Page 24 of Brutal Union (Ruthless Mafia Kings #8)

SHO

TWELVE YEARS EARLIER

Takahama Coast, Japan

The salt stings worse than the wound.

I hunch over in the pale sand, waves gently hissing up the beach.

My leg burns. A jagged gash slices along my thigh from earlier this afternoon, when I fell trying to keep up with the older boys on the breakwater rocks.

They didn’t notice I was hurt. They laughed and moved on.

That’s good. That’s what Father would’ve wanted.

Still, it bleeds. I press my hand to it, trying to stop the flow. The blood soaks through my fingers and runs down my shin. The pain is sharp at first, then dull, then just… there.

I’m not supposed to cry.

I’m not supposed to feel anything. Father’s made that clear a hundred times. Weakness isn’t just shameful—it’s dangerous. He says it all the time. A single crack is enough to bring the whole wall down. A moment of softness, and someone will use it to kill you.

The minute he deems me too weak, he will kill me.

He has done it before. I remember my brothers.

Benjiro was an artist who had a knack for drawing women and animals.

He used to tell me those were the two purest forms of humanity.

Riko was more of a lover. He was tender and kind, never really understood what it was to wield a sword.

Both died at the age of fourteen. I am almost fourteen, my father has no trust I will make it to maturity.

He believes my mother breeds weak men. I never asked about my one sister.

I haven’t seen her since the day she was born five years ago.

I don’t want to cry.

But the tears still come. Hot. Silent. Not sobs—nothing weak like that.

Just my eyes leaking without permission while I grind my teeth and keep my jaw clenched.

Salty streaks cut down my face, disappearing into the ocean air.

My shoulders shake, but only a little. Maybe from the wind.

If anyone finds me I will tell them I am cold, but I am unsure a man should even feel a chill. That may make me weak as well.

The blood gushing from my leg isn’t clotting, and my head feels too fuzzy to sense my surroundings. That is the only reason I don’t hear her approach.

I smell her first—lavender, and sea salt. She kneels beside me without a word and clicks her tongue at the sight of my leg. Her presence doesn’t feel like it pushes into mine; it’s like water—slipping around me, fitting beside me.

“Sho,” she hums, her hands moving around mine, and gently pulling them away from the wound .

I stare at her beautiful heart shaped face. She’s wearing a pale blue kimono with silver cranes dancing along the hem. Her hair’s twisted up, strands pulled loose by the breeze.

“Dō shita no, amai ko?” What happened, sweet girl? She hisses, looking at the long gash, moving my pained leg from side to side. It is only then that I recognize the swelling at my ankle.

I don’t answer her, and she murmurs under her breath, looking around the beach for the eyes of my father, or his men. She reaches into her sleeve and pulls out a small cloth bundle. Of course she brought it. She always brings something. I wonder how long she’s been watching me.

She unwraps the bundle and dabs at my leg. Her hands are warm. She’s gentle, but not afraid. When I flinch, she doesn’t. But her hands grip me tighter to keep me still.

“You should have come to me,” she says.

I stare at the waves. “I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I pause, biting the inside of my cheek. The words taste like shame. “Father said I can’t be seen as weak.”

She stops cleaning for a moment. Her hand goes still. The silence stretches so long I think maybe she’s angry. But then she resumes—slow, steady. “You’re not weak, Sho. Your father is weak.”

“That’s not what he thinks.”

“No,” she sighs, moving up to the curve of my knee. “It’s not. But your father was raised to worship stone. He thinks strength is being unshakable. But stone cracks, Sho. Stone breaks. ”

I should tell her that stone is still stone. That father would hit her for not understanding that a cracked stone becomes jagged and more deadly. I should say something my father would say, but instead I lie.

“I wasn’t crying.”

She doesn’t look at me. “I didn’t say you were.”

Her hands stay busy—pulling antiseptic from the cloth bundle she always seems to carry, wetting another corner of the linen, gently wiping around the gash in my leg with careful strokes.

It burns with every swipe, but I swallow down the hiss, and hold in the pain like I am meant to.

She moves with quiet focus, as if tending to me is something sacred.

I am afraid to tell her it is not. I am afraid to tell her I am no better than Riko and Benjiro.

That it is true. She creates weak sons. I am a weak son.

“Do you remember the story of Princess Kaguya?” She whispers, her gaze stuck on the line of my wound.

“The moon princess?”

She smiles, just a little. “Yes. The girl found glowing inside a stalk of bamboo.”

