Page 21 of Brutal Union (Ruthless Mafia Kings #8)

Chains line the walls. Leather harnesses dangle from the ceiling like decadent nooses. There’s a Saint Andrew’s cross, polished black wood slick with old polish and fresh promise. A table with velvet ties. A mirror-topped stool with stirrups .

I step inside, inhaling the scent of sweat, leather, and orgasm. My cock twitches. Gwen needs to keep this room on permanent retainer for Nadia and me, after I become a part of the family of course. It’ll be a wedding present that never stops giving.

I stick my hand through the curtain, blindly grabbing the door handle to close the door behind me, but before I can, a hand shoots out and stops it.

I don’t turn, but I walk into the room, my hand gliding over the leather strings of a flogger.

“You don't know how fucked up it is for you to be in this room,” I murmur, “and not be my girl.”

The door creaks wider, and Bhon steps into the room, one hand digging deeper into his pockets. He tilts his head, eyeing the array of paddles on the wall, then me. “Funny,” he says. “I was about to say the same thing.”

I clear my throat and finally look at Bhon’s smug face.

His long black hair is tied into a tight bun, with only a single strand out of place, and dangling in front of his right eye.

His face is carved in stone—sharp cheekbones, a chiseled jaw, skin like a polished pearl.

There’s no softness to him. Just cold calculation behind those midnight eyes.

He closes the door and looks me up and down. “Where’s the girl?”

“Alive,” I snap. “No thanks to you.”

Bhon’s all lean, wiry muscle beneath a black mandarin-collared shirt that doesn’t wrinkle no matter how much he moves. Every inch of him is composed, from the way his arms fold across his chest to the slight tilt of his head .

A blade gleams at his hip—curved, elegant, old.

“Well,” Bhon says, his voice low and smooth, “I didn’t kill her only because you came to her rescue. Fifteen years of assassin work and I have never missed a target. Never needed to issue a refund, until now.”

I snort, moving the bottom left side of my button-up shirt, subtly showing him where my weapons are. “Why do I get the feeling you expect a thank you?”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he shrugs, moving deeper into the room.

“So wouldn’t a bullet to the skull,” I counter, earning a deep chuckle from him.

Bhon lets the laugh linger for a second too long. He moves past me and nods toward the Saint Andrew’s cross, taking slow steps, running his fingers along the edge of the padded wood. “Was that a threat?”

“Only if you want it to be,” I mutter, leaning against the wall as I fold my arms.

Bhon grins, teeth barely visible behind his lips. “I wouldn’t dream of touching your girl. That would be suicide. Beautiful thing like that with a kill count? She's probably like heroin to you.”

“More like fentanyl,” I smile. “Maybe just a tab bit deadlier.”

He finally turns, his eyes narrowing. “This woman has changed you.”

“Maybe, but what’s changed you?.” I arch a brow. “You didn’t always care if you killed someone’s lover, friend, mother or brother so why do you care now? ”

“Let’s just say…someone important to me would kill me for hurting you,” Bhon says simply, his voice steady.

“What’s their name? I should thank them.”

I push off the wall and walk toward him, in measured steps, closing of the space between us. My palms press flat against the black table at the room’s center, the leather warming beneath my touch. I lean in just enough to let my voice curl like smoke between us.

“Well, if we’re talking heads,” I whisper, “how much is yours going for these days? Seventy? Eighty million?”

“Try two-fifty,” he replies, a flicker of pride in his smile.

I whistle. “You’ve been busy.”

“So have you,” he counters, that sharp tongue of his back in full swing. “Slaughtering the remnants of your bloodline… forcing your father to replace an entire council. Executing six of the most trusted Yakuza families in cold blood.”

“I found out some things after my mother’s death,” I say, voice like a blade being unsheathed. I lean forward, matching his energy with my own, letting the tension stretch between us like piano wire. “Including why there are no women in the Yakuza…or haven't been in the last thirty years.”

Bhon’s lips twitch as a faint smile crawls across his face—unnatural and cold, like it was carved there with a scalpel rather than formed by joy.

“You know what they do to the expendables,” he says, his voice almost tender in its cruelty. “And now you’ve come to save the day… how precious.”

“Don’t mock me,” I snap, venom lacing my words. “I was a child too. ”

“Yes,” he murmurs, the smile curving crueler.

“But you were the child. The golden one. The heir.” He wiggles his fingers like he’s twirling threads of my memory around them.

“You weren’t traded for a debt. You weren’t held down and trained to kill your brothers in exchange for food.

You weren’t called dog, ghost, or number. You weren’t owned .”

“I know,” I whisper, jaw tight, guilt swelling in my chest like something alive.

“I was being raised to serve the future king,” Bhon continues, stepping forward, voice dropping into something darker. “To die for you. To kill for you.”

