. Do you see?”

  Lilli scanned the security feed system, and yes, she did see. A team of men on several different screens. All dressed in black, all creeping toward the house with the ease of born predators. There was even a man in Dallas’s security cottage, also dressed in back and typing hard on Dallas’s computer.

  “I am not sure if the panic room you’re in can be hacked from Dallas’s computer. But I believe it can. I have to stop that man…or at least draw them away from you and hold them off long enough for the police to get here, since opening the panic room door triggered the silent alarm.”

  “But you should be down here with me!” Lilli started—then she placed her hand on her belly because the baby was kicking up a storm, as if he knew just how much danger his cousin was in.

  Still, Lilli insisted, “Ruby, Ruby come back here!” even though she wasn’t even sure her niece could hear her on the other side of the screen.

  “It’s okay, Aunt Ana,” Ruby assured her, smiling softly into the camera. “Everything will be okay. And…

  I love you. I hope you know that, even if I never said it before.”

  Finally the words she’d been hoping to hear from her niece. But not like this. Oh God, not like this. “I love you, too, Ruby. Come down here right now and hide with me, so we can both be safe!”

  Ruby’s answer to that probably unheard plea was to back away from the camera. And that was when Lilli realized…her niece was no longer on the first floor of the house. In fact, she wasn’t even in the house at all. She was standing just outside the security cottage. Not only that, but Ruby had something in her hand. Something Lilli recognized all too well.

  It was the sword she’d seen Ruby use during her training sessions with No.

  “Oh my God, Ruby. Don’t!” she yelled at the security camera. “No, Ruby!!!”

  But her niece was already running toward the house’s door with her sword drawn to one side.

  “Ruby!” Lilli screamed at the CCTV screen. “Ruby!!!”

  Then Lilli heard the most horrifying sound yet: Ruby’s voice, speaking in angry Japanese as she yanked open the door to the security cottage and raised her sword.

  Lilli covered her mouth with her shaking hands, fingers clawing at her mouth as the men on all the other security screens turned as a single unit and swiftly made their way toward her young, physically handicapped niece.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  No once again dreamed about his mother that night. Without the benefit of Lilli’s soft body beside him, the old nightmare had been plaguing him lately. He’d close his eyes and eventually find himself seated at the square table in the garden veranda of their “factory home” in rural Japan.

  His brother, Hayato, was seated next to him. A stern-but-pretty businessman, even at the young age of nineteen. Across from them sat their mother, more beautiful than a golden dragon as with the most gracious of smiles she thanked the servant who had just poured her a second cup of tea.

  His mother seemed happy in the country with just the company of her sons and the Korean couple who’d been serving them since even before No’s and Hayato’s births.

  Happy, despite having been more or less banished here by a man who’d made no pretense of preferring the company of his Chinese mistresses to that of his wife. And she reminded No of a water painting, as she sipped her tea with the perfect poise and grace of a girl who’d been raised to marry well. No would always remember watching her tilt her head to study the male half of their Korean servant duo, tending to the maples in their garden. Her eyes following the action of his tanned arms, which were roped with muscle after handling so many repairs on the aging property over the years.

  “Our servants are so very different from us,” she observed, adjusting her hat to protect her porcelain skin from the sun, so it would never go brown as the Korean male’s had.

  “They will work until the day they die because they must, whereas you boys and your father will do the same because you can imagine doing nothing else. Do you ever wonder what our servants would do with even a percentage of what we have?”

  No had never imagined such a thing, not even during his time among the considerably more egalitarian-minded student population of Carnegie Mellon. And it seemed a strange question coming from his mother, especially on the heels of her receiving a cup of tea from the male servant’s wife.

  No exchanged a look with his brother, wondering at his mother’s uncharacteristic questions without being so disrespectful as to actually ask her about them out loud—

  The brothers silent exchange was abruptly cut short by an unexpected choking sound. And when No looked toward his mother again, she no longer resembled a beautiful water painting. Or anything beautiful at all.

  The blood—that was what he would remember most vividly in the years and nightmares tha
t followed. Blood spewing from her eyes and nose, turning her into a horrible sight right before his eyes.

