Ramen Assassin

by Rhys Ford

  “You don’t have any fucking right.” Kimber Bishop went stiff and her jaw clenched, much like Trey’s did a few seconds before. Turning away from Kuro, her glare shifted to her brother. “What you’ve done to this family—”

  “I’m not saying he hasn’t done shit to your family, but you shovel a lot of it right back,” Kuro interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest. Trey was only a few inches away, and he wanted to reach out, to touch him and reassure Trey, but Kimber would take that as a sign of weakness, probably doubling down on her brother. Maybe. Kuro didn’t know, but he didn’t want to take that chance. “You can do whatever you want outside my front door, but not in here. Now, do you want to get past all of this baggage you keep flinging at him and we talk about what we’ve learned, or does this conversation have to happen elsewhere?”

  “Oh please don’t,” a woman’s voice called out from the stairwell, partially broken from her hard breathing. “I just climbed these damned steps. I would’ve called ahead, but no one is picking up their phone, and I had to get the address from the Black Widow.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Kimber growled. “We talked about that.”

  “If the spandex fits,” the woman grumbled, stepping into the loft. “You couldn’t find a room on the ground floor? Do you know how hard it is to climb stairs in three-inch stilettos?”

  “The Black Widow?” Kuro muttered at Trey, wondering why Aoki was letting everyone and his mother upstairs. “And who’s that?”

  “I spout off about Norse mythology and you don’t even blink, but drop something about pop culture and you draw a blank?” Trey whispered back. “Tatiana. That’s the Black Widow.”

  “Boom Boom?” He frowned. “She’s never been married.”

  “Scooter and Maggie call her that and Natasha. Like Moose and Squirrel?” Trey shook his head when Kuro gave him a perplexed look. “It’s a joke, but I don’t think they realize how accurate it is. You know, female Russian spies who want to take over the world? Where did you grow up? Under a rock?”

  “It just took me a moment.” The woman was headed straight for them, and Kuro’s hand itched, his mind instinctively longing for a weapon. He stood up, about to block her path when Trey’s hand touched the small of his back.

  “This is my sister Scooter.” Trey allowed himself to be dragged into a hug, squeaking near the end of it. He was visibly uncomfortable, squirming around in his sister’s embrace much like Yuki oozed when it was time to cut her nails. “Scooter, let go. Can’t breathe.”

  “Let me look at you. It’s been forever and a day since you’ve been to the house,” the woman said, releasing Trey. “You’re too skinny.”

  Scooter Bishop was practically a clone of her older sister, with a burnished-gold skin that didn’t come from sitting in the sun. Her hips and chest were a little fuller than Kimber’s, but her lush curves did nothing to soften her intimidating presence. Her legs were long and muscular, the hem of her gray tweed pencil skirt exposing most of her calves, and the tucked-in white button-up shirt was cinched tight with a broad red leather belt. Her hair was longer than Kimber’s, frosted to a light gold, but she’d applied her makeup with a skillful hand, playing up her enormous gray eyes while leaving her skin dewy. There were more laugh lines around her mouth, but Kuro wasn’t fooled. She may have projected a warmer image than her older sister, Kimber, but he knew Scooter Bishop was a cutthroat, ruthless businesswoman who’d cut her teeth on her father’s business when she was just a teenager.

  The long, assessing look she gave him solidified Kuro’s belief she was a wolf wrapped up in a fuzzy sheepskin, her warm nature meant to blend her in with the flock.

  “Why are you here?” Trey asked, edging away from his sister until his shoulder touched Kuro’s. “I thought you were in Europe.”

  “I was. I came back when I heard about Sera.” Scooter reached for Trey but let her hand drop onto his shoulder rather than embrace him again. The lines Kuro noticed before grew shadows as they deepened into creases. Scooter was either truly worried or Trey wasn’t the only actor in the family. “I know I haven’t been as present as I should be—”

  “You’ve got your own family to worry about,” Kimber ground out. “And why are you here? What do you hope to accomplish? This is an active investigation—”

  “Which involves our baby brother,” she shot back.