“I know ,” I roar, the words bursting from me like shrapnel. My fists tremble at my sides, knuckles bone-white. The images flood in without mercy—children shackled, trained like animals, carved into weapons and sold like currency. My own privilege curdling inside me.

I squeeze my hands together to stop them from shaking and avert my gaze. “I know, Bhon. And I swear—I will end it.”

The Yakuza wasn’t always like this. Once, there was honor—even in the shadows.

But that died long before I picked up my first blade.

Somewhere in the bloodline, someone traded steel for flesh, and the poison seeped in slow.

The sex trade. The children. The ghosts in the basements of Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok—names with no faces, bodies with no homes.

I thought I killed it when I executed the families. When I spilled elder blood in the name of my mother and burned their houses to ash.

But I was wrong. This rot goes deeper than tradition. Deeper than family .

“Are you calling me back in?” He hisses, the heat from his breath makes my guilt curdle like rotten milk. “Do you want me to serve you?”

“No,” I whisper, pulling back. “I need a favor.”

“I don’t do favors for the Yakuza.”

“You will.”

“Not after they killed Duri.” Bhon grips me by the collar of my shirt, his eyes wide open, and teeth bare like he could rip my jugular out with just his fangs. “I will never-”

“Duri isn’t dead.” I whisper. “I sent him to Europe.”

“Bullshit,” he snaps, but the fire is faltering now. His grip stays firm, but something in his stare is unraveling.

“I know his name,” I say carefully, the air tight with tension. “Where he lives. Who raised him. I kept him off the books. Off the record. He thinks you died as well.”

Bhon doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. The pressure on my collar spikes, and for a moment I think he’s going to crush my trachea out of reflex. But I hold my ground.

“Tell me who sent the hit on Nadia,” I say, voice steady. “Not the name they gave you. I need the truth. The real name.”

His eyes burn into mine, wavering between fury and something dangerously close to hope.

“I gave up everything for Duri,” he whispers, voice trembling like something inside of him cracked at the thought. “And if you’re lying?—”

“I’m not.”

“I’ll gut you. ”

“You can try,” I murmur. “After you give me the name.”

Bhon doesn’t let go of my collar. Not yet. His eyes flicker—searching me for deceit like he’s dissecting my soul one cell at a time. And then, slowly, his grip slackens.

“Fine.” He breathes, backing away one step.

He turns from me, dragging a hand across his smooth slick back hair, that one loose strand still hanging across his temple.

“Boris Petrov,” he says.

The name cuts through the air like a gunshot, echoing in the tight space between us. “Are you sure?”

“I met him six months ago,” Bhon continues. “He was greying, still a huge hulking man, just in a shitty grey coat and missing some teeth.”

“Where?” I demand.

Bhon’s jaw flexes. “An apartment in Matsuyama. Fifth floor. He didn’t have the money to afford me, but knew a man named Draco who did. He gave me Nadia’s picture, and told me his name was Nikolai.”

Matsuyama. A quiet, coastal city on the island of Shikoku.

“And you accepted knowing he was lying about who he is?” I ask.

He turns slowly. “It’s not my business who someone is, and besides, I am the best in the business, according to him. He needed me because I have never missed a target.”

My stare hardens. “But you missed this one.”

Bhon smiles, but there’s no pleasure in it .

“No,” he says. “I let her live. Because Boris didn’t want her killed cleanly. He wanted her to suffer, a job like that takes time and energy that a clean kill doesn’t.”

I nod, a smile rushing across my face. “The fuckers ego got in the way.”

“Most men do,” he nods. “Now Duri.”

“Guildhouse School in London, under the name Nathan Choi.”

Bhon nods slowly, letting the name settle into his bloodstream like a sedative. For a moment, the killer vanishes, and something vulnerable—something human—flickers behind his eyes.

“Nathan…” he repeats under his breath, like it tastes foreign on his tongue. “Guildhouse School.”

I nod once. “Dormitory C. Corner room. He likes astronomy. Paints when he can’t sleep. I made sure he’d never have to lift a blade. His adoptive parents Guilda and Franklin love him dearly, but they will be expecting you.”

Bhon’s jaw clenches again, but it’s different this time—like he’s grinding down a scream, or a prayer. He turns away from me.

“This changes nothing between us,” he mutters.

“I didn’t ask it to.”

“But I owe you now,” he adds, eyes flicking to mine. “And I hate owing people.”

“You’ll repay me when the time comes,” I say, already moving toward the door .

Just as I reach the velvet curtain, his voice cuts through behind me, low and dark:

“Sho.”

I stop. Glance back.

“A man who orders a hit on their daughter,” Bhon says, a violent chill in his eyes, “doesn't deserve a clean kill.”

“Oh,” I smirk, lips curling over the rage brewing in my chest. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”