Page 43 of Emperor of Havoc

Not yet.

12

TAKESHI

The Ishida-kai are watching me,waiting, like jackals sizing up a lion. Testing, prodding for weakness.

They don’t realize I see it—the way they gather in corners, voices low, eyes flicking to me when they think I’m not looking. But I see everything.

It’s all obviously Katarina’s doing. She’s been busy, that fiancée of mine. Moving chess pieces, whispering into the ears of various Ishida-kai allies. It’s almost cute how hard she’s trying to freeze me out.

Almost.

But this is a game I’ve been playing much longer than she realizes.

The captains are huddled near the far side of the study when I enter, talking quietly. Kolya was back in action as of two days ago, but then earlier this morning his doctors called him back to the hospital for some more tests.

His health issues aren't common knowledge, of course. Only the extreme inner circle—i.e., the captains I’ve just walked in on—knows about theirOyabun’smedical condition.

It goes without saying thatI’mnot supposed to know, either. But what can I say: I’m good at reading people, and I’ve figured out what’s going on with Kolya.

Just kidding. I bugged half the rooms in the house the first time anyone was dumb enough to let me wander around unsupervised.

A tumor on the spine sounds…brutal. Perhaps it’s part of the reason Katarina is so on edge recently.

That, or she’s still trying to reconcile her burning hate for me with what I’m sure is a burning desire for me to follow through on the dark fantasies she voiced to "Kaiju".

She’s close with her father—unlike me. Mom had Kenzo, and then Hana and I years later, with the same man: Hideo Mori, who at the time was the fearsome head of the Mori-kai in Kyoto, where our Norwegian mother had been studying abroad.

Freaked at the prospect of raising a child in the world of the Yakuza, she fled Japan when she was pregnant with Kenzo, never even telling Hideo she was expecting. Years later she went back to Japan, hoping to re-ignite things with him. But once again, she decided that she couldn’t raise a family with a Yakuza kingpin as the patriarch.

She left Japan a second time, now pregnant with Hana and I, and never came back. Hideo ended up moving on, finding his own happy ever after, and changing his name to leave the world of the Yakuza behind.

He’s in New York now, living his best life as Hideo Yamaguchi. Our half-sister, Fumi, is there as well—a top hot-shot lawyer at a top hot-shot law firm, not to mention First Lady of the state, since her husband is Governor.

It’s a strange world.

Hana and Kenzo have bonded with Hideo at little, but I haven’t much. Nothing personal—it’s not like I fault him for not even knowing we existed until recently. We’re just…not close.

Akira and I were, though.

Mom had met him through the various aristocratic circles she floated through. I never knew much about his background, except that he came from a prominent political family in Japan, had money, and was probably the coolest motherfucker I’d ever met.

I was getting into some dumb shit with the wrong kind of people, who knows why. Maybe it was a lack of male role models. Or lack of direction. Perhaps it was what a shrink would later call my “psychologically atypical personality traits” beginning to manifest.

Anyway, that’s when mom had Akira over to our place for dinner.

At first, I thought it was bullshit and maybe a little racist that she’d found the one Japanese guy living anywhere remotely close to us in the English countryside to play buddy-buddy with me. But by the end of it, when Akira took me outside and showed me his old BSA Y13 motorcycle?

Fuck me. I was in.

After that, especially as mom got sicker, and Hana developed her own circle of friends, Akira became like the cool uncle I'd never had. To me, he was like an Asian Patrick Swayze: effortlessly cool, smug, and fun. Over the next few years, he taught me everything that made me who I am today.

Bikes and cars. Engines. Music. Girls. He taught me how to lift, how to channel all the rage I felt inside into constructive activities like building my first street-racing motorcycle from the ground up, working out, getting my first girlfriend.

And then one day, Akira said he had to go back to Japan to deal with some family stuff.

He never came back.

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