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Even in his maddened wrath, Raiden had known that his uncle was right. Killing them all wasn’t a viable option.
He alone could eliminate a dozen Yakuza heads before the night was out. Enlisting his brothers’ help would widen his preemptive strikes by a factor of six. But there was no way they’d get everyone. The Yakuza were a cancer. Remove the main tumors and others sprouted in their place. There would be retaliatory hits sooner or later. Apart from keeping Scarlett hidden indefinitely, or changing her identity all over again, she’d always be in danger. Even if he disappeared with her, that still left his brothers. The Yakuza didn’t forget their vendettas, needed to demonstrate their lessons viciously to keep their future quarries in line. When their original target escaped them, they forced the target to surface by hitting at their nearest and dearest. If that didn’t work, they’d at least made an example that would ensure no one crossed them again.
No. Neither striking first nor hiding was the answer. Too much was at stake. Everything was at stake.
Scarlett was everything.
Keeping her and their baby safe required a different mode of attack. And for that, he needed his brothers. All of them. This had to be planned with no margin of error. None.
He entered his pitch-dark bedroom, knowing without needing to see that Scarlett was still out on his bed like the lights. Her scent enveloped him; her essence permeated him.
Doing what he’d wanted to do before his fateful meeting with his uncle, he stripped, joined her on the bed, rid her of her own clothes and cocooned her in his body, as if he’d taken her inside him, where she’d be totally safe.
He had to rest now, while she did.
Tomorrow a war began.
* * *
Raiden woke up the moment she did.
Keeping his eyes closed and his body relaxed, he hid the fact that he was awake, too. He needed her to go about her daily business as if nothing was different. The Yakuza would be watching both him and her more closely now that they’d sent their message. Yet he couldn’t alarm or distress her a moment before he had to. It already killed him that he would soon have to.
He lay there on his side as she separated her precious flesh from his, as she’d been doing every morning, gently, careful not to disturb him. Then as if she couldn’t help herself, she pressed back to him for a moment, feathering his chest with kisses. His heart almost imploded.
Pretending to turn in his sleep so she wouldn’t feel it thundering against her chest, he separated from her. A tiny sigh escaped her, a blissful little sound, as she placed a final kiss over his shoulder, then left the bed.
In the fifteen minutes it took her to get ready to leave, he almost suffocated with a dozen conflicting urges. To drag her back to bed and drown in her, to grab her and run out of Japan and disappear, to tell her everything now, not later. But the main need remained to go out and take down as many of those who threatened her as possible. A need he knew would go unfulfilled. But he still swore he was adding those goons to his list of undetectable and unendurable punishments.
But her safety came first, and last.
As she exited the bedroom, he thought he heard her humming a song. His heart stopped to make sure he’d heard right, before it rocketed into a whole new level of turmoil. She’d never done anything so spontaneous around him. He’d never heard her sound so...cheerful. For the first time in her life, he believed she was happy.
And he’d soon have to mar that happiness.
The moment the penthouse door clicked closed behind her, he exploded from bed. In minutes, he’d set off the general alarm, set up a meeting with those of his brothers still in Japan, with the others joining them on videoconference.
He needed a solution before this day was over.
And he would have it.
* * *
“Which Yakuza bosses made this threat?”
That was Numair, as usual the first one who spoke up with the most relevant question or comment after one of them made a report on a problem they were gathered to resolve.
Raiden had made his investigations. He now knew where the threat was coming from. He told his brothers.
All of them had intimate knowledge of every figure of power in the world, from heads of state to criminal masterminds. The names he’d just mentioned were among the most vicious.
After a minute of silence, Richard was the first to talk. “Are you sure you want to antagonize those vipers? You Japanese people have this weird obsession with honor and ritual, your vendettas last centuries and it makes your criminals the most tenacious on the planet.”
Raiden turned to hold the Englishman’s gaze. “I wouldn’t only antagonize the very devil for Scarlett, I’d die for her and take down anyone with me. But that’s why I gathered you all, to find another way that doesn’t include antagonizing them. I want this done gracefully and faultlessly, to ensure no fallout of any kind, ever.”
“I’m missing something, it seems.”
This was Jakob Wolff, their resident Norse god, as the media called him and as all women agreed. Having been given the codename Brainiac during their years with The Organization, he’d turned his weaponry and tech virtuosity into an R&D division that produced the next level of technology, probably Black Castle’s highest grossing. He and Raiden had always had their...differences.