“She leaves Earth at the end.”

“She does,” she nods. “But not before she lives here. Not before she’s loved, and feared, and misunderstood. Do you know why I think she cried when she returned to the moon?”

I shrug. “Because she was sad to leave?”

“No,” she says. “Because she was human for a while. Because it hurt to love people who couldn’t understand her—and still choose to love them anyway. ”

She finishes wrapping the linen like a bandage around my leg. Tight, but not harsh, and ties it off with a string from around her wrist.

“She cried, Sho. And those tears weren’t weakness. They were the burden of someone who felt everything and still kept going.”

I finally glance at her. “So… it’s okay to cry?”

She meets my eyes. Really meets them, and the dark brown of her eyes twinkle under the orange haze of the sunset. “I’m saying pretending you’re made of stone will kill you long before a blade ever does.”

My chest tightens. I don’t want to cry more, but the words press up against my throat like they’re trying to escape. I clench my fists in my lap. “But Father said?—”

“Your father fears weakness because it reminds him he once had it,” she says. “He doesn’t hate you for crying. He fears what it would mean if he let himself cry, too.”

I swallow. “He wouldn’t like hearing you say that.”

She laughs lightly. Not mocking. Almost sad. “He hasn’t liked most of what I’ve said for years.”

I stare at her hands. They’re thin. Delicate. Not like Father’s hands—rough and knotted like rope.

She looks at me again. “Sho. Strength isn’t about hiding pain. It’s about surviving it. Enduring. Like bamboo.”

I frown. “Bamboo bends.”

She nods. “Exactly. And that’s why it doesn’t break. It survives storms that snap trees in half. It bends with the wind, not against it. ”

I stare at the horizon. The sun’s dipping low now, casting the sea in gold. A fishing boat in the distance floats like a ghost. “I want to believe that,” I say. “But I don’t.”

She smiles. “One day you will believe me. When you bend, but don’t break. You will believe me.”

Present Day

The wind shifts. It’s warmer than I remember—thicker, more humid—but the rhythm of the waves hasn’t changed.

I sit on the same beach, knees drawn loosely up, hands resting in the sand.

The tide has pulled farther out, revealing broken shells and the jagged remains of seaweed clusters.

My leg itches faintly where the scar runs—a thin white line carved across my skin.

That was the last time I saw my mother alive. The next time was at her funeral, where I stood in black with my fists clenched so tight the nails broke skin. I remember Father calling it a sign of maturity. I remember wanting to rip his throat out for saying it.

I lift my eyes now, watching the horizon bleed red and gold as the sun sinks into the sea. The sky looks the same as it did that day, as it looks every day that I come back to my mother’s hometown. It’s a shame I can’t come here to remember my mother, and now I have to kill the father of my girl.

The handle of the knife is smooth in my palm, worn down by hours of use, the blade dull from recent work. I pull a whetstone from the cloth satchel beside me and begin to drag the edge along it, slowly letting the steady scrape fill the silence between memory and murder .

I speak softly, more to the wind than anything else. “You’d probably tell me not to do it.”

My voice doesn’t carry far, and I’m glad. No one should hear this but her.

“I can hear you now. 'Sho, you can't meet violence with more violence.' You'd sit beside me and wrap your fingers around mine, guide the blade away. You’d try to make me see the bigger picture.”

The whetstone whispers against the steel, smoothing it clean. The rhythm steadies my hands, but it doesn’t settle my heart.

“I don’t know if I’m doing this for revenge or protection anymore,” I murmur, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Maybe it’s both. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But I know this—he doesn’t get to keep hurting her. I won’t miss the same way I did with dad.”

“Her name is Nadia by the way. You’d like her. She is fucking ruthless, and gorgeous. She reminds me of you.” I let out a quiet breath, half a laugh. “Actually, no. She’s worse. Or better. Depends on the day.”

I glance down at the blade and test its edge with my thumb. Sharp enough.

“She says she’s no one’s. That no man owns her, not even me. But she looks at me like I might be the first person who could prove her wrong. And that scares her. And it scares me.”

The sun dips lower, half-swallowed by the sea now. The light flickers across the surface, gold bleeding into crimson.

“You told me once that Princess Kaguya cried because she was human for a little while. Because it hurt to love people who couldn’t understand her—and still choose to love them anyway.”

My voice is rougher now, as I grind the rock down harder. The knife catches the dying light, and for a moment I see myself in the steel—eyes dark, hollowed at the edges.