  “You walked away from him before,” their older sister replied. “We all did. Remember? No more coddling him—”

  “This isn’t coddling, and we agreed we wouldn’t enable his addictions, not toss him to the wolves. And right now, Kimber, there’s a shit-ton of wolves.” Scooter took a step toward Kimber, squaring her shoulders. “That’s something that hit me when Dad called to tell me what was going on over here. We’re all very good about keeping our distance because it’s easy, but right now, when he’s in the middle of something like this, that’s when we should be propping him up.”

  “Bullshit,” Kimber snorted. “What do you really want? Dad offer you a promotion if you show your solidarity? Where’s Margaret? Still in Asia, or is she flying in on her own broomstick to grab at the ruby slippers too?”

  “You know what your problem is, Kimber? You never move forward. Once someone does something wrong, you cut them out like they’re cancer instead of trying to deal with things like an adult,” Scooter scoffed. “No wonder Dad doesn’t want you to be a part of the company.”

  “Okay, I do not believe any of this shit.” Trey shouted them down, taking a deep breath when both his sisters glanced at him. “Look, I’m not going to pretend we’ve ever been close, but right now, the only thing I need is for someone to find out who’s trying to kill me. Scooter, I don’t think you can help with that. Fuck, I’m not sure Kimber can help with that, because the entire damned police force seems to think I brought this down on myself.”

  “Can we get back to what I walked in on? Who thinks Robert Mathers is Trey’s father?” Scooter reached down to unhook a heel strap, stepping out of the shoe once it was loose. She did the other, balancing on her toes while keeping her eyes on Kimber. “They proved he’s Dad’s. Twice!”

  “It’s a rumor that was started years ago, and apparently Mathers—Robert—didn’t believe the test,” Trey replied. “Someone Kuro knows dug up the gossip and threw it into the ring as to why someone wants to kill me. Robert Mathers left a bit in his will about everything going to his offspring if he dies.”

  “So someone believes the rumors,” Kimber mulled. “I would suspect David, but he’s dead.”

  “Who else would have gotten a part of the estate?” Kuro asked. “Because they were moving Robert for a reason. They couldn’t keep him much longer. Too much ice damage to his body. They would have been trying to dispose of him when Trey saw the body on the street.”

  “How do you know about the damage to his body?” Kimber tilted her chin up, narrowing her eyes.

  “Can we just accept I do and work on what needs to be dealt with first?” He jerked his head toward Trey. “Let’s get your brother out of someone’s dead pool and then we can talk about boundaries. Especially since I’m hoping that once this whole thing blows over, I won’t ever have to be a part of something like this again.”

  “How many times do you think I’m going to be framed for murder and put on a hit list?” Trey grumbled under his breath. “This is like living in a soap opera.”

  “Honey, with you, it’s always one thing or another,” Scooter piped up. “Not to be a downer, but if there’s a fleck of mud on the road, you fall in it.”

  “Okay, fair enough, but this time isn’t on me.” Trey appeared ready to argue, then sighed. “Who inherits if I die? My beneficiaries or someone else? Wouldn’t that be who we look at first?”

  “Well, I have an answer for you about that. It’s why I came over to begin with,” Kimber said, stopping Scooter from interrupting by holding her hand up in her sister’s face. “I got a call today from Mathers’s lawyer. Most of the estate that�
�s not given directly to someone rolls into a trust—which we knew from what Gilder told Dad from the beginning—but it took the firm some time to separate out who got what amount. Mathers definitely had a thing for Dad, because Harry… Trey… isn’t the only Bishop in Mathers’s golden book. He left a big chunk of change to all of us, as well as a few others. Everything stays in the trust. It’s doled out in percentages. Trey’s just got the biggest share.”

  “So if he dies, the percentages shift?” Scooter whistled under her breath. “Well hell, that changes things. A lot.”

  “Yep, because now, not only are the three of us targets for whoever is after Trey,” Kimber drawled, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets, “we’re also now all murder suspects.”

  Eighteen

  TWO DAYS after Scooter descended on him, Trey was climbing the loft’s walls.

