Page 22 of Emperor of Wrath

“Very diplomatic, princess.”

“This was fucking you?!” Takeshi bellows like a wild beast as he whirls on me with a fury that terrifies me.

I pale and start to back away as he advances on me.

“I—shit, I’m sorry?—”

“You’re sorry?!” he roars. “What the fuck sort of psycho bitch?—”

“That’s enough,” Kenzo growls as Takeshi takes another step toward me, looking like he seriously wants to hurt me.

“I—I’ll pay for it?—”

“NO FUCKING SHIT!!!”

In that moment, two things happen. Takeshi charges at me like a fucking rhino on steroids. But Kenzo moves as well.

And he’s faster.

He springs between his brother and me, his back to me as he plants both palms on Takeshi’s broad chest.

“I said that’s enough!” he snarls coldly.

It’s…unexpected.

Hell, I figured he’d love to see his animal of a brother tear me apart. Or at least let me squirm a little while longer. I would have lost big money on the “Kenzo steps between you and stops it” bet.

Takeshi glares at me around his brother. But then he rolls his neck and takes a step back. Kenzo turns to level a dark look at me. “You’ll pay him back for the bike.”

“I—yeah, of course?—”

“We’re done here…princess.”

He turns to face me, and steps close. My breath catches as he leans down, letting his lips brush my earlobe again.

“For now.”

5

KENZO

For a second, when the door first opens, I’m greeted by a man my height standing in a way that suggests there’s a gun hidden behind the door. Then his blue eyes lighten with recognition. Tate smiles as he steps back from the door and opens it a bit wider.

“Mr. Mori,” he bows, a little stiffly, and I manage not to laugh.

Tate, my father’s full-time nurse, can be a bit of a dork sometimes. Yes, a six-foot-four dork who can probably bench three hundred, but a dork nonetheless. He’s big on the formalities, which make sense since he’s ex-military—green berets, to be precise—but the way he always bows to me like I’m some ultra-traditional Japanese businessman is almost comical.

“Just Kenzo is fine, Tate. Really,” I smile as I step into my father’s sprawling apartment, smirking as I catch a quick glimpse of him slipping the gun that definitely was hidden behind the door back under his loose jacket.

I spent the early years of my life not knowing anything about my father beyond his first name. None of us ever pressed our mother on it, because it was clear it still pained her to talk about it.

Later, when I went to Japan to learn more about my past and my connection to the Mori name—which my siblings and I later adopted—I thought Hideo had died trying to run away with his family from the world of the Yakuza.

It was only recently that I learned the truth. Hideo was attacked while trying to get away, and sadly, his wife, Bella, was killed. But he and their infant daughter, my half-sister Fumi, managed to get out. Hideo got them new identities and new lives, and immigrated to the US as Hideo Yamaguchi, leaving behind Mori and everything that came with it.

Hideo and my sister had to start over again from nothing. The fortune he’d built with the Mori empire was gone. But it turns out, my half-sister is a bit of a genius.

Well, after all, she is a Mori.

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