His Revenge Baby: 50 Loving States, Washington (33 page)

Lilli peeped up at him. “If you cancelled your trip to Tokyo? Put it off until after the baby is born?”

No shook his head at her request, pulling her hand from his cheek to his chest. “Ana, I cannot. Ruby, however, has already told me she will stay here with you…”

“Please, No, I don’t ask for much,” she said. Pregnancy hormone, exhaustion—

whatever the reason, she was suddenly desperate to have him, the father of her baby, not her thirteen year old niece stay by her side. “I just need you to be here for me. For your family.”

“Ana, you don’t understand…” No dipped his head, frowning at her, as if she’d done something grossly unfair by not only pulling the “family” card, but also asking him to stay here with her. “Go and I are working on something very important. Something that will potentially put us on track for our biggest contract yet. I must be there. For our business. For our family.”

Lilli started to argue with him, but then stopped with a bitter shake of her head when she saw the shuttered black eyes staring back at her. The hawk was back, determined to have its way again, despite the progress they’d made in their relationship over the last few months. She could see that nothing she said, no trial she was currently going through would make No change his mind about leaving her behind, while he went to Tokyo for two weeks on business.

“Okay, fine…” she said, snatching back her hand and folding it over her shoulder, so he couldn’t get to it. A petty move to be sure, but petty was how she felt about No not even pausing to consider not going to Tokyo. Not even for a moment.

“I’M GOING to rest now,” she informed him. “We had a long night and I had to get up early for the appointment with Uta and Dr. Owen.”

Lilli closed her eyes, hoping he’d take the hint. That she didn’t want to talk about this. That they’d signed no new contracts and exchanged no rings and he still wouldn’t even so much as hold her hand in front of Ruby, much less their concierge team. That in this moment, their relationship probably wouldn’t survive them discussing him going to Tokyo while she was on bed rest. With his revenge baby.

Thankfully he did take the hint.

The next thing she heard was the soft click of the door.

THEY DIDN’T TALK about it again. In fact, No left that very day, telling her, “I hope to be able to wrap things up sooner this way.”

Lilli didn’t answer. And since Ruby was also in the room, No didn’t even kiss her goodbye.

“She is your aunt,” he reminded Ruby with a bow. “I am sorry you will not be coming with me to Tokyo, but glad you will be here to take care of her.”

“Tokyo will always be there,” Ruby answered No with a bow of her own. “I will take good care of her while you are away.”

Lilli’s eyes narrowed as she watched their exchange. Ruby had apparently gone from as excited as child before Christmas, to denying the existence of Santa Claus. And Lilli had to wonder if No hadn’t ordered her niece to stay here with her.

Still, she couldn’t say having Ruby there didn’t bring her any solace in the wake of No’s departure from the Lake Washington house. They ate breakfast together in the mornings and then Ruby left for school and during that time, it felt to Lilli like she was

willing the hours to speed by until her niece came home. They settled into a routine fairly quickly, with Ruby often doing her homework on the lakeside couch, then climbing into Lilli’s bed to watch anime with her until it was time for dinner, which Mrs. Santos—having apparently agreed to no more nights off while No was away—

brought directly to Lilli’s room.

As guilty as she felt about Ruby missing out on the big trip back to Japan, Lilli was grateful for the company—even if she got the feeling the girl was constantly reporting back to No, whose many texts Lilli had been ignoring.

But other than that, life was pretty boring. No more contractions. No more drama, outside of the kind happening on the small Naka 4K TV Dallas had mounted to the wall for her.

That is, until one night, a few days into No’s trip, when Ruby suddenly shook her awake.

“Ruby,” Lilli mumbled. “What time is it?”

“Aunt Ana, I need you to come with me. Right now. Okay? Can you come with me?”

“What time is it?” Lilli asked again, glancing at the bedside clock. 2:00 AM. “Jesus, Ruby. Whatever it is, can’t it wait until morning?”

“I’m sorry, but it really can’t. Please come with me. I really need you to get up.”

“Okay, okay, just give me a minute…

“
Iie
, Aunt Ana, right now!” Ruby insisted, tugging on her arm.