  “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate not being murdered,” he said, measuring two cups of rice out, then dumping it into the pot. “It’s just that… I want my life back.”

  “Your life’s exactly what we’re trying to save here. Shouldn’t be much longer,” Kuro replied, not looking up from the onion he was turning into a pile of minced white squares with a knife too sharp for Trey to even think about holding, much less use. There was a pause. Then Kuro shrugged. “I think.”

  Measuring the water out, Trey snuck a peek at Kuro’s index finger, silently guessing its length. Kuro assured him the water thing was valid and the rice had turned out okay the first time he’d done it, but Trey still had his doubts. Staring down into the milky water, he did what he’d been doing since he’d first run into Kuro after spotting Mathers’s body—all of his trust and faith with the man holding a weapon.

  He put in enough water until it touched the first-joint line of his index finger, then set the rice to cook.

  “On the majority of people, that joint is an inch long. So the water level tends to be pretty consistent. Let me get these onions going with some garlic first, then we can brown the meat.” Kuro took a flat-edged scraper and skillfully slid the onion bits into the tall-sided skillet he had warming on the stove. At a loss of what to do, Trey took up his now customary position at the barstool on the opposite side of the island to watch. There was an elaborate smash-and-mince dance Kuro did with garlic cloves before they joined the onion in the now sizzling pan. “It’ll take a little while for the flavors to blend, but the rice will stay warm, unless you want to eat it cold.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re making,” Trey confessed.

  “Chili. I like it over rice with shredded cheese, sour cream, and chopped raw onion,” Kuro replied as he reached for a thin green pepper. “I’m trying to remember if you ordered your ramen spicy or not. Most of the time you go with miso with kakuni. I can always leave it out and add some Chinese chili oil to mine.”

  “I don’t order the spicy ramen because it doesn’t come with kakuni. My life is always made better from braised pork belly. I don’t mind hot, but I don’t like it too hot. I want to taste the food.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. “I like the kimchi you guys have downstairs. It’s like the right level of heat. The cabbage one, not the cucumber, because that’s not really hot.”

  “Okay, one pepper it is.” Kuro began to deseed the pepper, nodding at the skillet. “Can you reach that to stir it?”

  “Like mix-stir or just push around? I don’t cook. Well, what I do really well is heat up things.” He took a flat wooden spoon off the counter and began to move the onions and garlic about. “Like this?”

  “Perfect.” The pepper seemed to need more concentration than the onions and garlic, because Kuro’s eyes were fixed firmly on the chopping board. “I’m going to ask this because I don’t know if you would bring it up, so I’m going to. Are you feeling too crowded? And I don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated to share a bed with me, even if it is just to sleep. I know the first couple of nights you were shaky, but if things have changed, I want you to tell me. The couch is comfortable. I’ve slept there more than a few times.”

  “You are the only part of the craziness making this whole piece-of-shit thing bearable. Well, you and Yuki,” he murmured, smiling when the cat meowed from her spot on the windowsill at the sound of her name. Putting the spoon down, Trey shrugged. “I just feel like I’m in a prison or a really crappy rehab facility because I can’t go outside. I miss stupid things like the blue cup I use for coffee in the morning. Then I remember Sera sometimes and I just want to cry.”

  “I don’t want you to feel pressured.”

  “I don’t feel pressured. I feel like you’re the only thing holding me together, and that’s a lot of shit to put on you,” he confessed in a low whisper. “Maybe you should feel more like I’ve shoved myself into your life and now you’re stuck with me and you don’t know how to tell me to get out.”

  “I don’t want you to go. I like having you here, and I really don’t want to let you loose into the wild while someone’s trying to take you out,” Kuro said with a grin, adding the minced pepper to the sizzling pan. “And it’s not like I haven’t wondered how things would be with you every single time you’ve come in for a bowl of ramen. I just wasn’t looking for any connections with anyone. I never thought I would, but I like it between us. It feels good. Easier than I thought it would be.”

