Page 49 of Toxic

Suro: Because we have each other.

Never so inspiredas I was by the performances in London, I work on my play for the first time in three years. I felt paralyzed and helpless during the pandemic. I thought going back to my family’s home and helping with the launch of their new creative arts center would help me start to write again. It didn’t take me long to realize how adrift I still felt. How much despair had caged me. I was walking in a cocoon of my former life. The oneI managed to paste together after Hisashi. Still, I never felt the same after being torn from him. There was always something that felt missing. I knew even as I was being hailed as the next best thing since August Wilson that I was working on borrowed time. Soon it would all fall away once the quiet got to me and I had to deal with what I’d done. Leave the one person I loved most in the world in his deepest despair. No one walks away from that unscathed.

It’s well past midnight but I haven’t stopped writing since we boarded the plane. In fact, I asked Hisashi for a pen and notebook when we started on the way to the airport.

Hisashi seems more at ease now since the moment I re-entered his life. I’m not sure if it was the promise I made not to leave him or the Kinbaku scene afterward but he seems almost at peace.

Sighing, I get up from the makeshift writing desk I’ve made for myself. The interior of the plane is dimly lit. I gather the notebook and pencils he gave me. Why a pen would be detrimental to my captivity is lost on me. Hisashi forgets not everyone has the genius level deduction he embodies. I could have a hundred pens and still wouldn’t even begin to know how to override the system to alert anyone of my kidnapping.

He’s funny that way, assuming what comes natural to him is as effortless to others. I’m sure keeping company with his brother, cousin, and Ghadi Carrington has done nothing but further this thinking. Well, Mr. Techgenuis your wife’s blessing is limited to her craft as a playwright, so I won’t be MacGyvering my escape anytime soon.

Standing, I stretch my cramping back knocking out the kinks. “Ahh,” I exhale, loving the stretch of my muscles.

Gathering my meager items, pulling them close to my chest, I head to the bedroom of the private plane. The term is all that is typical of this and most private jets. It’s as large as Air ForceOne with the same type of security and high-tech amenities. The Takedas are known for their security measures, and none have been skimped on the plane assigned to Hisashi.

“To have me killed in such a dishonorable way would be a mark my family would never recover from,” he told me unabashedly on the way to New York when I asked why he had such a supersize plane.

Making my way through the long deep aisle leading to the sleeping quarters I can’t help the feeling of anticipation coalescing in my body.

Will he angry if I wake him up? I wonder heading down the corridor to the bedroom.

“Iie,” gasped loud and in distress is the first thing I hear when I enter the room.

Frozen, I watch Hisashi fight for his life in the covers of the bed. I know he was exhausted. He hasn’t slept in days. I noticed the dark circles marring his otherwise beautiful face. I know he still suffers from insomnia just like I suffer from the night terrors that have plagued me since childhood. The toll his work is taking is not lost on me. I know a lot of his behavior stems from the hacking and uncertainty this strike is bringing.

My gaze is glued to the scene before me as his long limbs struggle within the mass of sheets.

He fights. He flails. He screams in guttural Japanese threatening retribution. Maniacal laughter spills forth, promising, cursing, sneering only to be trampled by cries of mercy and heart-wrenching pain.

It’s like my night terrors have returned only now made real. Every dream was of his imagined torture. What he’d been made to endure in the facilities he’d been placed. I know they were deeply hidden because the fear of the public knowing he’d been committed would have left a taint on the Takeda name. Guilt and fear haunted me for nearly a decade and were only alleviated byhim— I realize now that I’ve seen the videos of how he soothed me while I slept. He was my solace even when I was his pain.

Suddenly, as if sensing me he sits up. Tears stream down his face. Anguish tears at every one of his features. His eyes well again and again. He so broken, beautifully so even in this moment.

“Tay-chan, help me. Please. I need you,” he pleads, his whole face breaks as he’s wracked with sorrow.

I don’t hesitate. I don’t think. Dropping everything I carefully carried into the room I rush over to him. Curling around him I wrap myself around him like I saw him do when I had night terrors.

Moments pass as he struggles. Eventually he settles. I kiss his back whispering, “It’s okay. I’m here. Tay-chan is here.”

He stills.

He flips us.

I’m underneath him, my throat is being slowly squeezed, and not in a good way. Not in the way I like. His hand is hard, his grip impersonal, cold.

“I’ve got you now, little bitch,” he hisses in that cultured oddly detached voice he sometimes uses.

“Hisashi,” I gasp on my last breath.

“No. No. No. No. No, little bitch. He’s cowering from the rapists. He was SUCH a pretty boy. They couldn’t resist him you know. They just had to take his ass,” he hisses, licking a long swathe of wetness from my neck to cheek. “In the place you left him. The place he thought you’d come save him. But it wasn’t you was it, little bitch but me. I was the one who kept him safe. Me. Never. You.” He shakes me slowly, his voice almost lilting even as he slowly squeezes my life from me.

“I saved him as I always have even from his bitch of a mother,” he whispers hotly in my ear. I feel the heat of hishardness pressing against me. I go cold. This is not my husband but a different person entirely.

“I saved him from YOU.” He pulls back, his eyes black onyx orbs of coldblooded danger. “You broke him. I put him back together. Now you are back trying to break him again. I can’t allow that to happen.”

“No. No. I would never,” I gasp as he squeezes, slowly methodically, relishing every moment in what seems to be killing me.

“Hisashi will n-never forgive you,” I gasp. Dark spots dance before my eyes. “Never,” I promise firm in my belief in a man who’s never shared his darkest secret with me. Still. I know. I know.

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