Page 46

46

RYUJI

I was on my second glass of scotch when Fallon Byrne knocked on the front door and Wynn, the little bastard, let her in. I had a knife in my palm within an instant, but he insisted. He took her—with his sister and Zoya—straight to Leona’s room.

What were they doing here?

It didn’t matter. I didn’t care.

By my third glass of scotch, anger leeched from my limbs, along with my sober state of mind.

I sank into the couch cushions, propping my feet on the coffee table while nursing the remaining brown liquid. A shadow passed over my eyes, and I opened them to find icy blues glaring at me.

“The fuck, Ciel?”

“Follow me,” Ciel said, without any other explanation. Behind him stood the bodyguard and Wynn, both looking contrite as hell. Assholes.

I snorted, taking another drink, and leaning my head back on the couch. I should just go to my room and disappear. Maybe I would once I finished this glass. But no, the bottles were out here.

Maybe I could head downstairs to the club and lose myself in the music, the bodies, and the dance floor, as I had done countless times before.

“I didn’t fucking ask, Ryuji,” Ciel said. He stomped over and took the glass right out of my hand. “Get up. Follow me right now.”

I sighed. “Sassy Ciel.”

“Do you want to fight?” he demanded, whirling on me. I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take you down to the gym right now. You know I can take you fair and square, even if you weren’t drunk.”

My eyes roamed over him. He was right. Ciel often got relegated to the van for tech work, but we all knew he was as deadly as the rest of us. If he wanted to, he could lay me flat on a mat—but I could do the same right back to him.

But for the first time in a long time, I didn’t want to fight. I was tired, and it seemed pointless.

“Not tripping up over your words now, are you?” I teased.

Scotch always made me feel so delightfully fuzzy, but truthfully, I wasn’t as drunk as he apparently thought. No, I was just stewing in the realization that all of this had gone to shit, and I was right to have purchased that LA club. Now would be the perfect time to slip away.

I had everything I needed for a clean break.

“Come on, Ryuji, we need to talk,” Wynn said from the hallway. “We’re going to the library.”

I stared at the ceiling for a few breaths before rolling my eyes and standing.

“Where’s my glass?” If we were going to talk—meaning they were going to talk, and I was going to drink—I needed a refill.

“You can have it back after we’re done,” Ciel said, carrying it with him as he stalked across the room. “Hurry up.”

“ Fine.”

I reluctantly followed, trying my fucking hardest, yet failing, to avoid looking at Leona’s closed door. My ears strained to pick up even a murmur of conversation going on inside.

Had Fallon come to take her back to Philadelphia?

Both my feet and my heart stuttered to a stop at the idea.

She wouldn’t…she wouldn’t leave . Would she? Fallon couldn’t just steal her from us.

“Ryu,” Wynn hissed, jerking his head. Ciel stood in front of the door to the library, pounding his fist on the dark wood.

“Open the fucking door, Obi,” Ciel snapped. My eyebrows raised in surprise. I’d never heard my quiet brother so angry . The door just barely opened before he burst inside, the rest of us following behind like little whipped dumbasses.

I glared at the bodyguard.

“This is all your fault,” I hissed as the two of us entered the room last.

He looked like he wanted to pull his hair out first, then turn to me and do the same. “At least I’m not running away like a scared little boy.”

Obi shut the door behind us, grabbing my arm before I could snap back at the bodyguard. Maybe a fight was a good idea. But Obi’s fingers dug into my skin.

“Ow.”

He let go. “You’re drunk.”

I sniffed. “So are you.”

“I hold my liquor better than you do,” he said, turning his nose up.

“The fuck you do,” I said, making a beeline for the bottles he kept hidden in his desk. One was already half empty. I held it up. “Hah! I knew it.”

Ciel crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. “Everyone, sit down.”

The bodyguard and Wynn sat on the leather couch like the good little boys they were. Obi collapsed at his desk chair and swiveled to face the view of the skyline. Ciel narrowed his eyes at me, and I scoffed as I poured myself another glass and simply leaned against bookshelves. No need to get comfortable. I wouldn’t be here for long.

“So fucking difficult.”

“Yep.”