  Sometimes in the dream, the blood dribbled like tears down her face. Sometimes it cascaded in great sheets. He’d had the dream so many times, he found he could no longer remember the facts of her death very well at all. Just that there had been blood. A lot of it. Her body’s reaction, they’d later find out, to the poison the Korean wife had hidden inside the tea.

  In real life, he and his brother had called out to her in horror, running to catch her when she pitched sideways from her chair. But in the dream, he sits there, merely watching her horrific death unfold, because in the dream, he knows what he didn’t know then. That she is only seconds away from death, no matter what he does, how he calls out.

  But not that day. That day, instead of watching his mother die, he awoke to the sight of his watch blaring red. It had been so long since he’d set up the system, it took him a moment to realize what it was. But when he did…

  Hot, sick nausea rolled his stomach as he yanked out his laptop and rapidly typed in the code to unlock the screen.

  The image that flashed on was the very same one he’d had up on his screen before deciding to take a midday nap. The jet lag was still plaguing him. And tomorrow morning was a big day. When he planned to present his pitch to the board to be named as the new co-director of Nakamura Worldwide along with his brother Hayato.

  Just a year ago, none of this would have been possible. The Japanese still respected seniority more than just about any other advanced culture on earth. They were not a nation where bright CEOs under the age of forty thrived. In fact, it was unusual to find one under the age of fifty. If he and his brother won their bid, it would be unprecedented. A business move unlike any the small but powerful country had ever seen before.

  It also helped that he and his brother had a few things going for them. Their father was no visionary. Sales had been suffering for years under his reign with a few cost-cutting scandals in between. Whereas RoTeku had thrived. Not only that, but No had recently received an interesting proposition from the Japanese government. A deal for GoNoRobo to develop driverless cars and other products for the country’s rapidly aging population that would be worth billions.

  This meant if Nakamura Worldwide accepted the relatively young Nakamura brothers as their co-directors, they’d come with a deal so lucrative, No would be untouchable. No matter what he did. Or who he married.

  So No had taken an uncharacteristic nap. To ensure he was fresh for tomorrow’s presentation, and his mind well-rested, so he could defend his brother and himself against any protests their father, the current president, might have.

  He’d fallen asleep during the day only to have his most familiar nightmare before waking up to an even bigger horror.

  On his laptop screen, No watched Ruby lead Lilli to the panic room, just as No had instructed her to do should an enemy ever invade their house. But before he could breathe a sigh of relief, Ruby pushed the panic room button, letting the doors close on Lilli before darting back up the stairs and out of the house.

  Which was how he and Lilli both ended up watching the same horrific show on opposite sides of the ocean.

  Ruby raising her sword against the enemy who’d invaded the security cottage. Ruby getting only a few steps into her charge before one of the house invaders tazed her from behind.

  “Stupid girl,” he yelled at the screen. Even though this—not the way he wished—would have been how a true house samurai would have handled things. Suspecting correctly that Lilli wouldn’t be safe until she neutralized whoever had hacked through the house’s security system. Brave, stupid girl, he thought as the intruders consulted over her prone body.

  “Let me out of here! No! No! If you can hear me, please let me out of here! I have to try to save her!”

  It was Ana. Calling to him from the panic room, her voice shaking but brave. “I can’t stay in here while they—” She didn’t seem capable of finishing her sentence because it was too much to bear. “Please, please, No!”

  But he knew she had to stay put. Losing Ruby to these invaders was difficult enough. But if they took Ana and their unborn baby…

  He had to turn his mind from those panicked thoughts. Where were the police? he wondered. The alarm had been tripped. They should be here by now—

  The intruders all looked up as one—like lethal meerkats having heard the distinct wail of the same predator. A quick conversation ensued. Then they picked up Ruby’s body and carried her out the front door where a Honda Odyssey—the most recognizably American thing to ever come out of Japan—idled. And it wasn’t the one he’d bought for Ana, but a vehicle they’d chosen on their own. Nothing to see here. A car by way of Japan, but somehow as American as apple pie.

