Again, Jiro cleared his throat. “Kai resolved to carry through with his plan anyway. The child was his, and all that was left of Clemence. He would claim her from you.”
Apprehension churned Jake’s gut. “I never received word from him.”
“Six months after Minako’s birth. That is her name, yes?”
Jake nodded, feeling more unbalanced by the second. His brain refused to speculate where this tale might lead. Certain possibilities were too extraordinary.
“Kai found a ship captain willing to take his gold and see nothing all the way to Singapore. I agreed to accompany him as I had more connections in the art market. But bad luck followed us across the water, and by the time we docked in Singapore, we had contracted breakbone fever.”
Jiro reached for a sketchbook and flipped it open to a blank page. Charcoal in hand, he began scratching across paper. “We found our way to a cheap boarding house in a neighborhood of vice to wait out the fever. Both master and servant were sick among strangers. One couldn’t discern who was who.” He glanced up from the paper. “Who is servant in that circumstance? Who is master? Sickness renders all men equals in that way.”
Jiro lay down his pencil and eyed the sketch before holding it up for Jake’s inspection. “You thought to find this man when you came here today?”
Jake studied the drawing. Without consciously realizing it, that was, indeed, the man he’d expected to see today. Certain extraordinary possibilities began to appear, unexpected puzzle pieces clicking into place.Impossible.
He looked up to find Jiro studying him with narrowed eyes.
“When the fever passed,” Jiro continued, “one rose and the other did not”—
Jake’s gaze darted from the sketch to Jiro’s face.
—“And master became servant.”
Possibility became reality. The picture was clear.
“Kai.”
Chapter 23
“It has been nearly fifteen years since I’ve been called the name of my birth. I must confess, it feels good to be known.”
The impossible collapsed down on Jake as irrefutable fact.
“I am now called Kano Jironobu. Jiro, if you will.”
Jake now recognized what he’d refused to see earlier: Mina in this man . . . Kano Jironobu . . .Kai. Pain borne of fear and desperation spiked through him. Mina washisdaughter, not this man’s. No matter what biology might argue to the contrary.
“After a few months, I recovered and came to your household by the back door, selling cheap watercolors. I saw that Minako had a good home with you, a better one than I could giver her as a fugitive with no friends or family left in this world. I was cured of my romantic notions.”
Kai flipped to a fresh blank sheet and began sketching again. “I also knew that I could not stay in Singapore. My Japanese features stood out too distinctly, and it was only a matter of time before my father’s spies found me, living as I was with several other boarders. People had taken notice and were asking questions. I’d heard that there was a community of us from Asia in London, so I boarded the first ship bound for England. Of course, my features stood out here, too, but the English tend to lump allOrientalsinto one group, which would keep my secret safe. I knew you would arrive here with Minako someday. I set up a studio and waited.”
“Have you seen her?” Jake ground out. “In London?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” Jake asked, his equilibrium beginning to return, as if he’d been knocked down in the ring and was regaining his footing. In such moments, a determination came over him to see the fight to the end and to win it. This moment was no different.
“In Hyde Park.”
“Did she see you?”
“Yes,” Kai hesitated, “and there was something in her eyes when she saw me.”
Jake assessed his opponent. For all his refined appearance, Kai could throw a punch. “And what was that?”
“Hunger.”
There it was: the truth. A truth Jake had known on an elemental level for some time. A truth he hadn’t the means to satisfy.
