Page 66 of Brutal Unionn

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 likewaves.

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.