Page 119 of Emperor of Havoc

My mouth thins. “This concerns Katarina?”

“It…might,” Kolya growls.

I lurch to my feet. “Then I can fuckingrun.”

38

TAKESHI

The car roarsthrough the neon-lit streets of Tokyo, the city a blur of light and shadow beyond the tinted windows. Kolya's hands, strong and tattooed, are tight fists on his knees as he sits beside me in the back seat, his face a mask of grim determination.

His voice breaks the heavy silence. “Where and when did you meet my brother?”

“England,” I murmur, looking out the window. “Ten, twelve years ago. Through my mother's social circles. He became a sort of mentor to me when I was a teenager.” My jaw tightens, the memory bittersweet as I turn toward Kolya. “He was also my friend.”

Kolya nods, his expression grim.

“My brother has experienced…problems with his mental health,” Kolya mutters slowly, as if forcing the words out costs him. “He’s suffered from psychosis and paranoid schizophrenia since we were children. He had it under control for a while. He was on the right meds.” His voice becomes almost hesitant. “Butright around the time my wife Marianna became pregnant with Katarina, Jin said he needed a change of scenery. He left Japan, moved to the UK, and sort of fell off my radar. He was there for years; we lost touch for many of them.”

My brow furrows. “Why the different name?”

Kolya smirks privately. “Akira Ohno?” he murmurs, shaking his head. “No idea. Probably wanted to distance himself from the Ishida name. But Icantell you how he picked his new name.”

He sighs as he turns to me.

“Do you watch anime, Takeshi?”

“Excuse me?”

“Japanese animation. I don’t mean Pokémon. The more…adult versions.”

I lift a shoulder. “Sometimes.”

“Are you familiar with the movieAkira, about the outlaw young man who races motorcycles around a future Tokyo?”

Ihaveseen that movie. And suddenly, it clicks.

Akira.

The man who lived and breathed motorcycles, who gave me my love for them, took his new name from a movie about a kid who loves motorcycles.

Holy shit.

It’s so obvious and simple that it almost makes me want to laugh.

Almost.

“And Ohno…” Kolya smiles a rare smile, shaking his head. “That was a nickname we had for him growing up.” He turns to me. “Jin was…accident prone. Or maybe trouble-prone. And whenever he’d mess up, my mother would say ‘oh no’ in English.”

My mouth falls open. “He returned to Japan when Marianna…got sick,” Kolya continues. His voice tightens, but he keeps going. “She died not long after Jin came home. It was strange: they weren’t that close, but Jin took her death very hard. He wasn’t ever the same. His moods spiraled, his mental health crumbled. He stopped taking his meds and started trying to fix things with drugs and alcohol instead.”

Kolya grits his jaw as he glances at me. “I tried to help him. I even put him in a facility, hoping they could help him. But it got worse. He became…volatile.”

“So these notes,” I growl. “To Katarina. They're from him?”

Kolya nods curtly. “That’s his handwriting. I'd know it anywhere.”

My blood runs cold. “Do you think he took her?”

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