Prosper left me and my cousin, Krie in charge of her network. Your mission if you choose to accept it is to TAKE YOUR POWER BACK.
Even if you stay, you do so knowing you can leave anytime you wish. If you go, you have everything you need to start a new life — a new name, passport, and a few million in starter cash — our gift to you.
He’s going to hunt you. They all do. Takedas are relentless.
Most husbands just cut their losses and save themselves the humiliation and sign the divorce papers. We both know what happened to me even though Akchiro loves me and we worked it out.
The choice is yours. I just want you to have one.
I love you and I’m truly sorry for my part in all this.
I wish you happiness, bestie.
XOXO,
FT
Fat tears spilldown my face as I start the engine.
“Thank you,” I whisper, shifting the car into drive to leave Riyu forever.
Chapter 2
Flee ?
Bridget
Looking at my husband blissfully asleep, I try the quell the beating in my heart, knowing what I have to do — get the fuck out of here while I still have the chance. While I still have the nerve.
Still, I stand at the edge of the bed, looking down at him for an interminable length of time. Captivated by the way the dark fringe of his lashes shadow his chiseled jaw, the way his jaw hollows and is shaded with a light dusting of new hair growth.
My pussy clenches thinking of how stubble felt when he buried his face between my legs after he chased me down on the property earlier after he took me for a drive. I should have known he was toying with me. That is the way of his cruelty. To promise me freedom to only snatch it away. He takes pleasure in dangling hope, only to snatch it away just as my fingers graze it. It’s been that way from the start. He will say we made a deal, but it was only one he made because he knew he would be victorious.
“Run, and if you make it off the estate with me not catching and claiming you, then you are free to go. If I catch you, then we dead this shit, and I don’t want to hear another word from your little messy ass, but ‘yes, sensei’ for the rest of our lives.”
I ran like hell. Still, he caught me before I could make it back here to escape him. I never had a chance tonight, just as I know I never had a chance with him. I can’t fathom why he wants me when it’s so obvious that he loathes me. My Alabama southern nature to the way I snap back, kick, punch and never allow him to fully win. I’m not the girl to ever cower, and coo over a motherfucker, and I never will. I’m not a spit fire I’m a raging inferno.
Sure, I crushed on him hard, but that was before he kidnapped me in retaliation for Flower running away from Akchiro. Sure, they are lovey-dovey now, and maybe even Ev is with Riyu, with the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her all night, though that’s not saying anything since all of these Takedas ain’t wrapped too tight. They have this unhinged quality about them when it comes to the women they are obsessed with.
Flower knows this, that’s why she’s helping us now. She knows there is no way we should settle for the status quo of these marriages.
Turning to the garden, I follow the instructions of the message I literally ate earlier thanks to the cookies that Flower hid them on.Tea. Garden. Butterfly.
When I first saw them, my heart stuttered thinking, we’d get caught. But everyone was so taken with the gifts they received that no one even batted an eye at me gobbling them up, other than to smirk at my sweet tooth. Takashi admonished me, “You’ll get a tummy ache.” He needn’t have worried. I was done after the evidence was gone. The messages were emblazoned on my memory.
I handled the first part of the instruction giving Takashi the drugged tea as soon as he returned from the meeting he had with his brothers and cousins earlier after getting a message from the Yakuza prince, Tsuyoshi Tatsumoto they’d joined forces with now that he’d taken over the syndicate with patricide. Whateverthe issue was, it left him in a bitter mood. So much so he didn’t even bother to hide any of his aggression when he returned to the room.
He snatched the tea I offered, drinking the brew before tossing me on the bed and taking me in his ruthlessly efficient manner. Barely moving when I eased from beneath him, I made my way to the shower on shaky, jello-like legs to shower and wash his come away.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t budge when I came back.
I’m barely breathing now. The anxiety about potentially getting caught has me in a chokehold, and that’s saying a lot. I never hesitate to act. Out of the three of us who’ve been best friends since college, I’m the one who is the first to face the fire of whatever endeavor we have chosen to take on.
I was the one who urged my friends and partners in BITE, our tech firm, to leave the US and try our hands here where they seem to prize innovation and skill over nepotism and perceived pedigree.
Sliding the door open, I step out into the crisp winter night. Looking up I see the bright constellations being this close to heaven affords us being near Mount Fuji.
Chilled morning air makes the flesh on my arm rise, though I can’t be sure which of the emotions I’m feeling — the fear of being caught, or the excited elation of finally having freedom so close.
