Page 27 of Brutal Union (Ruthless Mafia Kings #8)

SHO

THREE YEARS LATER

One. Two. Hut. One. Two. Hut.

My knuckles are purple, bloody and tortured, with splinters digging deeper and deeper into my flesh with each movement.

The wood beneath my fists is stained with sweat and iron—indented from the months of training.

My hips are stretched so far they burn, but I keep the position.

Arms straight. Back straighter. Knees bent.

Every tendon in my thighs trembles like a decaying bridge threatening to break, but I don’t move. If I fall now, I bleed for it. Again.

Three years ago, I held my breath with every shift in my muscle. My back is an array of switch marks from every time I broke my position. Some faded, some fresh. Each one a signature of failure. But not today.

Today, I don’t breathe. I endure. I become stone.

My teeth are clenched so tight my jaw aches, but I dare not relax. One sigh and I risk another whip. One blink and the sting returns. The voice above me barks orders, but it fades into a dull echo. All I hear is the thud of my pulse and the crackle of fire building in my spine.

“Again,” Bhon orders, his arms crossed behind his back. A patient look on his face as I move my body through the movements.

At the beginning, he told me there was a music to getting through this pain. To pushing through every gritted tooth. To allowing your pain to play the tune you can stomach.

I thought he was pulling my leg. Something that a mentor says just to make you feel as if you can push through the pain. This is me assuming that Bhon isn’t the sadist I predict him to be.

I snap my right arm to the front, the heel of my palm slamming into the wood, just as Bhon’s whip cracks across my spine. I hiss, my eyes darting to his blank stare.

“You moved your hips,” he shrugs. “You will be one man versus a never-ending onslaught of Yakuza men. Your hips can’t move when you don’t want them to.”

The sting burns straight to my ribs, but I bite down the sound trying to claw its way out of my throat.

My body is soaked in sweat, muscles trembling like faulty wiring. The wood in front of me is dented from repeated strikes, stained red where my palms bled earlier. But I don’t stop.

“You’re losing tempo,” Bhon calls again, stepping closer now. “Again.”

I move. Slower this time. More precise. One motion flows into the next.

Strike. Step. Twist. Hold. Again .

“You think they’ll wait for you to catch your breath?” His voice is a cold sneer that crawls across my flesh like a burn. “They will eat you alive, still. Three years of training and you are still a sloppy mess.”

I push myself harder, eyes focused on the tattered bark in front of me. “You’re a fucking liar and you know it.”

Bhon chuckles, the slick sound of a whip follows, but I lean back escaping the tip by centimeters.

“You’re too cocky.” He comments, walking around the back of the tree, just as the sound of the shoji door opening behind him.

“Are you boys done playing?” Aoi sighs. Her robe hangs loose off one shoulder, silk slipping down her collarbone. She doesn’t flinch under my stare—just yawns and stretches like a cat after a midday feeding and a lazy afternoon nap.

“Only if you’re done playing,” Bhon says simply.

Aoi leans against the door frame, a lazy smile on her face as she stares at Bhon with a fondness I never thought she was capable of. “I am never done playing. I thought you knew that.”

I smirk, moving through the next movement. Bhon’s blank stare flashes at the tease, and he barks his next command. “Break.”

I collapse to my knees, chest heaving, sweat dripping from my jaw to the dirt floor.

My back throbs where the whip landed. Aoi walks past me, offering a faint, smug smile.

Her robe sways with each step. The scent of her—coconut milk and jasmine—drifts behind her like the temptation she has craved herself into being .

“Get water,” Bhon says without looking at me. “Because after this, we do blades.”

I drag myself toward the tin cup and hot steel sink just outside the house, my mind racing faster than my heartbeat. My mind is clearer than it has been in months, and despite the growing urge to think about her. The compulsion to hear the melancholy purr of her voice.

I drop down into a squat as I fill the tin cup up with barely consumable water. I swallow each drop of the lukewarm water with the hope that today will result in the first day I can breathe without the gnawing gap in my chest wishing to beat again.

I won’t dare say her name, but to myself, my mind calls to her. Nadia. Hime. The first woman I have ever loved. The last woman I have ever loved. The woman who was going to sell me back to the Yakuza for the revenge of her father.

When I first left her she called insistently.

She flew to Japan and frequented the darkest corners of the country.

