However, “this shit” stressed him out. Victor knew because Phantom had told him that exactly before they drove up to Western Massachusetts.
Victor also knew his cousin’s question hadn’t been in jest. Phantom wouldn’t have judged him if he had decided to end Dawn’s life instead of marrying her. He might’ve even respected him for it.
As if confirming Victor’s thought, Phantom muttered, “Killing her for what she did to your dad makes a helluva a lot more sense than this plan. Why didn’t you kill her again?”
It was a good question. Too good. The molten black rage that had been simmering inside of him for four years rose to a boil. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier with at the moment. Phantom for asking the obvious or himself for not having a strong and comprehensible reply.
The easy answer to Phantom’s question was that simply murdering Dawn would’ve been too light a punishment. The harder and truer answer was that if Victor were capable of killing Dawn, he would have done so already.
He had no good excuse to give for this weakness. And he doubted his cousin would have excepted his best answer: She’s an open wound that I’m trying to heal. You don’t put bullets in open wounds.
“She’ll be out soon,” Victor assured Phantom without replying to other questions.
“You sure about that?” Phantom asked when another few minutes passed without any sign of her at the town hall’s double glass doors.
No, Victor wasn’t sure about that. Why hadn’t she arrived yet? Had she made a run for it, escaped through a bathroom window like in so many American movies? No. Where was there for her to go? Surely, she had guessed after waking up in the back of his car that wherever she went, wherever she tried to hide, he would hunt her down.
But then, Phantom introduced a possibility Victor hadn’t considered. “Let me tell you, these American chicks are real fucking fragile. Sure you don’t want me to go in there? Make sure she didn’t slice her wrists in the toilet or something?”
The thought of her doing that to escape made Victor’s throat burn. But he still carried his father’s voice in his head.
Show no weakness. He didn’t allow Phantom to go in after her. Victor held the course, and another two minutes passed. Phantom didn’t say anything else. But Victor could almost hear what his cousin was thinking as they watched the door.
That he was an idiot. That this whole plan was idiotic. That if Dawn had run away or offed herself, it would be what Victor deserved for being the idiot who had come up with the idiot plan.
Just when Victor didn’t think he could take it anymore, Dawn pushed through the town hall’s front entrance.
The sight of her hit him even harder than when Phantom first dumped her in the Bentley’s back seat.
He’d very rarely seen her out of her school uniform back in Japan. But now she was wearing a college t-shirt with a pair of cotton sports shorts. The outfit showed off all of her curves, hugging her hips and her large breasts. Meanwhile, the waist-length black braids she wore her hair in now swayed as she came bouncing down the stairs.
It was like watching a slo-mo reintroduction to the grown woman who’d replaced the girl he’d once known. And his body responded the same as it would have when he’d been a schoolboy. His cock stirred, and the kind of need he hadn’t felt in years—hot and urgent—suddenly flooded his body.
A memory floated back to him. Dawn sitting on his lap as they made out, and him having to shift her away from his instantaneous erection because he didn’t want to scare her with how fucking hard she made him.
He hated that his body still responded to her like this. Hated that she could make him feel anything when all the other women he had taken since her only made him feel numb.
“What took you so long?” Phantom demanded as she approached the car.
She looked directly at Victor as she answered his cousin’s question. “I had to use the bathroom—like, really had to use it. I’m not sure how long ago you two kidnapped me, but I’m figuring it’s been hours. And before that, the judge held me back for a little conversation. Pretty sure he thought you were trafficking me like dear old dad.”
Rage spiked inside of him that she would dare bring up his dead father. Also, they didn’t traffic women anymore. Han had insisted on cutting girls out of their product offerings when Victor asked him to help him create The Silent Triad. And they’d already let Kuang know that this was the one part of his business they refused to touch. But he didn’t want to give Dawn the satisfaction of telling her that.
