Page 18 of Craving Revenge

I stop dead in my tracks and quickly say, “We won’t, and if you’d told us sooner that you’re a goddamn woman, we wouldn’t have hurt you.” I crouch down on my haunches to make myself smaller as I meet her terrified eyes. “Who are you?”

Tears begin to spill over her cheeks, and she slumps down onto her back, her breathing shallow and fast. “I’m nobody. Just a shadow.”

Her words are so soft I would’ve missed them if I weren’t looking at her face.

“Are you related to Masato?” I ask.

She shakes her head again, and even though we’ve worked her over pretty hard and she’s clearly out of it, I can see her mind working behind her brown eyes. “I’m just a random woman pretending to be his son.”

“If she’s a body double, it explains why she didn’t answer the questions,” Raffaele comments. “A body double won’t have any information. She was probably terrified we’d just off her if we found out she’s not Ryo Tanaka.”

The woman turns her head to look at my underboss and nods at him, and finally admits, “I have no information. Please, let me go.”

Jesus, she’s in no condition to walk out of here. She won’t even make it to the door.

I shake my head as I stare at the woman who’s barely able to breathe where she’s lying on the ground.

I move closer, and when I slip my arms beneath her, she begins to shake her head frantically. “Please. Don’t!”

She’s only able to slap my neck with her right hand because her left arm will be out of commission for a while.

“We’re going to drop you off at the hospital,” I tell her, so she’ll stop worrying.

She gives me a wary look, fear for me darkening her eyes, then she glances at her hoodie.

Right. She probably feels exposed in the bra.

I reach for the oversized hoodie and pull the fabric over her head. She pushes her right arm through the sleeve but keeps her left one tucked against her black and blue middle.

I pick her up, and now that the shirt is off, she weighs practically nothing.

A crippling wave of guilt fills my chest, and as I carry her out of the hangar toward the SUV, I glance down at her swollen face.

She did a fucking good job of impersonating a man, and even though her face still looks masculine, especially with the bruises, it doesn’t make me feel any less ashamed.

It doesn’t matter what she looks like. She’s a woman, and we beat her to within an inch of her life.

Slowly, the guilt keeps growing, and I know when my mother hears about this, she’s going to be fucking disappointed in me.

“Fuck,” I snap angrily, which has the woman’s body jerking in my arms. My eyes snap down to her fear-filled ones. “You really should’ve told us you’re a woman!”

She practically folds into herself, and it feels like she’s shrinking in size to make herself a smaller target.

“Follow us in the other SUV,” I order the two guards who stayed behind with us while everyone else returned to the States.

Because I did most of the damage to her, I feel responsible for making sure she gets to a hospital. If she were a man, I wouldn’t care.

Once I’ve placed her in the backseat, I slam the door shut. My eyes meet Raffaele’s across the roof of the SUV, and I shake my head.

“Do you want to search for the Yakuza once we’ve dropped her off, or head home?” he asks.

I let out a sigh and glance at the empty airfield. “We have to wait for the jet to come back, so we might as well find another way to contact Masato Tanaka while we kill time.”

He nods as he gets in behind the steering wheel. I climb into the front passenger seat and let out another sigh.

This unexpectedly turned into a shit show.

Originally, the intention was to call Masato, so I could hand his beaten son to him as a warning to never fuck with the Cosa Nostra again. But we don’t have Ryo.