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Remorse.
“I—” I drag my gaze back to the man looming over me. “I don’t know what you?—”
“My name is Takato Ito,” he mutters. “Is the name familiar to you?”
My brows knit. “No?” I answer truthfully.
Takato smiles. “Then perhaps you know my uncle, Orochi?—”
“I don’t know who you are!” I scream. “But whatever you want, just take it! I can get you more money?—”
Takato starts to laugh heartily. The men around him join in as I shrink under their venomous looks.
“Oh, I know you will, Fumi. Or else…”
I gasp, and my father makes a move to lurch toward me before he’s yanked back as Takato lifts my chin with the tip of his viciously sharp samurai blade.
His lips curl into a smile.
“No…” he muses. “Not you. Too proud. Too brave,” he chuckles. “No, it won’t be you.”
My face turns white as he turns and touches the blade to my father’s neck.
“No!”
I try and scramble across the floor toward my father. But the men behind me grab my arms and yank me back.
“He’s sick!” I plead. “Don’t hurt?—”
“Be silent,” Takato hisses sharply. He sucks on his teeth, his cheeks hollowing and giving him an even more sinister look.
“Please,” I choke quietly. “Please! Whatever you want, I’ll give it?—”
“What I want,” Takato snaps, “is the five million dollars your father stole from mine twenty-five years ago.”
My mouth falls open.
“I—what? My father was a truck drive?—”
“Fumi.”
My gaze snaps to my father’s. He’s still looking at me with this haunted expression in his eyes, his mouth grim.
“Dad?” I whisper quietly.
“That’s what I want, Ms. Yamaguchi,” Takato growls. “Or should I say, Ms. Mori.”
What?
“You have one month to get it to me. If you don’t, I’ll come back here and cut off your father’s hands. Then his feet. Then his head—one piece for every day after the month you don’t have that money.”
My entire body goes numb as I stare up at him in horror.
“And when I run out of pieces of Hideo…” Takato grins darkly.
He slowly drags the sword away from my father, ignoring the way he roars and tries to fight the men holding him, and holds the razor-sharp tip of the sword an inch or two from my exposed throat as his dark eyes glint.
“…I’ll let my blade taste pieces of you until you pay me. Do we understand each other?”