  “Even with all of the car chases and gunfights?” He tried to keep a teasing tone in his words, but the truth refused to be boxed in by humor. “It’s been a shitty couple of weeks for you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kuro said, gesturing with the knife he’d used on the peppers. “In my old line of work, this is just a typical Tuesday.”

  Trey was trying to ignore the burn in his blood, the rushing need to be numbed to the point of senselessness or taken right to the edge of not caring. Sex with Kuro had been comfort, a need he still nursed in his belly, but the addiction was something else, a wicked pull he wasn’t always strong enough to resist.

  “Everything is kind of at a standstill,” Kuro pointed out. “Kimber is having to look at everyone in your family as a suspect, and Mathers’s lawyer says he’s still working out the logistics of the will. I don’t know anything about inheritance and how long it takes to settle those kinds of things, but from what everyone says, an estate of this size takes a while.”

  “I don’t even want the money,” he muttered, scrubbing his face with his hands. “I want to ask Dad about Mathers and why he thought I was his kid. Mom slipped off to Europe and she’s not answering me, but that’s normal. I keep leaving messages for Dad, but I’m getting the runaround. Tatiana says he’s busy. I think he doesn’t want to deal with this.”

  “Is there any validity to Kimber’s suspicions about your other sisters?” Kuro added. “Margaret is Kimber’s full sister, correct?”

  “Yeah. Dad had three batches with three wives. Kimber and Margaret, then Scooter. I was a very big surprise.” Trey leaned back a bit as Kuro began to debone what looked like a piece of meat he’d gotten off of a dinosaur. “Scooter’s always been hot and cold, but Margaret and Kimber weren’t too happy when I showed up. There’s always a lot of tension, and I didn’t help things by fucking up my life. I think Kimber tries because she’s the oldest and she went her own way, so maybe there’s a little guilt because she turned her back on Dad’s business.”

  “Did he expect all of you to go work for him?” Kuro stopped slicing, his expression growing thoughtful. “I know that kind of pressure, but sometimes you have to walk away from it in order to be your own person.”

  “That’s kind of what Kimber said. I don’t know Margaret very well. She stays very far away from me, even when I was a kid. Do I think they would kill me? No, not really but I think if I showed up at the office tomorrow and told Dad I was ready to have a desk, they’d be the first ones to sharpen the knives.” He chuckled. “Well, not Kimber. She’s not driven by money, and her mom came into the marriage already rich and left it richer. Scooter�
�s mom is kind of a hippie, but I think that’s sort of an act. She’s got this whole organic, natural beauty line business, and she’s pretty ruthless.”

  “And your mom?”

  “My mom is still the current wife, so she’s pretty much got her cake and eats it too.” He’d long given up expecting Joy Bishop to be maternal, and any hurt he felt now was buried beneath years of disappointment. After spending so much of his life trying to earn her love and respect, Trey knew his mother simply was incapable of giving it to anyone besides herself. “I’ve got a few cousins scattered around, but I don’t know them. I wonder if David had any kids. Because if Robert and David inherited the business from their father, shouldn’t it flow down to both brothers’ families?”

  “That’s probably something Kimber’s chasing down.” The meat had now been turned into strips, Kuro gracefully manipulating the dark red flesh with sweeping cuts. “How about if I throw this all into a Crock-Pot and you and I go on a very long run?”

  “I think that’s what I need,” Trey confessed, exhaling hard. “Just feeling really cooped up.”

  “I can tell. You keep rubbing at your arms, so I’m guessing you need to burn off more than just a little energy,” Kuro said, looking up. “I want you to promise me something. I don’t ever want you to feel like you should be ashamed of being an addict. You got coping mechanisms in place to help you deal with wanting drugs and alcohol. Those are good things to have, and if you need to do them, just tell me. I’m here to support you, even during the times when you’re feeling a little on edge. Talk to me. Tell me. Okay?”

  “I didn’t even realize I was doing it,” he sighed. “It’s a bad habit I picked up. It’s like I’m trying to scratch the itch in my blood. I don’t like calling attention to who I was, and I guess I’m not used to sharing what’s going on in my head anymore. Not since I had to attend group therapy.”