Dim Sum Asylum(39)

I knew better. I’ve always known better. I’ve walked the spiderweb of my existence since my first breath and didn’t see an end in sight because when being my father’s son no longer mattered, my world would become so complicated, walking across the street would be an exercise in logistics. Still, I couldn’t help but mutter a curse when I was jostled trying to pass a small crowd of men.

“Shit, that hurt. Watch it.”

Kingfisher’s stopped.

All of it simply… stopped.

The man who nudged me was familiar. Or at least his type was. I knew the smell of him—the look of him—the greasy feel of his smile smearing itself over his pockmarked face, and despite the expensive cut of his navy blue suit, he felt cheap. He stank of the tonic he used to slick his black hair, his breath permanently scented with the odor of bottom-shelf scotch. Shorter and stockier than his colleagues, he was hunched over at first, cackling loudly in a mean-spirited glee. But when he pulled his shoulders back to stand up straighter, I still had a good six inches on him, although there was a puffiness to his spirit and he inflated it to make himself look larger than he was.

The baku inked on his neck was visible despite the tightness of his white collar, and a bit more of his chest tattoo was visible beneath the thin fabric where it wasn’t doubled over for a lapel or placket. His markings were for show, crudely done and badly lined, dug into his body with all the care someone would use to pick out a crouton from a salad buffet. He spit some harsh out in ghetto Japanese, dealing me an insult my mother would have felt if she’d been alive.

Then he saw my face and turned whiter than Ghost.

He kept turning, shifting his shoulders, and his narrowed eyes widened until I thought his eyelids would rattle back like old paper window shades. Kingfisher’s remained quiet and still, a ripple of silence deepening with every hesitant breath. For a moment I thought he’d bow.

I could see his hesitation, so I reached over and patted him on the shoulder and murmured, “No worries. It’s fine. We’re just going around.”

The pockmarked man flinched when I touched him.

“Ah, excuse us. Just coming through. I’m fine. Just surprised.” There were so many lies on my tongue I was surprised I didn’t choke on their weight while I circled the group, nodding as pleasantly as I could to the others. Trent moved in, broad shoulders angled to cut himself a path through the loosely packed bodies, and his eyes were moving again, dancing and hitting on each face in the crowd.

Breathing began again. So did small movements, then the too loud chatter of people trying desperately to fill a void with all they had inside of them, even if it was inane nonsense, anything to blunt the razor-sharp edge in the air.

Then as I took a step forward, someone in the small cluster of tattooed suit-wearing men said in a guttural Japanese, “After you, Betobeto-san.”

This time the silence came with a scuffle of feet and a hushed ocean of apologies, emptying the space around a hard-faced kid with a gold tooth.

Before the quiet was anticipation. This time it was deadly.

It was funny how the oddest things stood out during moments when everything hung in the balance. Sounds were probably the most notable because, in the held-breath quiet, the room was still… loud. The crystal chandelier above Trent and I creaked when a blast of cooled air hit it, its thick black fabric cord twisting about in the hole through the light fixture’s gold anchor in the ceiling. A subtle shush-chiming whispered around me, the off-sync chords and violin-string plucks of wings being ruffled and rubbed.

I didn’t know how much Japanese my partner knew, but he probably at least caught the tone of the insult, because Trent was a statue made of flint and gold. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, standing a few feet away and as rigid as stone. He resonated danger, guarding my flank as if we’d known each other through many lifetimes instead of just a few handfuls of hours and a couple of disasters. All I had to do was reach out, call to him or give him a nod, and I knew he’d ignite a firestorm of reckoning.

In the space of a heartbeat, the primal animal in me saw Trent Leonard with his gilded Viking strength and qirin-scarred face and knew he’d have my back if I needed it. I’d never known that. As much as I’d loved John, he’d been useless in a fight, a mediator of soft words and thoughtful gestures. It was a different kind of partnership we were forming, one literally forged in blood, fire, and potential violence.

It was… nice. And at any other time, probably a bit of a turn-on, but the middle of Kingfisher’s, a declared sanctuary shared by the yakuza and triad families, was probably not the best place to rain down Hell and brimstone on a snarky piece of shit who had less sense than a sucked-dry juice box.

Still, some things couldn’t go unremarked. That was just how things were done in order for everyone to survive in the détente created by my grandfather’s insanity.

I sought out the one who’d tried to shame me. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, a cocksure kid with a few thin hairs sprouting from his sloping chin. He looked more kappa than human, a sad genetic stamp one particular family in Japantown was known for. I vaguely knew his cousin, or maybe it was his uncle, a bulge-eyed, flat-nosed man who’d weaseled his way into my paternal family’s inner circle. The uncle-cousin had that same smirk the brash asshole challenging me couldn’t keep from curling his upper lip.

Staring him down for a second, I waited for him to get uncomfortable, and when he shuffled his feet, the rest of the men bled off into the background, leaving the young thug standing alone under the pool of light coming from the squeaking chandelier.