Page 30 of Love on the Run

The mask of blanked out emotion is back. It’s like he can see through me. I have nothing to hide. Trying to beat him at the cool maliciousness he has cultivated over the years is folly. He is a man who sits across from world leaders and crime bosses alike. He’s a master of the game of strategy and will. No this is not where I beat him. Going head to head with him, I will always lose. I see that now. Fighting him so openly will always have me being the one who loses.

His kidnaping me and my subsequent illness had me scrambling. After the episode this morning, I realize I need to take my power back. Being reactive is not the way to deal with a man as brilliant as my husband. He’ll also sniff out any deception and punish it cruelly.

No, I have to be me— at least the me that captivated him in the beginning. My power lies in the quietness of my strength. The girl he met in the limo. The happy effervescent girl who ran her own company and his household. I won’t cower. No more of that. I will soften him little by little. Soon moments like theone in the bath will become more frequent, bigger and stronger until he crumbles just like a glacier that’s drifted too far from the South Pole.

“Shall I begin?” I ask, looking him squarely in the eye. Letting him know I got his threat. He can keep harping on it if he wishes, but I’ve moved on. I see the muscle ticking in his jaw, but he gives me a brief nod.

“Hai.”

I spoon rice into a small bowl and sit it before him before selecting the best of the best morsels of fish and placing the bite size portions in a neat row on an oblong dish. Following that, I set several dishes before him of his favorite along with some edamame.

After I serve him. I take a small plate and do the same though my portions are nowhere the size of his.

I’m pouring his tea when he says coldly, “You will eat more food, Flower.”

I finish pouring and hand him his tea. He makes no move to get it. Okay, we both know that is the height of rudeness in Japanese society. I try not to let it bother me. I mean I really try. I can’t help the way my nose stings. I blink rapidly, swallowing back the ache in my throat.

It takes all my concentration to sit his cup and saucer down before him with the barest rattle. I sniff looking down at my plate.

“I am. After being sick it’s taking my appetite a while to come back.” Not to mention the stress he’s put me under, but I don’t say that. Surely, he knows.

I take my sushi dipping it in my preferred soy sauce and miso trying to eat. The way he watches me makes it hard to swallow. I follow with the rice and salad. It’s so hard to enjoy food under such intense scrutiny. I feel like I am taking a test.

“Your breakfast and lunch are barely touched every morning. I’ve been informed you order no snacks, only water.” He tells me after he’s eaten. I move to replenish his dishes.

“You will tell me why this is.”

I swallow around the slick sea urchin. One would think it would be easy being one of my favorites, but I barely get it down. Misery sinks its claws into me.

“Worry,” I shrug, looking into his hard, unyielding gaze. “I’m worried about all this, Asa, you, me.”

At least two minutes pass as he holds my gaze his face a mask of rage. I can tell he wants to rail at me. Tell me I caused this. Totally absolving himself of any blame. Ignoring the fact, he held a young woman prisoner for years in order to keep her brothers under his heel. Yes. Let’s forget that sick shit. I don’t drop my gaze from his. I can take it. I’m done cowering.

“You need to gain your weight back,” he says in a hard, awful voice.

I tip my chin thinking of the painfully thin Aussie vying for his attention and all the women he dated before and after me when I went back to America. None of them were cuvry, none of them hoes were below five foot seven.

“Before me, you only dated super thin, tall women. When I went back home and miscarried you were dating super-ultra-thin socialites.” I allow no heat as I gently remind him how he went back to his playboy ways after I was forced to leave because my brother, FADE almost died.

He tossed his napkin on his plate. “I didn’t marry any of those super-ultra-thin or tall women, Hana. I married you. I had a son with you— ” He cuts himself off. His gaze slides to the side and down. “I wanted more children with you.” There it was again just like in the bathroom. He’s having a hard time as well. Good. We’ll wallow in despair together.

Just then his phone buzzes out of nowhere. He never allows calls during family time. But we’re not exactly a family or a couple anymore, are we?

He takes the phone out of his pocket not even bothering to answer it handing it to me. “It’s your mother.”

“Mommy?” I can’t hide the wonder and sadness in my tone. As I get up from the table and move to the seating the area of the suite. I barely notice Akchiro getting up and moving towards the window by the bed.

“Yes, Sugar-drop it’s me. How’re you doing, baby?” My eyes sting hearing the concern in her voice.

“Good, mommy, so good.” What else can I say, I’ve been kidnapped and being bred by my husband to produce another two heirs for his empire before he discards me? I’m pretty sure that won’t go over too well.

“Umhmm, so y’all are working things out?” She asks diving right into the problem. My mom has never minced words, so I’m not surprised. “That’s why he said he wanted to take you cruising. So y’all wouldn’t have any distractions. Akchiro was real tore up when he came here, Flower. But if he’s been unfaithful, I don’t expect you to forgive him.”

“No mom, he didn’t cheat on me. It was other stuff we haven’t fully talked about in our marriage that just blew-up in our faces.” I give her the bare bones of the situation.

“So, instead of facing him you ran and took his baby? Now, I already know how ruthless he is.Youknow the man you married. This man you stood in front of your family and fought for. You know what he’s capable of, Flower. I know he had to do something terrible for you to leave like you did. Still, you took his child and left him near dead from what I hear from your brothers. You’re lucky you didn’t kill him,” she admonishes but there is no heat to her words.

“I know I was wrong, mom. I just couldn’t see another way.” I look over my shoulder. He’s at the window, looking at the night sky shining beyond where it meets the sea. “He wouldn’t listen,” I whisper, so he doesn’t hear that part. “He didn’t care how I felt about it.”

---