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“I see you’ve done some homework since the last time we met, Mr. Black.”
“Good. I was hoping that would be glaringly obvious by the way I just told you to get the fuck out.”
“Please don’t make yourself look like a cheap, lying politician by telling me it’s because I’m with the Yakuza, Mr. Black.” He nods down at the people below. “Because otherwise I’m not sure how men like Ares Drakos, Castle James, and Gavan Tsarenko would have made it in.”
I’m glaring at him with my jaw clenched as he turns to grin at me.
“Which leads me to think your disdain for me maybe isn’t so much that I’m Yakuza, but more that I know your wife so well…”
My teeth grind as I stand a little taller. Takato leers at me.
“Perhaps the real question isn’t why I was talking to your wife like I know her, Mr. Black. But rather, why your wife was talking to the Yakuza as if she knows me.”
“I would advise you, Mr. Ito,” I growl quietly, “to walk away right now.”
“Perhaps you’d like to hear a small proposition I have for you first.”
“Whatever your proposition is, it’s well beyond my scope of interest. You talking about my wife like that, however?—”
“It concerns the five million dollars you’ve paid me.”
What.
I frown, my head cocking as my eyes bore into him.
“Excuse me?”
He grins slowly at me, his brow arching. “Ahh. Interesting,” Takato muses. “Very, very interesting.”
“Start talking,” I mutter.
“About what, Mr. Black? About how perhaps you don’t know your wife as well as you think you do?” He grins widely at me. “Do you know Ms. Yamaguchi at all, Mr. Black? Do you truly know who it is you’ve married?—”
With a low growl, I shove Takato back, pushing him away from the railing and out of sight of anyone else as I slam him against the wall right next to Renoir’s Woman with Parrot.
“Start. Talking,” I growl.
He smiles maliciously at me. “Now this is the sort of governor that I can get behind. True power. A man who knows how to?—”
“START. TALKING,” I snarl.
Takato bristles when I roar in his face, but keeps his eyes locked on mine.
“She’s like me, Mr. Black.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to?—”
“She’s Yakuza.”
I flinch, blinking as it hits me like a slap, even though I know this is bullshit. We obviously ran a background check on Fumi when she was hired at Crown and Black. And there’s no way Meredith didn’t do the same after the auditions.
“That’s not true.”
Takato grins. “Well, not quite like me. But I’m beginning to realize that you don’t know her very well. Her or her father.”
“Mr. Ito,” I growl, “whatever your goal was in coming here tonight, all you’ve accomplished is pissing me the fuck off. I don’t give a shit about your little stories, and I didn’t pay you five?—”
“No, but your wife did.”