Which was how she ended up sleepily shuffling across the first floor in Ruby’s wake, wondering what could possibly be so important that—

She stopped short when she saw the large shadow at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor. But wait, it wasn’t a shadow. Lilli squinted in the darkness, realizing…it was a body! A man she recognized. And even in low light, she could see his throat had been slit. There was so much blood on his purposefully low-cut V-neck now…

A hand clapped over her mouth before the scream could escape. “Ssh, Aunt Ana,”

Ruby whispered in the darkness. “Dal-san tried his best, but he could not stop the bad men. And they are still here, upstairs looking for you, so we must be very quiet.”

Ruby stopped speaking and her eyes rose sharply to the floor above them, obviously hearing or sensing something Lilli could not.

“They’re coming!” Ruby whispered. “We must get to the dojo now. Quickly!”

She pushed Lilli down the sub-basement stairs. And Lilli was so confused she ended up doing exactly as her niece instructed, though she’d later wonder why she so blindly followed instructions. Why she didn’t try to get her bearings before rushing down the stairs as fast as she could with her heavy stomach, and across the dojo’s threshold. Only to have a metal door, which Lilli wasn’t even aware the dojo had, suddenly slam shut behind her.

“Wait, Ruby!” she called out, turning to the now blocked entrance.

But no, her niece hadn’t followed her inside. And across the room, the mirrored wall suddenly began to sink into the floor, revealing…

Lilli’s breath caught.

Revealing what looked like a small apartment. Neat and mostly gray, it had the stillness of a long unused room. As if it had been waiting for someone to finally occupy

it. It would almost feel inviting, if not for the wall of CCTV screens taking up the entire back wall.

What the…!

“It’s okay, Aunt Ana!” a voice suddenly said.

Lilli started and looked up to see that her niece’s face was now filling one of the screens.

“Don’t be scared, Aunt Ana. But I need you to look at the rest of the screens. Do you see?”

Lilli scanned the security feed system, and yes, she did see. A team of men on several different screens. All dressed in black, all creeping toward the house with the ease of born predators. There was even a man in Dallas’s security cottage, also dressed in back and typing hard on Dallas’s computer.

“I am not sure if the panic room you’re in can be hacked from Dallas’s computer.

But I believe it can. I have to stop that man…or at least draw them away from you and hold them off long enough for the police to get here, since opening the panic room door triggered the silent alarm.”

“But you should be down here with me!” Lilli started—then she placed her hand on her belly because the baby was kicking up a storm, as if he knew just how much danger his cousin was in.

Still, Lilli insisted, “Ruby, Ruby come back here!” even though she wasn’t even sure her niece could hear her on the other side of the screen.

“It’s okay, Aunt Ana,” Ruby assured her, smiling softly into the camera. “Everything will be okay. And…

I love you. I hope you know that, even if I never said it before.”

Finally the words she’d been hoping to hear from her niece. But not like this. Oh God, not like this. “I love you, too, Ruby. Come down here right now and hide with me, so we can both be safe!”

Ruby’s answer to that probably unheard plea was to back away from the camera.

And that was when Lilli realized…her niece was no longer on the first floor of the house. In fact, she wasn’t even in the house at all. She was standing just outside the security cottage. Not only that, but Ruby had something in her hand. Something Lilli recognized all too well.

It was the sword she’d seen Ruby use during her training sessions with No.

“Oh my God, Ruby. Don’t!” she yelled at the security camera. “No, Ruby!!!”

But her niece was already running toward the house’s door with her sword drawn to one side.

“Ruby!” Lilli screamed at the CCTV screen. “Ruby!!!”

Then Lilli heard the most horrifying sound yet: Ruby’s voice, speaking in angry Japanese as she yanked open the door to the security cottage and raised her sword.

Lilli covered her mouth with her shaking hands, fingers clawing at her mouth as the men on all the other security screens turned as a single unit and swiftly made their way toward her young, physically handicapped niece.

