I flicked the picture back at her, sending it flying across the table. “Tell him to go fuck himself. It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard of?”
And this time, she did smile as she picked up the photo in front of her and slid it back inside her jacket.
“What are you smiling at?”
“I told him you wouldn’t agree.”
“You think I should?” I countered. “You think this isn’t just some horrific way for Gabriel to bring me under his control? It’s ridiculous.” I licked my dry lips. “And I’m surprised he’d want a half-Jap polluting the family blood anyway. Seems unlike him.”
Actually, it was exactly like him. Binding my family to his. Forever in my face.
She exhaled slowly as if calculating her next words as she folded her hands on the table. “I know what you really want,” she said. “You want to know where Damon is. You don’t want to be surprised. And right now, you’re a rat in a maze. You don’t know which way to turn, and you won’t see that you’ve gone the wrong way until you’ve gone too far.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you’re the prey right now,” she shot back. “And once…you were the hunter.”
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table again. “You want me to find him?”
“I couldn’t care less if you tore apart this entire city looking for him,” she retorted. “I’m here to deliver a message. Nothing more.”
“But you must’ve known I’d refuse.”
She nodded once. “Yes.”
“So, why come?”
Now she was the one to hesitate. She reached out and grabbed a piece of notepaper and a pen from the middle of the table, looking down as she began writing and speaking at the same time.
“Because after you refuse,” she started, “I’m going to leave.” She scrawled on the paper, taunting me with her smooth words. “You’ll then go upstairs and out to the open terrace to work on your forms in the evening air. You’re liking it out there more now, I can tell.”
My eyes burned as I glared at her. What?
“The weather is cooling off, so it’s more comfortable to practice outside, isn’t it?” she went on, still not looking at me as she wrote. “And resist as you may, your mind will eventually drift to our discussion tonight. You’ll think about how so very little is in your control anymore. You’ll think, ‘What do I do now?’ and how your life is in a stalemate, and how the small itch under your skin called anger is growing stronger?”
I stopped breathing, and she looked up and met my eyes, complete fucking pleasure pouring out of her gaze and cutting into me.
“It’s building and building and building every day,” she said, slicing even deeper as I sat frozen. “Because your life embarrasses you. It hasn’t even become close to what it was before you were arrested.”
She dropped her eyes and began writing again. “All of your high school friends—well, nearly all of them—moved onto college, prestigious law schools and medical schools, bringing their families pride,” she continued, “and at night, they get to go to clubs and pick up hot, young undergrads who blow them in the car rides back to their penthouse apartments. They’re on top of the world without a care.”
The slow strokes of her pen scratched across the paper, sounding like a blade carving into wood.
“But not you,” she jeered. “You think you’re a joke to them. How far the golden boy did fall. A disgrace to his family. The infamous story they’ll tell at the high school reunion in five years, which, unfortunately, you won’t be attending, because deep down you know they’re right.”
She re-capped the pen and placed it back in the holder at the center of the table.
“Then you’ll come inside after your workout, and you’ll go take another shower. Your third one today. It washes off the self-hate for a little while, doesn’t it?” She folded the paper in half, sharpening the crease as her eyes held me like an anchor. “Then you’ll drive and go to a club and find someone—anyone—to take all that rage out on, so you can at least sleep for a few hours tonight.”
I tightened my fists, pressing them into the table as I rose from my seat. It took everything I had not to grab her by the fucking neck. Walking over, I leaned down, pushing her chair to recline. Her proud eyes stared up, daring me. Where the fuck did she get all that? She’s been watching me?
I didn’t hate my life. I wasn’t angry. I’d served my time. Deed was done, and I wasn’t wallowing in self-pity. I knew how to pick myself up and get on with it.
Or, at least I was trying.
“And when you wake up,” she said low, nearly whispering up at me. “You’ll realize how much everything around you sucks and how it’s time to get in the goddamn game, Kai Mori, and take some chances.”
Goddamn her.