He flipped me the bird, and I barked a laugh. “I like the backbone you’ve grown, little brother.”

“We need to fix this,” he said, ignoring me. “Right now. Whatever bullshit is going on between you two”—he gestured to me and the bodyguard—“work it out.”

“He’s intolerable.” I shook my head with a lopsided smile. “And I hold grudges like a fucking champ.”

There was nothing to be said between him and I. We’d never mesh.

“And Obi?” Ciel continued, uninterrupted. Obi still stared out the windows. “You need to figure out how to talk to the rest of us, or all of this is going to fall apart.”

“We got what we needed,” he said. “It’s a step forward in the plan.”

The bodyguard snorted in disbelief, if you could even call it that. Maybe more like a choked whimper. “You got what you wanted at the expense of my relationship with her.” His eyes widened. “Is that what you wanted the whole time?”

At that, Obi finally turned around. “No, I wanted the both of you to act like fucking adults and do what needed to be done.”

“Obi and his goddamn plans.” Now, it was my turn to laugh. The scotch burned on the way down. He was no different from my old oyabun , simply using me as a means to an end. “You took me to China to get me out of his hair, so he’d have the balls to propose, and he still didn’t even do it. And you offered me a 10 percent bonus to go—which I still very much expect, by the way.”

Obi leveled the glare at me, but I didn’t flinch, and he didn’t argue. His twitching fingers—like he was looking for a weapon—didn’t scare me.

“A bonus?” Wynn scoffed.

“You used me,” the bodyguard said. “Look where it got us. When all this falls apart, what’s next? Are you going to kill us? The deadly Shadows never let a mark go.”

I raised an eyebrow. Now that didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, for him anyway. I’d never hurt a hair on Leona’s head.

“Enough!” Ciel shouted. All four of us blinked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you at that decibel before,” I said after a few moments of stunned silence.

“It’s because I’m so fucking angry with you guys,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Obi, you cannot treat us like pawns, especially not her. Especially not when that’s the only way she’s been treated her entire life. We’re partners .”

I swirled the remaining scotch in my glass, watching the amber liquid spin. I needed another refill.

In the past, I had barely cared about Obi’s behind-the-scenes machinations. They hadn’t mattered to me because I had my own plans, my own ideas about what I wanted for my future. I was happy to let him call the shots, if that meant I got paid and I could walk away whenever I wanted.

But now? He’d manipulated the shit out of me. Out of all of us. It left a bitter taste in my mouth that definitely wasn’t from the liquor.

“Our goals are worth the personal sacrifice,” Obi finally said.

“Is that right?” I tilted my head to the side. “Is that why you won’t touch her?”

His eyes flared with ire.

I looked at the rest of the guys. “He still won’t give in. He wants her so badly he’s about to tear the hair out of his beard, but he still won’t do anything about it. In LA, he said this was just a business relationship, anything more, and we risked ruining everything.”

“Fuck that,” Wynn said. I almost laughed.

“Look at what has happened,” Obi said. “Was I wrong?”

“So wrong, Obi,” Ciel said, voice low and deadly. “You’re so wrong and you can’t even see it.”

“I don’t see how thinking with our heads is wrong,” Obi snapped. “Keep our eyes on the ultimate goal. We must take New York for ourselves.”

“Why do you fucking care?” I asked. “In all the years we’ve been together, all the shit we’ve done, you’ve never actually said it out loud.” I shrugged. “I don’t even know, and you’re supposed to be my best friend.”

His jaw worked, but his eyes were hard. He said nothing.

“Cool,” I sneered. “Message received, loud and clear.”

The room went silent with tension.

“Your withholding will break us, Obi,” Ciel said. “Hopefully you see that before it’s too late.”

“My personal reasons have nothing to do with how capable we are of success,” he replied. “It does not matter.”

“If we can’t trust each other, we cannot succeed,” Wynn added. “And right now, she doesn’t trust any of us.”

“That’s not my fault,” Obi said. “I told Caspian to tell her before the meeting. I even encouraged her to make the right choice.”

“ Tell ,” Ciel hissed. “‘ Tell’ her, Obi. You’re still not thinking about it like she deserved to make a decision. You used her.” Obi opened his mouth, but Ciel held up his hand. “You did. Admit that to yourself.”