Chapter Forty-Four

NO ONCE AGAIN DREAMED ABOUT his mother that night. Without the benefit of Lilli’s soft body beside him, the old nightmare had been plaguing him lately. He’d close his eyes and eventually find himself seated at the square table in the garden veranda of their “factory home” in rural Japan.

His brother, Hayato, was seated next to him. A stern-but-pretty businessman, even at the young age of nineteen. Across from them sat their mother, more beautiful than a golden dragon as with the most gracious of smiles she thanked the servant who had just poured her a second cup of tea.

His mother seemed happy in the country with just the company of her sons and the Korean couple who’d been serving them since even before No’s and Hayato’s births.

Happy, despite having been more or less banished here by a man who’d made no pretense of preferring the company of his Chinese mistresses to that of his wife. And she reminded No of a water painting, as she sipped her tea with the perfect poise and grace of a girl who’d been raised to marry well. No would always remember watching her tilt her head to study the male half of their Korean servant duo, tending to the maples in their garden. Her eyes following the action of his tanned arms, which were roped with muscle after handling so many repairs on the aging property over the years.

“Our servants are so very different from us,” she observed, adjusting her hat to protect her porcelain skin from the sun, so it would never go brown as the Korean male’s had.

“They will work until the day they die because they must, whereas you boys and your father will do the same because you can imagine doing nothing else. Do you ever wonder what our servants would do with even a percentage of what we have?”

No had never imagined such a thing, not even during his time among the considerably more egalitarian-minded student population of Carnegie Mellon. And it seemed a strange question coming from his mother, especially on the heels of her receiving a cup of tea from the male servant’s wife.

No exchanged a look with his brother, wondering at his mother’s uncharacteristic questions without being so disrespectful as to actually ask her about them out loud—

The brothers silent exchange was abruptly cut short by an unexpected choking

sound. And when No looked toward his mother again, she no longer resembled a beautiful water painting. Or anything beautiful at all.

The blood—that was what he would remember most vividly in the years and nightmares that followed. Blood spewing from her eyes and nose, turning her into a horrible sight right before his eyes.

Sometimes in the dream, the blood dribbled like tears down her face. Sometimes it cascaded in great sheets. He’d had the dream so many times, he found he could no longer remember the facts of her death very well at all. Just that there had been blood.

A lot of it. Her body’s reaction, they’d later find out, to the poison the Korean wife had hidden inside the tea.

In real life, he and his brother had called out to her in horror, running to catch her when she pitched sideways from her chair. But in the dream, he sits there, merely watching her horrific death unfold, because in the dream, he knows what he didn’t know then. That she is only seconds away from death, no matter what he does, how he calls out.

But not that day. That day, instead of watching his mother die, he awoke to the sight of his watch blaring red. It had been so long since he’d set up the system, it took him a moment to realize what it was. But when he did…

Hot, sick nausea rolled his stomach as he yanked out his laptop and rapidly typed in the code to unlock the screen.

The image that flashed on was the very same one he’d had up on his screen before deciding to take a midday nap. The jet lag was still plaguing him. And tomorrow morning was a big day. When he planned to present his pitch to the board to be named as the new co-director of Nakamura Worldwide along with his brother Hayato.

Just a year ago, none of this would have been possible. The Japanese still respected seniority more than just about any other advanced culture on earth. They were not a nation where bright CEOs under the age of forty thrived. In fact, it was unusual to find one under the age of fifty. If he and his brother won their bid, it would be unprecedented. A business move unlike any the small but powerful country had ever seen before.

It also helped that he and his brother had a few things going for them. Their father was no visionary. Sales had been suffering for years under his reign with a few cost-cutting scandals in between. Whereas RoTeku had thrived. Not only that, but No had recently received an interesting proposition from the Japanese government. A deal for GoNoRobo to develop driverless cars and other products for the country’s rapidly aging population that would be worth billions.

This meant if Nakamura Worldwide accepted the relatively young Nakamura brothers as their co-directors, they’d come with a deal so lucrative, No would be untouchable. No matter what he did. Or who he married.

So No had taken an uncharacteristic nap. To ensure he was fresh for tomorrow’s presentation, and his mind well-rested, so he could defend his brother and himself against any protests their father, the current president, might have.