Poisonous Kiss: Chapter 20

“Good morning, Mr. Black.”

I smile my customary clean, polished grin at Jan as she hands me my coffee along with a file folder.

“Morning, Jan. Thank you.”

“Of course, Mr. Black,” she beams. “And, if I may ask…”

I chuckle. “The wedding was fantastic.” I waggle a finger at her, playfully chastising her. “We missed you, you know.”

She groans as she scrunches up her face. “I know, I know!” She sighs. “Believe me, my weekend was far less exciting.”

I flash another smile, tucking the file under my arm and resting my free hand on her shoulder. My brow furrows into its best Concerned Expression. “And Chuck is feeling fine after his operation?”

She blushes, rolling her eyes at me. “Don’t think because you were sneaky and didn’t sign the card that I didn’t guess who those flowers were from.”

I laugh heartily, spreading my arms in appeal. “What gave it away?”

“You mean beside the fact that I’m the one that set up your accounts with every decent florist in the city?”

I shake my head, wagging another finger at her. “You got me there. You’re too good, Jan.”

“And you are too kind, Mr. Black,” she smiles. “Chuck’s doing just fine. He’s just grouchy about missing the Knicks game this⁠—”

Her eyes go wide as I pull out two crisp, glossy, courtside tickets to the Knicks-Heat game in a few weeks.

“Mr. Black…”

“Tell Chuck to brush up on his cinema before you go. These are next to Spike Lee’s season tickets.”

Her jaw drops. “I’m supposed to get you a wedding gift!”

I grin. “I don’t need a thing, Jan. And these aren’t a gift. They’re…” I shrug. “For putting up with my shenanigans year after year.”

She takes the tickets as I place them in her hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Black,” she sighs, smiling at me. “Really, thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” I say, turning to step into my office.

“Oh, before I forget…” she nods at the file she just gave me. “That’s the dossier you wanted on Dwayne Halbertson.”

My jaw grits. Jan shakes her head and exhales.

“I know you’re the last person who’d ever want to hear something like this, but I hope God himself comes down to drag that man to the Hell he deserves. I mean after what he did to that poor girl, what a travesty of justice⁠—”

She stops, looking up at me sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Black,” she says quietly.

I shake my head. “Don’t be. It’s natural to feel angry, hurt, and let down when justice is miscarried, and the guilty are allowed to go free. Why would I be the last person who wanted to hear that?”

She smiles sheepishly. “Because you’re just so good, Gabriel.”

Right, good.

Sure.

Alone in my office, I sit back and flip open the dossier I’ve had compiled on Dwayne the rapist, who will be stepping into a courtroom within the hour to hear that his case is being dismissed for lack of admissible evidence.

He won’t be going to jail. But he will be going to Hell. I don’t think I can promise Jan that the Lord Himself will have a hand in that…

But I sure will.

I frown, rubbing my temples as I skim the documents.

You’re so good, Gabriel.

It’s what I’ve spent my entire life projecting to the world. I mean Christ, I was literally a fucking Boy Scout when I was a kid. “Good” is what the world sees when it looks at me, and it’s served me well.

It’s why they all see Atticus Finch when they see me in court. Or a Rockefeller when I’m at a charity event putting the use of my Hamptons beach place for a weekend up for auction.

They see what I want them to see. If that golden mirror wasn’t there to reflect back their hopes and wishes and good thoughts, they’d run screaming at what they saw when they looked at me.

My siblings and Taylor have seen me grumpy, sour, and in some dark places. But not even they have seen how deep that darkness goes, or the depravity lurking at the bottom of the pit. Nor have the few women who’ve gotten deep enough into my world to get a glimpse of my monster. Even they just think they caught me being “a little too kinky”.

My father was the only person to really, truly see me. I was eight when I came home from school one day, my nose and knuckles bloody from a fight I’d gotten into with a bully who’d been terrorizing some smaller kids at recess.

At first, Vaughn Black was impressed. He was proud of me for sticking up for those who couldn’t defend themselves, even if maybe he wasn’t thrilled about the fist-fighting.

Then the school called. And the bully’s parents. Finally, the police.

I didn’t just hit that asshole, I fucking wrecked him. I put him in the hospital.

