Poisonous Kiss: Chapter 26

“Oh, and can you pick up some baby bok choy on the way home?”

Jesus. I’m so domesticated it almost fucking hurts.

“For?” I frown.

“For food,” Fumi says over the phone. “I’m cooking dinner tonight.”

“You can cook?”

She laughs, the sweet sound making something swell inside my chest.

Yes, I’ve somehow gotten into the habit of calling Fumi. Randomly. For no real reason. This time it was just to let her know I’m on the way home from the interview I just gave to the Times over coffee. And now I’m heading to the house I share with this woman, who is, apparently, cooking us dinner. For which she needs baby bok choy.

Yeah. So fucking domesticated it’s almost painful. And yet…I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.

Life is good. Like, really good. Not only am I somehow juggling my work at the firm with all my election obligations, I’m crushing it in the polls. It’s not in the bag yet, but Governor Hall is slowly dropping, and I seem to be on the rise. And I haven’t even used my secret weapon yet.

Then there’s the home front.

Fumi.

For years, I’ve known that there are two sides of me. The dark and the light. At times over the years, those two have been snarling, bitter enemies. Other times, there’s a frosty truce. But right now, for the first time ever, somehow those two sides of me are in perfect balance.

She’s done that.

Because with Fumi, I’ve allowed myself finally to be completely at peace with both parts of me.

She knows the golden Gabriel who charms juries and wins cases. But she knows the monster as well. She knows my darkness as well as my light, and she doesn’t just “accept” both.

She wants both. And she encourages both sides of me to come out.

She wants both Jekyll and Hyde.

“Yes, I fucking cook. Jerkface. Dinner’s in forty-five minutes. Don’t be late.”

“Is it cereal?”

“You’re an asshole.”

My lips curve dangerously. “Such language. Do I need to punish that mouth when I get home?”

Fumi’s breath catches. “Maybe,” she whispers, her voice suddenly husky.

My dick throbs as I get into the back seat of the town car.

“See you soon.”

Trevor pulls away from the curb as I hang up.

“Do you know where to buy baby bok choy?”

He frowns, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Sir?”

“The vegetable. It’s used in a lot of Asian cuisine. You know what, hang on, I’ll figure out where we can stop⁠—”

Just then, my phone rings. I glance down, and my jaw tightens.

It’s Jason, Judge Myers’ clerk.

“Trevor, could I have a minute?”

“You got it, Mr. Black.”

He raises the partition between us as I answer the phone, grinning.

“Tell me you’ve got good news.”

Jason chuckles. “That I do. I’m on the move so I haven’t had a chance to look at the goodies myself. But the un-redacted files hit the judge’s desk an hour ago. I just sent them by courier to your house.”

I glance at my watch.

“Fantastic. I’m on the way there now. Thanks, Jason. Really. I owe you.”

“Yeah, you do,” he chuckles. “You agree to hear my idea for cash bond reform when you’re in the Governor’s mansion, and we’ll call it even.”

“You bet. And thanks.”

I’m just stepping out of the car outside my place when the guy on the bike rolls up. Fuck it, I can get bok choy later. These require my signature and mine alone. I sign for the documents and immediately rip open the sealed bag, sitting on the steps of my building as I yank the documents out and start paging through my nuclear weapon.

Fucking hell, it’s good.

There are details about the campaign staffer Governor Hall had the affair with, and the fallout of after she threatened to go public. Internal emails between Hall and his campaign manager about paying her off, discussing how much to give her. There’s even a really fucked-up exchange where his campaign manager starts questioning the legitimacy of her parents’ immigrant status. One particularly vile exchange jokes about having her “taken care of by a professional”.

I mean fuck me, Hall is going down for this shit.

A dark, devious smile crosses my face. This is it: the atom bomb that’s going to destroy Hall’s reelection campaign.

I’m going to win.

A warm, smug feeling washes over me. Then I flip to the last page, where the allegations against Hall are completely dismissed, and the female staffer in question is officially fired from the campaign.

My eyes drop to the bottom of the page, where this woman who had the affair with Governor Hall willingly signed her own dismissal.

And my whole world crumbles.

It’s a signature I’ve signed my name next to as the lead attorney on a dozen cases.

It’s the signature next to mine on my fucking marriage license.

The teenaged campaign staffer was Fumi.