“You know what else he told me?” the bodyguard added. “‘ If not you, then someone else.’ He would have married her to someone else, anyone else, who could have given us an advantage.”

“The fuck?” I snarled, standing straight. If not us, then no one. I’d kill anyone else who laid a hand on her.

Ciel groaned. “You would have sold her to an outsider ?”

Wynn shook his head and sunk farther into the couch.

Obi kept silent.

“Goddamnit, Obi,” Ciel said. “You’re bartering her. You’re making choices without even warning her. It doesn’t matter that she probably would have said yes, anyway. How the fuck can you not see that acting like that would hurt someone?”

Making decisions without even warning her. The thought swirled around in my brain; the same as the scotch swirled in my glass.

Had I done the same?

My choice to expand to LA, to make sure my clubs could support me if I left the Shadows—left her— had only been thinking about my future.

But I had excluded her wishes and her desires from those decisions.

I closed my eyes as I exhaled eyes out of my nose, trying to catch the thoughts flitting through my buzzed head.

What if she did the same to us? To me? How would I feel?

My eyes flew open. I knew exactly what I’d do if someone treated me that way: I would walk away.

“Why is Fallon here?” I demanded, looking at Wynn. “And your sister? What’s wrong with Leona?”

Willow had come too, carrying a bag at her side. Fallon had glared at all of us, but Willow hadn’t lifted her head when the three women walked into our penthouse like they owned the place.

“I don’t know why?—”

“Is Leona hurt?” I asked. “Is that why Willow’s here?”

He shook his head slowly. “All I know is that Leona called Fallon herself.”

I stiffened, placing the glass on the desk. “Is Fallon taking her?” The words tasted like fucking ash. “Is she leaving?”

My fingers clenched and unclenched, over and over, as I pictured Leona packing a bag and walking out that door, never to be seen again.

Running.

Avoiding.

Abandoning.

Was that how she saw me?

“I don’t know.” Wynn rubbed his face. “Willow didn’t know anything else, either.”

“No,” I whispered.

“That’s why we have to fix this,” Ciel insisted. “Figure this shit out.”

“I should have told her the truth,” Wynn said, looking to Caspian. “I should have brought it up with you again, but I was scared that she’d say yes, and it would change everything.”

“I was scared that she’d say no, and it would change everything,” the bodyguard responded.

My heart clenched. What if it did? What if everything was changed now, anyway?

“She doesn’t belong to you, Cas,” Ciel said.

“I don’t think she?—”

“You’ve certainly been acting that way,” Ciel cut in with a sharp tone. “You agreed to this. You agreed to let Leona try to figure this out—let us all try to figure this out. Are you backing out or are you all in?”

His expression hardened.

“For fuck’s sake, Cas, you cannot be on the fence.” Ciel looked around at us all. “ None of us can be on the fence about this. We’re all in with each other, as a team, or we’re done. It’s that simple. I’m all in.” He gulped, throat working. “I lo—I love her.” He looked at Caspian again. “I love her, too.”

Love.

My dead heart sputtered back to life, clawing its way from the pit of my stomach to my throat.

Love meant nothing. It had always been a ruse. A falsehood.

But this…Leona was nothing like the women in my past or the oyabun who was supposed to take care of me but shot me in the gut.

Did I love her, too? Was I capable of that?

Did I want the commitment that came with it? Or did I want the freedom that came with being unattached?

Caspian hung his head in his hands. “I hurt her.”

“Yeah, you fucking did,” Ciel said. “You hurt all of us, Cas. Not just her.”

Cas looked up at each of us. “I’m sorry.”

When he got to me, our eyes locked. If he was all in, if we were sure we wanted this, maybe it was possible for things to change between us. Maybe we didn’t have to be oil and water.

But he still fucking drove me crazy. That didn’t just disappear because we were suddenly all copacetic.

Ciel sighed. “We can’t change what happened, but we get to choose how we make this right.”

Caspian stood and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a black velvet box. At the sight, Obi sucked in a deep breath, his hands clenching the armrests of his chair.