After dad smoothed things over with the kid’s parents, the school, and the law, he came to see me in my room. Dad wasn’t ever the corporal punishment type—he never once hit any of my siblings or me. But that day, I thought he was going to.

He didn’t. He was furious, sure; more furious than I’d ever seen him. But he just sat down and asked me why I did it. Why I’d kept hitting Tommy Bidderman even after he was on the ground, bloodied and unconscious.

“Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too.”

That line might have worked on someone else, but Dad was as avid a reader as I was.

“That’s from Ender’s Game”, he’d said quietly. “Nicely played, but try again. And this time, Gabriel, I want you to tell me the truth.”

So I did. And it actually felt really good to put words to the feelings I’d been wrestling with for years.

That sometimes, I got so mad I felt that I was going to explode. That sometimes, I saw terrible things happening that shouldn’t happen, bad things happening to good people, and it made me so angry at the unfairness of it all.

I told him that sometimes I felt like there was a monster living inside of me.

Some parents might have taken their kid to half a dozen shrinks if they said something like that. They’d probably be right to, as well.

Dad didn’t. He just hugged me close, and told me he loved me, and that I was a good kid, even if I felt like a monster sometimes.

Then he told me how he used to get angry like that, too. But then he’d figured out that setting strict rules for himself, and dedicating himself to following those rules, made the world easier to bear.

With his help, I started doing the same. Routines. Rules. A code of conduct I followed like a fucking samurai warrior.

First it was taekwondo, to help me channel my aggression and my energy. Boxing helped a bit, but that was always more Alistair’s thing. Then I got onto the debate team, and joined clubs like model UN, together with other extracurricular activities that were all about focus and following guidelines.

It’s what ultimately led me into law, following in my dad’s footsteps.

I’ve spent my entire fucking life since that schoolyard fight crafting the perfect shiny armor and mask to shield who I am from the world. For people like Jan to see.

What they don’t see is the monster who’s chased Fumi around the dark basement dungeon of a sex club before fucking her like a goddamn rag doll twice now—once a week before our wedding, and again on Saturday night, when I allowed her to follow me again.

I do enjoy this game we play. The game where I prowl into the darkness leaving breadcrumbs in my wake, and Fumi follows, gobbling up those breadcrumbs until she’s so far down the dark hole that there’s no escape.

The game where she pretends that she doesn’t know I’m the beast who’s been chasing her. But I know she does.

I’ve allowed her to know.

That first hunt was the thrill of my life.

The second was even better. Also slightly amusing, because I’m now referring to it—at least to myself—as “our honeymoon”.

No champagne and a hot tub for us. No rose-petals on clean silk sheets with a view of Paris or the Caribbean.

Our honeymoon involved me chasing Fumi through the dark and pinning her face-down on the hard Venom floor. It involved using a knife to slice her clothes away, savagely stuffing my cock into her greedy, messy little cunt until she came, and then coming all over her bruised, gasping, perfect body and making her clean me off with her tongue.

Not a single soul knows what we’ve done in the dark. No one except her and me.

I scan the dossier on Dwayne once more before I switch to another fight that needs fighting. I pull my assembled notes out of my desk and spread them across the top.

I may have been careful to hide my misdeeds and my darkness from the world. Governor Hall, not so much. He’s left a trail of wreckage during his last two terms as Governor, not to mention his stint as US Congressmen before that.

Rumors of grift and skimming. Nepotism. Insider trading. Allegations of sexual misconduct and assault have been quickly squashed, to the point where they’re barely even a rumor.

But where there’s even a hint of smoke, there’s always fire.

There’s one silver bullet I’m homing in on, and I’m very close. I’m making a few motions now, being careful so as not to raise any flags. And soon, a judge I’m friendly with will be granting me access to certain files that have been sealed for almost a decade.

If the rumors are true, it’s not even a silver bullet. It’s a silver atomic bomb, and I’m to use it to destroy Preston Hall’s chances of securing a third term as Governor.

No one ever said politics wasn’t a dirty fight.

A knock at my door pulls my attention from the files in front of me.

“Yeah,” I grunt, pushing everything back into a folder, slipping it into my desk and locking the drawer. Kratos Drakos steps in with a nod.