  Even before it sped away, No cursed them for making the right choice. A white conversion van, the police might find easily. A dark grey Honda Odyssey? It would disappear into Seattle traffic faster than you could say soccer mom.

  Helpless on his side of the ocean and computer screen, he watched them drive away with the girl who’d more than proven herself a worthy house samurai.

  “No!” Ana was screaming in the panic room. His name or a plea to the universe, No couldn’t be sure.

  But he linked to the panic room’s feed to tell her, “Ana, please stay calm. The police will arrive soon to take you to the hospital.”

  “Fuck calm! Forget about me! Those fuckers killed Dallas, and they took Ruby!” Ana screamed at the camera. “They took her!”

  The sound of her wretched, frantic tears tore at No’s heart, and this time it was both a vow and a reassurance when he replied, “I will avenge Montana-san’s death, and I will get her back. I promise you, Ana. I will get Ruby back.”

  After that came technicalities. Sharing the panic room code with the police, making sure they knew to take Ana straight to the hospital. And then he called his brother.

  Not Hayato. The other brother. The half-brother his family barely acknowledged, even though he’d been their hitman for years before hanging his own shingle.

  The one who answered No’s call

  and then said, “I am coming now,” as soon as No explained what had happened.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Twenty-four hours later, No walked up to the door of their rural factory home for the first time since his mother died. On either side of him were his brothers—both his brothers.

  Two intimidating but perfectly polite guards looked the three of them up and down. And then with the instincts of bloodhounds, patted Suro down. Neither guard acted surprised when they came away with two guns, sleek and lethal.

  However, Suro didn’t seem all that perturbed by the loss of his firearms. He simply eyed the guards, as if memorizing their faces, before dropping his arms back down to his sides. Weaponless, the three brothers followed another two guards toward the back of the property.

  Their father would be waiting for them in the garden veranda. No somehow knew this before they’d even reached their destination. This is what made his father “good in the conference room” if “terrible behind the desk.” While his business instincts left much to be desired in No’s opinion, he did have a way of reading his enemies. Of waging his battles on both physical and psychological fronts.

  So of course he’d invite his sons to meet with him in the same place the mother to two of them had died horrifically. What other place would better suit his father’s mind?

  And there Kazuo was at the square white table. One that looked almost identical to the old one but not the same, as the original table had to be replaced because of the blood stains.

  However, that grisly scene seemed very far away from the garden now, and his father looked the picture of an older Japanese gentleman. Chatting in Japanese with his guest. A small, biracial girl with dark circles under her eyes—dark circles that were the result of getting knocked unconscious before being transported to her country of origin to be used as a barg
aining chip in a high stakes negotiation with his son.

  “Norio,” his father called out as they approached the table. “I was just telling the young lady about you!”

  He extended a patently false smile to the girl as one of the guards suddenly appeared with a pot of tea. “You see, Ruby-chan, I knew these boys were truly weak when they refused to come back here after their mother’s death. Such a beautiful house, but neither of her sons would so much as visit. What do you make of that?” he asked the girl with a shake of his head.

  “Perhaps I should have killed them then. Put them down like dogs, and started yet another family with a third wife. A better wife. In the hopes that she would finally give me the family I deserve.”

  Ruby’s gaze slid toward No, questioning. Obviously wondering what she should do next.

  Nothing, he answered her mentally, before saying, “Hello, Father,” and bowing deep at the waist.

  His father did not return the bow or even stand. Merely said, “Or perhaps I should have had girls. You, Ruby, despite being hafu, are not weak. You are much stronger than my sons. I hope they make the right decision now with regards to you.”

  “Father, we are here to negotiate,” No said, keeping his voice level. “Exactly as you asked. Tell us what you want, so we may leave the girl out of this.”

  “What I want…”

  His father finally looked up, only to stop when he saw Suro. The original son, the oldest son he had not set eyes on in nearly twenty years.

  “Ah, I see what is happening now,” he said, eyeing his estranged son. “I now understand why you chose such an unsuitable mate to carry on my family name. How long have you two been in contact?”