Owned by the Yakuza: A Japanese Mafia Bad Boy Romance (2 page)

But, hadn’t I been through it all too?

No. No feelings like that should come from my heart today. My name meant
a
loyal man
and that’s just who I was. I was my brother’s right-hand. No matter what, he was my brother and my kumichō. It was my duty to serve him and I would do everything within my power to make sure that our family was taken care of.

CHAPTER ONE

Tadao
忠夫

“I’m sorry sir, but business has been very slow lately, with it being summer holidays and all that,” The manager mumbled. He was holding his hands together at chest level, they were trembling. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.

I hated doing this dirty work. I hated seeing the people who gave us money begging and scared. I preferred to see the money once it was over, neatly bundled in stacks and piled in boxes. I loved the smell of cash. I loved the hum of the bill counter. Money didn’t talk or cry. Money didn’t smell like sweat – usually unless it came from a strip club.

I sighed. “Aright, listen. I’m feeling gracious tonight,” I paused. The man let out a grateful sound from the back of his throat, clasping his hands tighter. “So, I will give you an extension to pay this money. One week. If it’s not here before then, well…” I trailed off because his imagination would devise a punishment infinitely worse than any I was prepared to give.

The manager collapsed on the floor in a full bow, his head pressed to the dirty floor. “Thank you. Your kindness is much appreciated.”

I stepped away from him. “I’ll be back on Friday. Don’t disappoint me.” I turned on my heel and pushed through the curtain that divided the kitchen from the seating area. The bar was dead – at least he hadn’t been lying about business.

“Tch, your kindness is much appreciated.” Tatsuya mocked. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and was leaning against the counter.

I looked at him.

Tatsuya scowled at me. “You should have made him pay up.” He slammed the side of the cash register with his fist and the tray popped open with a chime. He rummaged around and grabbed a handful of change.

“Don’t take that,” I started.

“It’s interest.” Tatsuya pocketed the change and pushed off the counter. “Come on, let’s get going.”

I heard the manager’s whimpering from behind the curtain. I shuddered and straightened my blazer. “Yeah.”

Yuji was waiting for us outside in his red Miata. He had the top down and was staring at a bunch of girls across the street advertising for some new massage parlour.

Tatsuya jumped into the back and lit his cigarette. “A new image club, huh?” He eyed the women dressed like maids. “Do you think it’s the Shimazu-kai?”

Yuji shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s been a lot of men going inside.”

I slipped into the passenger side of the car and looked at both of them. They were practically drooling. “If you guys need some sex therapy, go to one of our clubs, don’t give your money to the Shimazu-kai – or any other gang for that matter.”

Yuji looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t going to.”

Tatsuya laughed. “We have way better girls anyways. Geez,” He bumped his fist against my shoulder. “Loosen up a bit.”

“Did you get the money?” Yuji asked as he started the car.

“No,” I said, simultaneously ignoring Tatsuya’s snicker and Yuji’s gasp. “It’s fine. He’s short this week. I told him it’s all due next Friday.”

Tatsuya tilted his head back and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Idiot.”

I clenched my fist. Out of all of the kyodai, I had never gotten along with Tatsuya. We were opposites and not in the way that complimented each other like my brother and I. We were like oil and water.

“Show Tadao some respect,” Yuji turned around and snapped the cigarette from Tatsuya’s mouth, flicking it onto the street. “And no smoking in my new car!”

“What? The top’s down!”

Yuji stomped on the throttle and I watched the buildings pass, letting them argue.

We were still newcomers to Shinjuku, edging further into the Shimazu-kai’s territory while they recovered from the death of their kumichō. The man who had murdered my father. The man who had been killed by my brother.

I had never killed a man in all my life. I was twenty-seven and the worst I had done was shoot a man in the knee. All of the other kyodai had stopped keeping track of their kills. There were probably rookie shatei that were more intimidating than me.

My strengths lied with my abilities with numbers and my perfect memory. These passive attributes weren’t exactly the kinds of things that made our rivals tremble in fear. To add insult to injury, before he left my brother had made me promise to bring Tatsuya with me whenever I went out on business – as if I was some kid that needed babysitting.

The initial request for one week had become two, and I feared that Kenichi would spend so much time in America that he might never come back. He and I were two halves of a whole. I needed him to be the muscle and he needed me to be the brains.

“Hey, Tadao, are you listening?”

I shook myself and glanced at Yuji. “What?”

“We’re going to go drinking, that was our last stop. You coming?”

“No thanks. Just drop me at the office.”

Yuji sighed, shaking his head. “Alright, have it your way.”

#

Back in the office, it felt like home.

I sat at the desk, surrounded by piles of money and computers. I let out a sigh and rested my forehead on the desk, listening to the ticking of the clock. This was my place in the yakuza – not outside roughing up barkeepers who owed protection money.

My father’s first venture into organized crime had been loansharking at it was still the most profitable vein of business for us. Taking advantage of gambling addicts was easy and if they failed to pay, sending Tatsuya or Kaoru out to enforce usually made money magically appear in a few days.

Hours went by as I counted cash and updated accounts.

The sun was rising when I glanced up from my computer screen and decided that I should probably take a break. I went to take a sip of coffee and found it cold and thick. It was amazing how fast time flew by when I was having fun.

The sound of a body falling in the hallway alerted me. Our office was kept in the basement of a building that my father had purchased as a front. Above us, there was a simple souvenir shop and a laundromat. No one would suspect that there was billions of yen being stored in the basement behind reinforced steel.