“How was the honeymoon?”

Oh, you know. Debaucherous. Debased.

Primal.

“We’re both pretty wrapped up with work, but we’ll figure something out soon.”

“Uh-huh,” Kratos grunts dryly.

I arch a brow. “Something you’d like to share?”

The giant Drakos brother chuckles deeply. “Gabriel, you know damn well who and what my family is. I know an arranged marriage when I see it.”

My lips thin. “Kratos, I⁠—”

“Yeah, I don’t need coaching on keeping shit secret. Save your ink and paper. I’m not touching an NDA.”

I frown.

“But that’s because it’s your business, and I have no interest in sharing it with anyone.”

Slowly, I nod. “How obvious would you say it is?”

“Actually? I almost missed it, if I’m being honest,” he smirks. “You sold the fuck out of it at the wedding, gotta say.”

That kiss never should have happened. I mean, obviously, I’ve kissed Fumi before. But those kisses were more like two animals grappling for each other’s jugular, our blood pumping hot, with the taste of fear and savagery in the air.

Kissing her at the altar like that was a misstep. It was too…I don’t know, romantic. Too real. Yes, the goal is to sell this to the public. But when I claimed her mouth at that altar, I worried later that it was too much.

That it was us crossing a line we shouldn’t.

So I’m pleased to hear that it sold—or almost sold—the story to someone like Kratos.

Kratos zips his fingers across his lips. “To the grave. You have my word on that.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You’re going to appreciate this even more.”

He pulls a file folder out of his jacket.

“Tell me that’s what I hope it is.”

“Consider it my wedding present to you.”

Fuck yes.

I’m not one to brush random events off as happenstance that I don’t need to think further about. It’s what makes me a great lawyer. Ironically, it’s also what makes me a phenomenal monster.

So I wasn’t about to just forget the Japanese guy I saw Fumi talking with angrily at my media blitz in the Conrad Hotel’s ballroom. The one who oh-so-artfully dodged giving me a name. The one who tried to insinuate that he “knew” Fumi from law school.

I’ve told myself a dozen times that I’m looking into him because I want to know how he even got past security at the event. But if I were being honest, it’s because I’m trying to find out if he’s an ex of Fumi’s.

It’s a development I didn’t see coming: feelings of jealousy. Feelings of fury when I think about my little kitten with any other man. A feeling close to the kind of impulses I get around pieces of excrement like Dwayne Halbertson.

The desire to kill. To spill blood.

That’s the real reason I asked Kratos to look into that guy. Not because I was concerned about his media credentials or if he actually went to Columbia Law.

I want to know if he’s laid a finger on Fumi. If he’s tasted her the way I have. If he’s feasted on her darkness and devoured her sweet submission.

If he has, I might not be able to stop his fate from playing out in a very, very not-so-nice way.

“Who is he?”

Kratos clears his throat and drops the file folder on the desk in front of me. I open it to find some grainy still shots he snagged from the Conrad Hotel’s security tapes, plus a few other black and white photos of the same guy exiting a building, or getting into a car.

“Your mystery man is Takato Ito.”

My jaw tightens.

“He’s Yakuza, Gabriel, and not a small-time nobody, either. His uncle⁠—”

“Is Orochi Ito, head of the Kyoto Hato-kai,” I growl, my eyes narrowing on the dossier. “Yeah, I know.”

“These guys are fucking serious, Gabriel,” Kratos says quietly. “Like ninjas dropping out of your ceiling at night with samurai swords serious.”

I cock a brow. “Ninjas? With samurai swords?”

“Fuck off, Mr. History Channel,” he sighs, rolling his eyes. “But for real, take this shit seriously. They don’t have much of a presence in New York, but the Hato-kai run Kyoto. They’re not someone I’d take lightly.”

“Noted,” I mutter, standing and reaching across the desk to shake his hand. “Thanks, Kratos.”

“Any time,” he rumbles. “Just keep me out of it if this comes up with Ares. He’d have a heart attack if he thought I was stirring shit up with the Yakuza.”

I thank the Greek giant again before he takes his leave. Then I find myself sitting by the window of my office, staring at the information he’s collected on Takato.

And wondering why the fuck Fumi is talking to the Yakuza.