Dim Sum Asylum(76)
“I will not kill him.” The look he gave the cousin was pitying, but I gave the guy credit. He wasn’t peeing in his pants. He met our grandfather’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. “You owe Rokugi for your life, Nobu. You chose to come in here when I advised you not to.”
“I thought you would need… I worried he would kill you, Sofu,” Nobu replied, ducking his head. “I know better now. I will work harder to earn your trust and faith.”
“Make something of yourself and do not let Roku’s generosity go to waste.” Grandfather motioned to the teapot. “Pour us tea.”
“Don’t know if I’m willing to drink it,” I said cautiously. “I’m not too sure about drinking or eating anything you give me. It’s kind of like being in the faerie kingdom. Suppose once I eat something, I can’t ever leave?”
“Then have your lover drink as well so you are not lonely,” my grandfather responded. “Pour, Nobu. My throat is dry.”
“How many people know your mistress is missing?” Trent asked a question I’d been dreading to utter. “Other than Nobu here?”
“No one other than who is in this room,” my grandfather responded. I wasn’t fooled by his gentle tones. He was sheathing his knives in a velvet calm meant to lull us into believing he meant no harm. “And anyone you’ve told.”
“How many before you came looking for me?” I prodded, leaving off mentioning I’d told Gaines what was going on. My godfather had nothing to worry about. Takahashi liked Gaines, believing him to be my mentor and the only positive male influence in my life, an unsurprising view considering my own father had been scarcer than an attack chicken’s teeth. “And before you ask, Jie doesn’t know who is with her. Unless Grandmother told her, she just thinks she’s a woman named Yukiko.”
“She called you? The Kingfisher’s girl called you?” Grandfather sucked in a breath, pinning me with a hard glare. “What did she say? Is Yuki… your grandmother… is she—?”
“I don’t know. Grandmother had a phone on her, one she hid or whoever took them just didn’t give a shit about.” I briefly filled in what Jie’d said and what I’d heard in the background. “We don’t have a lot of time. And I’m wasting what I have by talking to you.”
“I know where they are. The bastard who has them made sure I knew. I just don’t know why, but I will find out.” Grandfather clenched his fist around the fragile porcelain cup Nobu handed him, spilling a bit of tea over his fingers. “I need you to get her back. I need you to make sure she is safe. Once again, understand this. I will give you anything you need. Anything you want. But I need her to be safe.”
“If you know where they are, why can’t you go in and get them?” Trent prodded gently. “You’ve got better resources, better intelligence than the SFPD. In this case, anyway. Why are you asking Roku to do this?”
“Because the family does not know of my relationship with Yukiko. They cannot know. It is the agreement I made with Akemi. Yukiko is not her sister. They were… friends at one point. When I brokered the arrangement to marry Akemi, it was for the power she would bring to the Takahashi. Yukiko’s presence in my life would undermine Akemi’s position in Japan, weakening her power base.” He shrugged as if the tangled threads of wealth and manipulation were natural for a family to thrive on. “We cannot afford to lose any ground in Japan or here, but I refused to live without Yukiko. Now… my hands are tied, and I can’t risk going for her, not without tearing apart the foundation the family is built on.”
“Lies. That’s what this family is built on.” I sighed. I didn’t want my heart to ache for a woman whose life was a lie. My grandmother was a lie to everyone except me and the man she’d given a son to. A son his true wife claimed as her own, leaving Yukiko with nothing but a chance to be kidnapped and held as bait. Hating myself and knowing I had no choice, I asked, “So where is she?”
“What do you want in exchange? You’ve never met Yukiko. Never spoken to her. You have no connection to her, and the Jie girl—she is nothing to you now, where perhaps a few years ago, you would have gone to her without stopping to question why.” His hand trembled as he raised the cup to his lips. After taking a delicate sip, he rolled the tea in his mouth, then swallowed. Setting the cup down, Takahashi sighed, shrinking in on himself. I wasn’t taken in by the show of feebleness. He was a consummate con man, something I’d known before I could spell my own name. “What do you need in order to do this for me? I will give you everything.”
The love he had for a woman whose name I knew but had never met was evident in his expression. In the cold, harsh planes of his face, cracks were forming, bits of passion splintering the fa?ade he wore. Still, lies were his coin, and after all the years we’d fought about what I wanted out of my life, he still didn’t understand any of it… didn’t understand me.
A part of me wept, the tiny bit of the child I’d been, tucked away inside me. I’d longed for a family, one of those large, sprawling boisterous tribes I’d seen throughout my life, and I’d made one of my own before the Takahashi, with its fierce petty jealousy, stole it from me and broke it. I wouldn’t let my grandfather or any of his clan near me again. But that didn’t mean I would walk away from them.