“Hey!”

The way she smiles at me as I charge into the kitchen almost rips me in two. But it also brings to the surface a fury that turns my skin to napalm, turning to ash whatever happy little domestic thoughts I had in my head just twenty minutes ago.

Those are all gone now. There’s only burning anger and hatred remaining.

It’s not just that she had an affair with that motherfucker. It’s not just that every shred of evidence in the file in my hand points to her trying to shake Hall down when he tried to end things. I mean, yes, obviously cheating on your wife with a nineteen-year-old employee makes you a piece of shit. But it’s not illegal.

Lying about being assaulted sure is, though. So is asking for money in exchange for your silence. It’s called blackmail.

I stare fixedly at the back of Fumi’s head as she hums to herself and stirs something on the stovetop.

Fuck me. I want so badly to tell myself that I’m angry right now because she lied, or because she broke the law. Or because if this gets out now, it’ll be a “troubled past that made him a stronger man” for Hall, and it’ll be an embarrassing punchline for me, as the candidate who went and married Hall’s old fling.

But that’s not really it.

I’m angry because all I can think about is Fumi with another man, and it’s making me want to destroy the world.

“Did you manage to pick up bok choy⁠—”

She tenses when she turns and sees the poisonous look on my face. “Gabriel?”

My jaw grinds as I start to move toward her. Fumi shivers, a look of fear spreading across her face as she backs away from me.

“You’re scaring me⁠—”

“Yeah?” I snarl, surging into her. She gasps, shuddering as my hands slam past her, gripping the counter behind her on either side, boxing her in.

“Gabriel…”

“You fucked him?!” I hiss.

Her face pales. “What?”

“DID! YOU! FUCK! HIM!”

Fumi’s throat bobs. “What are you talking⁠—”

“I’m talking about you and fucking Hall,” I snarl viciously. “I’m talking about you playing Monica fucking Lewinsky with my goddamn opponent!!”

Her face cracks.

“I am talking about,” I roar, “the fact that you neglected to mention your fucking fling with the very man⁠—”

“It wasn’t a fucking fling,” she suddenly screams at me, her face shattering as tears begin to tumble from her eyes. “I was drugged and raped by that fucking man!!”

The kitchen goes utterly silent.

“What you’re talking about, Gabriel,” she chokes, sobbing as she starts to break down completely, “was the most horrible experience of my life⁠—”

And then she crumples. It’s like she’s a marionette, and someone’s cut her strings, and she’s falling into a pile.

But she doesn’t make it to the floor. Because I catch her first and pull her into my arms.

At first, she’s still screaming and hitting me. But I don’t move away, or let go, or stop myself from hugging her tight to my body. Slowly, her screams and her anger fall away, and all I’m left with is her sobbing into my arms as she clings to me for dear life.

Fumi’s sipping on some tea, sitting on the sofa in the living room. She’s staring at the file folder sitting on the coffee table in front of her that I won’t allow her to touch.

Letting her read all those filthy lies would be cruel.

She slowly shakes her head, her shoulders still shaking as she breathes.

“Whatever is in that,” she murmurs softly, glaring death at the file, “it’s all bullshit.”

Her lip retreats between her teeth. Slowly, her eyes lift to mine.

“I was nineteen, Gabriel. I didn’t know I was going to go into law yet; I was going to be a political science major. I wanted to work on campaigns and be a part of the democratic process, you know? I mean, I wanted to help bring about change.”

She looks down at her tea.

“It was rape, not a fucking affair,” she hisses bitterly.

I nod slowly, folding my arms over my chest. I lean against the bookshelf behind me, watching her carefully.

“Tell me whatever you can.”

She takes a deep breath.

“At first, it was just little things. Like he’d get flowers for a bunch of the female staffers as a show of appreciation, but they’d all get lilies and I’d get roses. Or he’d leave little trinkets on my desk.” Her brows knit as she glares into her mug. “I was so stupid.”

“Fumi—”

“I was naive, Gabriel. I thought he was just being nice, you know? I mean, he’s like thirty-five years older than me. It never once occurred to me that he was flirting with me or grooming me or whatever. He was older than my dad, for fuck’s sake! And fucking married!”

Her shoulders shake as she takes a breath.