She even tracked down my best friend Nickel in Osaka, and camped out at the Onsen for a couple of days.

She did everything, but apologized. Refused to beg.

Did everything in her power not to beg me, and I hate that I love her for it.

“Stop thinking about her,” Aoi yawns, leaning against the cool exterior of the house. Her arms are crossed over her chest with a look of pure boredom on her face.

I pause, swaying in my squat as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I wasn’t thinking about her.”

“You’re a liar,” Aoi sings, plopping down on the concrete step just outside the front door of the house. Her kimono flares around her like waves.

In another life, I wouldn’t have been foolish enough to lay with my enemy.

I would have stayed with Aoi, and made do with never feeling the all consuming heat of being infatuated with a girl who I could never quite have.

But in this life, I choose to walk into the icy shackles of Nadia’s gaze and Aoi has fallen madly in love with Bhon, their empty gazes and tendencies towards murder draw them closer and closer together.

I push back and fall onto my butt, the impact jarring but nothing compared to what’s churning in my chest. “I do not want to think of her.”

“Then do not,” Aoi sighs, tossing her midnight hair over her shoulder with deliberate ease.

“If it were that simple, I would’ve cut her from my mind and burned the scraps.” I snarl, my gaze drifting to the tips of my fingernails grazing the dirt beneath me. “Not everyone can be like you and Bhon—soulless. In control. ” Utterly in love.

Aoi chuckles, the sound soft and cutting. “I think you were a fool for loving her.”

“Are we stating facts now?” I roll my eyes, plucking a blade of grass and rolling it between my fingertips like it could tether me to something sane.

“I think you’re an even greater fool for not staying.”

“You hate Nadia.”

“I hate Nadia,” she says, her voice thinning into something colder, “because I am like a dog, Sho.”

She leans forward, her fingers tracing the thick vein threading my shoulder. The touch is light, almost tender. Almost .

“I marked my territory,” she whispers. “Not well. But you were marked.”

“And now?” I ask, though I already know.

“Now,” she says, pulling back just enough to smile without warmth, “I have Bhon. And you… you’re still obsessed with her.”

I push onto my feet, shrugging off her chilling caress like ice melting from my skin. “It’ll fade.”

“You said that three years ago,” Aoi shrugs, moving closer to me from her post against the house.

“I didn’t believe it then.”

“And you believe it now?” she deadpans, rising slowly to her full height. Her gaze is unflinching, sharp as the blade tucked inside her robe. “Is that why Boris is locked in your basement? Starved. Tortured. Alive.”

“That’s my business,” I snap, too quickly.

She doesn’t flinch. “If you're done with her—kill him.”

Her words hit harder than they should. I search her face, but her eyes are so black they swallow the light, the kind of eyes that hide bodies and never blink.

Her lips curl into a smirk as she steps into my space. One hand pinches my chin, tilting it. The other snakes behind my neck with the quiet finality of an executioner’s grip—deadly and practiced. Assassin control. Before I could blink, she could snap my neck.

“Who are you keeping him alive for?” she taunts, her voice a breath against my cheek. “You won’t let anyone touch him. Won’t let me finish the job. But you keep him there. Hanging. Dripping. Like the sweetest carrot.”

I clench my fists, jaw twitching.

Her fingertips curve over the outline of my jaw. “Who else do you do it for if not her?”

“Your point, Aoi.” I keep my voice strained, eyes never leaving hers.

“Go get her back before you go to war,” she says, no flirtation, no venom—just the bone-deep command of a killer who’s done dancing with emotion.

“You sound like you care about me,” I smirk.

Aoi taps my cheek once, like a warning. “I care that you don’t make a fool of Bhon, because you’re distracted by a pair of tits.”

“You know it’s more than that.”

She turns away, a smirk over her shoulder as her robe trailing behind her, disappearing back into the house. I wait until I can’t hear her footsteps anymore before I move.

Through the brush, I follow the narrow, hidden path carved out by years of secrecy and blood.

Jagged stones jut up from the earth like broken teeth, their edges worn smooth by footsteps that never wanted to be followed.

Thick roots snake along the ground, silent and unmoving beneath a canopy of pine and cedar that swallows sound.

The deeper I go, the more the forest tightens, the air cooling with every step, until even the breeze feels hesitant to follow.