Page 5 of Poisonous Kiss

Like the one downstairs, the door to my apartment is also ajar.

Fear stabs into me as I reach for my phone.

“Dad?”

I nudge the door open, my thumb hovering over the emergency call button.

“Dad, where?—”

It happens so fast I barely register it. One second, I’m staring at my dad in shock and horror, trying to figure out why he’s on the floor on his hands and knees, and where all those tattoos on his back came from. The next moment, I’m being yanked inside. I gasp as I go sprawling to the floor next to my father.

“Fumi-chan!”

My father lunges for me, as if to shield me, then grunts when a booted foot kicks him hard in the ribs. I scream and try to grapple my way toward him, heedless of the hands yanking me back and the different male voices barking English and Japanese.

Suddenly, I go still, when I feel the cold metal blade touch the side of my neck.

“Fumi!” My dad chokes, fear in his wide eyes. “Fumi! Don’t hurt her?—”

“Stop.”

With a clarity almost as sharp as the blade resting against my throat, my eyes focus as the whole apartment goes quiet. My gaze slips up the long, slightly curved blade of the sword, to the rounded hilt, and the tattooed hand adorned with rings holding it. My eyes drag over the black leather of the man’s jacket sleeve, all the way up to his handsome but cruel face, split by a wicked smile, with his black hair slicked back.

“Konbanwa, Yamaguchi-san,” the Japanese man purrs, his lips curling devilishly.

My throat bobs, my heart thudding.

“There’s a lockbox behind the blender in the cupboard above the refrigerator,” I whisper quietly. “There’s five thousand dollars cash in there?—”

The man begins to laugh coldly. For the first time, I allow myself to focus on the entire room, and my heart sinks. It’s not just the man with the cruel smile and the fucking samurai sword against my neck. There are four other men with guns. I eye the tattoo ink on their necks, wrists, and the backs of their hands, and tense.

That’s Yakuza ink.

What the fuck is the Yakuza doing in my living room?

My eyes drop to my father. He’s wincing, and his face his bruised. But he doesn’t look badly hurt.

My brows furrow as my gaze slips to his shirt, ripped halfway off his body.

My father never shows his bare torso to me. Not once, not ever. When he was young, he was burned badly in a fire, and he’s always told me the scars make him feel self-conscious.

But right now, it’s not scar tissue that my eyes are locked onto.

It’s the fact that his entire back is covered in traditional Japanese tattoos.

The fuck?

“Ms. Yamaguchi?—”

“My watch!” I choke out, my eyes dropping to the Rolex Taylor bought me as a gift when I made equity partner. “It’s a Datejust 36?—”

“No,” the man growls quietly.

“It’s a ten-thousand-dollar?—”

“I am not interested in robbing you,” the man snarls with sudden viciousness. “I’m here to take back what was stolen from me.”

My face pales. In confusion, my eyes dart to my father’s. I don’t see terror in his gaze. Weirdly, I see a sort of dark fury. Fury, and something else that takes me a second to place.

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