“You should come to visit us in Hong Kong,” Han said in his terrible Japanese, leaning a little further down as he often did with shorter girls. “We just got a Disneyland in Hong Kong. We could take you.”
“I wish!” Dawn said with another pretty laugh.
It made Victor want to take his ax off the wall and throw it straight at Han’s chest.
“Stop flirting, and tell Donny to take her home,” Victor signed to Han behind Dawn’s back.
His brother gave no indication of seeing Victor's message. But as soon as Dawn was done laughing, Han wished her good holidays and told her she should probably get going.
“If your father sends you back, text me,” she signed to Victor in ASL before she left.
Victor signed back a stiff goodbye in ASL without making any promises.
And then she was gone.
“What was that about?” Han signed to Victor as soon as she left.
Unlike Dawn, he didn’t bother to speak along with his signs. They’d been conversing with just their hands for so long. It probably had never occurred to him.
“Her time was done, and I was thinking of asking Ayane if she could still come over.”
Han raised both eyebrows at Victor’s blatant lie. Then he signed. “If you wanted to fuck her, you should have told her that in the three months you had with her before you decided to act like a jealous cunt.”
Han’s face might be elegant, but his rough language gave away his real background.
Victor looked at him for a long hard moment before signing. “You can get away with saying many things to me, Brother. Not this.”
Han looked back at him, his eyes just as hard.
“I apologize,” he signed after a long while. Then he gave Victor a bow so low and formal, it verged on mocking.
This was his chosen brother’s way of highlighting what he couldn’t say out loud. That Victor was abusing their power dynamic.
Over a girl.
A girl who only came to visit him every week because he paid her.
“I’ve changed my mind about Ayane,” Victor signed. “We should go out. Enjoy our Roppongi club here one last time before we leave.”
Fortunately, Han was not one to hold a grudge. “Yes! Perhaps we can find girls while we’re out.”
Victor partied like the triad prince he was that night. VIP and champagne that never stopped flowing. A few members of the Japanese branch of their gang came up to say goodbye. Victor would turn eighteen in January, and many assumed that he wouldn’t be returning to Tokyo.
Women also showed up like magic to their section. Quality beauties. Victor was certain they weren’t from one of the Red Diamond’s thinly disguised brothels. The downstairs manager knew better than to send up any professionals when Han was on the premises.
Han’s mother had been the mistress of one of Red Diamond’s former rivals before she died. But she had started out as a small-town girl who had fallen for the wrong big city job scam. So Han was one of the rare Red Diamond members who refused to sleep with pros.
Not that Han ever needed to be that guy, especially tonight. A steady stream of beautiful women came through, naturally wanting to have a good time with the two young men ordering endless bottles of champagne and their friends.
Still…
Victor shook his head when Han asked him if he’d be taking any of them back to their apartment. There was a strange ache in his stomach. Too much champagne, maybe.
Or maybe something else.
“I’ll take two home to make up for you not doing your job,” Han signed.
Victor grinned and wished him well. Then he continued drinking with the other Red Diamond, long after his chosen brother left, even though all of their conversations were one-sided.
Victor kept an emergency scratchpad in the inside pocket of his blazer. But his father had instructed him never to bother with communication when it came to the other Red Diamonds.
“You will be a silent leader,” he’d vowed to his only son the one time the subject had come up. “And they will bend to your will. No words will be necessary.”
Victor played the part that night. Acted the silent prince. Drank his weight in alcohol. Tried to forget and let go.
But the words he’d written on that piece of paper continued to swirl around his mind. “Not sister's job to protect brother.”
And eventually, Han showed back up to the club in the wee hours of the morning.
“It’s time to get you cleaned up for the plane ride home,” he told Victor.
After his return to Hong Kong, his father kept him by his side for all business negotiations. He’d only done this once before. The night of their meeting with the Nakamura-gumi, a very old yakuza syndicate who was rumored to be tied to the Nakamura auto family. But in Hong Kong, Victor was called upon daily to accompany his father to meetings and negotiations all over the city.