I grabbed the knife that I kept in the desk drawer and slowly walked to the door, carefully stepping to not make a sound.

“Tadao,” It was Tatsuya’s voice. “Tadao, let me in, idiot.” His words morphed into the sound of vomiting.

I sighed and sheathed the knife. I could see Tatsuya through the peephole, doubled over and dry heaving. He was drunk. I slid open the numerous locks and opened the door. “What do you want?”

Tatsuya’s face lit up. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Oh good, you’re here!”

“Where else would I be?”

Tatsuya blinked slowly and unevenly. “True.” He stumbled.

I grabbed him by his arm and pulled him inside. I sat him down on the sofa and poured him a glass of water. “Look at you, and you’re the one calling me an idiot?”

Tatsuya downed the water in a single gulp and grinned. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I mean it. I thought I would come over and apologize for messing with you earlier.”

“You mean Yuji thought you should come and apologize,” I corrected. I laughed and shrugged. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. No one takes me seriously anyway,” I added.

Tatsuya bolted to his feet, letting out a dramatic gasp. “No, that’s not true!” He held me by my arms and stood close enough that I could smell the sake and vodka. “You’re the best!”

“And you’re drunk.”

“That’s ok,” The kyodai shrugged. “It helps me be honest with people.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed him back down on the sofa. “Well sleep it off, you can’t be wandering around like that during morning rush hour. You’ll get charged.” I sat back down at the desk. I guess I wouldn’t be leaving either – someone had to make sure he didn’t die in his sleep.

The sound of my fingers on the keyboard echoed in the small room for a while and then Tatsuya spoke again. “I know you have a lot of shit to deal with right now,” He muttered.

“What?” I glanced up from the computer screen.

Tatsuya was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed and a drunken smile on his face. “I know that you’re not over your dad,” He went on. “And that you have a lot to live up to, being the younger son and all. Just so you know, we don’t think you’re weak… You just need to understand that sometimes violence
is
the answer. You can’t stay like this forever. Eventually, someone is going to tick you off so much,” He trailed off, pointing his index finger at me and mimicked shooting a gun.

I was quiet. The last thing that I expected from drunk Tatsuya was wisdom. And that was the last of it that I got. He promptly passed out and started snoring. Good, if I was lucky he wouldn’t remember this conversation.

My hands shook as I stuffed wads of bills into an envelope. Besides organizing the debts, I was also in charge of payments. I hissed as the paper sliced into the side of my finger. “Fuck.” I threw the money down on the table. I was exhausted. I shouldn’t be counting when I was this tired or I’d make a mistake. I hauled the box back to the safe and locked it up.

As I was walking, my shoulder bumped a banker’s box and the papers came crashing down to the ground. Tatsuya didn’t even flinch. I sighed and started shoveling the old documents back into the box when I came across a name that I hadn’t seen before.

“McMillian?” It was an English name. There weren’t many foreigners who got involved with yakuza loan sharks. I opened the file. It was a few years old and the papers were faded. The date at the top was 2012, two years before I finally convinced my father to digitize our files. Out with the old in with the new. I guess this one was missed somehow.

I flipped through the pages and sat down at the desk. Whoever this Gregory McMillian was, he owed the Himura-gumi a million yen and his payments were four years late.

CHAPTER TWO

Oriana
オリアナ

For the first time in weeks, there were no sympathy cards in my mailbox when I got home. Just bills, bills, bills.

I stumbled through the front door, weighed down with a combination of exhaustion, stress, and heavy bags. I had salvaged everything that was valuable from my parents’ storage locker, everything else was junk. I flicked on the light and dumped the bags down on the floor.

The apartment still smelled like my mother’s laundry detergent. Everything in it reminded me of them. I numbly walked through every room, but couldn’t cry a single tear anymore. I trudged back to the fridge and swung it open – empty. All of the meals and baked goods that neighbours had given me were used up. I sighed and made a cup of ramen instead.

I ate the salty noodles at the counter with a pair of disposable chopsticks.

The silence was suffocating.

My parents had both died in a car crash two weeks ago. It had been so sudden, but then again, I guess no twenty-year-old university student ever anticipates getting that kind of call.

I pulled my sweatshirt over my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I did laundry or went grocery shopping, but I was going to need to get back to it soon. Next semester was creeping up, and I had to get my shit together before classes started in order to keep my scholarship.

The noodles went cold.

I breathed in deeply and dumped the noodles in the garbage. I summoned all of my strength and instead of sitting in the dark silence all night, I would try to get some stuff done. I hauled the bags to my parents’ bedroom, where I kept the door shut tight. Then, I washed the dishes in the sink and piled which food containers had to go to which neighbour.

Lastly, I went to the bathroom and ran a hot bath for myself. I felt achy and dirty. The tension that was coiled within me released as I sank into the steaming water. I had only been soaking for a few minutes when the doorbell rang.

I let out a long exaggerated sigh. It was probably one of the neighbours again. My parents had lived in this apartment for five years and they had known everyone. I just wished they would leave me alone. Those sorts of conversations always made me feel awkward. I closed my eyes and sank down into the water. I’d just pretend that I wasn’t home.

The doorbell rang again. I ignored it.

A few minutes later, it rang persistently.

I growled and pulled myself out of the warm water. I wrapped a robe around myself and pushed my feet into slippers so I wouldn’t track water through the apartment. Mother had always hated water stains on the hardwood floor – I realized as I was walking.

The doorbell rang again.