“I bought her a ring,” the bodyguard said, opening the box. My breath caught in my throat, not just at the sight of the sparkling gems, but at the thought of that ring being something that connected the six of us—not just the two of them.

Fuck .

Two seconds ago, I was thinking about this whole fucking thing being blown to smithereens because we just couldn’t figure out how to trust one another. But now? As that ring sparkled in the light?

It represented a future. One I never thought possible for myself.

“It’s beautiful, Cas,” Wynn said as he bent over the box. “It will look stunning on her.”

He handed the box to Ciel then stepped back. “I know we’re stuck now if we want the Vero Family men. More and more will turn to our side the more the word spreads. I know it, but I won’t give it to her unless…”

“Unless what?” I asked, the words barely a whisper.

“Unless the five of us want that, too.”

I gulped. Did I want that future?

He definitely wasn’t offering that ring as a joint symbol of marriage between all of us, whatever the hell that meant, but fuck . He wouldn’t give it to her if we said no.

“You’re asking for our blessing,” Ciel said.

The bodyguard nodded. “I guess so. Yes. I am.”

If he gave her that ring, if I said I was okay with it, that was committing.

“What’s the alternative?” I asked.

His ring on her finger .

My pulse was skyrocketing. My vision was a little spotty. Had I drank too much scotch? Or was this something different?

“I don’t give it to her, and we back out of the engagement,” he said. “We might lose the men, but we get to keep her. I don’t want it if it means she’s unhappy.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “If it means any of us are unhappy.”

“You’d take it back?” My lips felt fucking numb, but I glanced at Obi, and he stared at the sparkling ring like he’d seen a ghost.

“I know how much you all mean to her.” He looked to Ciel then. “I know how much she means to you, too. I know we agreed on a partnership before, but that was business. This discussion isn’t that. This is a relationship. So, I guess I’m trying to say, I’m in. On this.”

Ciel smiled, clasping his shoulder. “And you’re not going to hide shit anymore?”

The bodyguard shook his head. “No.”

“We need to be able to call each other out,” Wynn added. “And be honest with her and with each other.”

“Baby steps, Wynn,” Cas responded.

I laughed, deep and heavy. “Yeah, Wynn, let’s temper our expectations a little. I’ll agree not to kill him, but everything past that is going to take time.”

The bodyguard met my eyes and gave a slight grin.

He still drove me up the fucking wall, and we had a long way to go in terms of our viewpoints of Leona’s choices, but it was progress.

“Are you guys fine with this?” Caspian asked, gesturing at the ring box still in Ciel’s hand. “And for the record, it changes nothing.”

“I want her to have the choice,” Wynn said. “Even if she says no, it still changes nothing else.”

“Yes, I’m fine with it,” Ciel replied. “But you have to start believing that you’re one of us. You’re a Shadow, Cas, just like she is. We’re in this together.”

The bodyguard’s crooked smile brightened his eyes. “Thanks, Ciel. Ryuji?”

I stiffened. I didn’t want Leona to leave, and I didn’t want to leave her.

If I got to choose a future where I was happy, I might not know exactly what that looked like, but I knew it had her in it.

“Yeah, give her the ring,” I said, leaning against the bookshelf again. “But fair warning: when the time comes, I’m buying her my own shit.”

She might wear his ring, but maybe she’d wear my collar. Everyone would see it and know she belonged to me, too. I smirked at the thought.

Cas breathed a sigh of relief with a nod.

“What about you, Obi?” I asked. He stared straight ahead, rubbing his chin like he was lost in deep thought. “Obi?”

He stood, a haunted look in his eye. “What?”

“Are you going to keep hiding shit and manipulating us?” Ciel asked.

“I will continue to do what needs to be done.” His response was like a needle to a balloon, popping the rest of us until we lay flat and sad on the floor.

Without another word, he left the library, and all of us, behind.

“Great,” I muttered. Ciel moved to follow, but I grabbed his arm. “No, no. He’s a stubborn fuck. He just needs time to feel bad, and he’ll come around.”

That look on his face…seeing the ring triggered something in him. I had no clue what that was, but he needed to figure out what he wanted, and fast.

“We’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Ciel said. “All we can hope is that Obi comes around before then.”