“He started having me work directly with him, and I was so star-struck I thought it was a promotion. I mean, I was working right alongside the guy who was going to be the next Governor of New York! How fucking amazing would that look on a resume! So, when he had me stay late more and more frequently, I just went along with it, because that’s the job, right? When he started having dinner brought in for just the two of us on those late nights at the office, I thought he was being kind. I felt like his protege or something. When he told me he and his wife were divorcing, but that no one knew, I felt honored that he trusted me enough to confide in me…”

Her mouth twists with nausea as her head shakes slowly side to side.

“God, I was fucking stupid.”

My teeth grind just hearing it. But she has to get it all out, like poison from a wound.

“One night, when it was just the two of us, after we’d finished dinner, I was about to go when he stopped me. I…” She grimaces. “I should have said no. I wanted to. But, I mean, he was a Congressman, and my boss, and he’d been so nice to me, and he was going to be Governor.” Her face darkens as she stares at the floor. “He kissed me, and I froze. I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t say no…”

“Fumi.”

She shivers, looking up at me with haunted eyes. I nod gently for her to keep going, and after a moment she nods back.

“Finally, I pulled away and said I had to go. I went home and freaked out for a while, then decided I had to stop whatever this was. So I did. The next night, same thing: dinner finished, we were alone again. He made a move, and I told him I couldn’t. God, I even blamed the fact that he was married, because I was too scared to tell him it was him.”

The monster inside me is awake and demanding blood.

It wants to kill.

Slowly.

Fumi continues. “I thought he’d lose his cool. But he was totally fine with it. He told me he understood, that he was sorry for making me feel pressured. I mean, he was so good about it. He poured us two glasses of this really expensive scotch and told me he was excited to see where my career would go. We even toasted to it…”

Her whole body shakes violently.

“It—it goes fuzzy after that. The next thing I remember, my shirt was pulled down and I was on my knees in front of him. He was sitting at his desk. And he was…he…”

When she breaks, the roar of the monster inside of me almost drowns out the everything else. I want to scream. I want to destroy all the beauty in the world.

I want to kill, until warm blood trickles through my fingers and the universe knows my rage.

But I don’t. Because this isn’t about me. This is about the woman I’ve fallen for, and the pain that’s shattering her in two.

Fumi flinches as I wrap my arms around her. Then she melts, clinging to me and sobbing into my chest.

“I hated every moment,” she cries. “I hated it so fucking much. And then, when he was done, he told me to stand up, and ‘make myself presentable’. I was still so fucking out of it that I just did what he said. I didn’t go to work the next day, but in the evening the asshole came to my house,” she chokes bitterly. “He wanted to make sure we were ‘on the same page’ about what had happened. When I told him I was going to go to the police, he just left without saying a fucking word. An hour later, there were lawyers at my door threatening to destroy my life if I didn’t sign all of these NDAs, a termination report, and a signed statement full of lies about how I’d tried to shake that fucker down for money.”

She sucks in air, clinging to me tightly.

“And before you ask me why I didn’t go to the police anyway⁠—”

“I wasn’t going to,” I growl quietly. “You don’t need to explain shit⁠—”

She barrels on. “I was the daughter of an immigrant, Gabriel. My dad was still trying to cement his citizenship, and Hall’s fucking lawyers told me they’d make sure it was derailed if I said anything. Then later, after more than a year had gone by and my dad did have his citizenship, I just wanted to leave it behind me. Pretend it never happened. I figured if they could screw up someone’s citizenship application, who knew what else they could do…”

She starts to shake as she cries softly against my chest.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

My jaw clenches tight as all the different emotions slam into me: hatred and anger toward the man who hurt her. Fury at the system that let her down.

A fierce need to shield her from anything and everything in the world that wants to hurt her from this moment on.

She has nothing to apologize for.

But he sure as fuck does.

“So now you know what I really am,” she blurts miserably, looking away as she hugs herself.

“Fumi—”

“Now you know. I’m…I’m…”

“Perfect,” I growl, cupping her face and leveling my eyes with hers. “What you are, Fumi, is fucking perfect…and fucking mine.”

She’s still shaking a little as I kiss her fiercely, bruising her lips with mine.

Holding her.

Being her rock.

Her everything.

I kiss her until our lips go numb. Then I hold her until she falls asleep in my arms.

Now I know: I don’t just have to beat Preston Hall.

…I have to fucking kill him.