The pleasure inside of me dissolves, replaced with irritation.
I came on her.
I’m supposed to kill her.
She nuzzles her cheek into the pillow, and a photograph crinkles under her cheek. In it, there’s a brunette teenager with braces, and a similar, dark-haired older couple standing behind her. Lily and her parents, back when she still lived with them. She takes after her mother; they have the same piercing green eyes. I recognize the picture from Lily’s social media.
I don’t know if I look more like my mother or my father. I never met my father.
A prickling sensation sinks to the bottom of my stomach. Lily fell asleep clutching a picture of her parents. It’s wrinkled, like this isn’t the first time she’s done this. And from how many times she’s reposted that same picture online, it’s obvious she values it deeply.
Everything about Lily is so different from me. She’s longing for a family that rejected her, while I’ve never missed mine. After I watched my mother die, my oyabun taught me to believe that she deserved it.
Maybe my mother did deserve to die.
Maybe Lily deserves to die too.
I stow the knife, though I don’t know why. It’s not the sleep in Lily’s eyes, the drool on her lips, or my come rubbing off on her bedsheets. It’s something else entirely.
We come from such different backgrounds, and yet, I see myself in Lily. Neither of us chose this life. It’s always been out of our control.
Logically, I know Lily is a person. Someone who is replaceable. Someone who is in the way of our business.
My brain gets so out of hand when it comes to her.
She groans, her eyes fluttering open. I don’t have time to think. I simply react.
I race down the stairs, not caring if she wakes up from my noisy exit. I need to get out. I need to get away from everything that has to do with her.
Lily. A poisonous flower. My lily of the valley.
It takes twenty minutes of speeding to get back to the Samurai Castle Resort & Casino, and once I’m in the basement, I pound my fists into the cement walls, each hurling fist sending shocks of pain through my skull.
Niko enters the basement. “You let her live, didn’t you?” he asks nonchalantly.
He already knows the answer.
I barrel toward him, throwing my bloody fists, and the two of us fight on the ground until I’ve got him pinned underneath me.
“You will not touch her,” I howl.
“You should hear yourself right now. She’s making you weak, brother,” he laughs maniacally, and the hairs on my body stand. Whenever Niko gets like this, it’s not a good sign. I ready my fists, but Niko is faster. He punches my eyes in quick succession, with such tremendous force, that it stills me.
The world is dark, my vision swirling with blurry figures.
Niko pushes me off of him. I swing toward his footsteps. I miss.
“I won’t touch her,” he says gruffly. I calm at those words. “As long asyoukeep focused. If she gets in our way, I won’t hesitate. I’ll take care of her myself if I have to. We don’t have any room for instability in the Endo-kai. You know that.”
The basement door slams behind him. I lift my head. Slowly, the forms are coming back. The metal racks posted against the walls. The fermentation projects in various containers. My jars of eyes.
I’m home in my basement, below the resort, right where I need to be. Safe and contained. Isolated from everyone. Including Lily.
Her image flashes in my brain like a neon sign.
Lying there.
Helpless.
