PROLOGUE
Tessa Lancaster’s rather freakish paranoia was what almost got
her in trouble. Her automatic reaction as she exited her uncle’s club was to
scan the dark streets. Seven cars, two on this side of the street and five on
the other. Hard to tell if anyone sat inside them, but she didn’t catch shadowy
movement. A homeless man huddled in a doorway of a shop a few doors down, the
same man she remembered seeing when she entered the club.
Her cousin, Ichiro, saw her movements and laughed. “Like
somebody’s going to jump you right outside Uncle Teruo’s club? Nobody’s that
stupid.”
“They may not know who owns the club. It doesn’t exactly have
‘Japanese mafia’ in neon letters over the door.”
“Everyone knows it belongs to Uncle Teruo.” Itchy’s arrogance
was about as extreme as Tessa’s paranoia.
A stiff breeze from the San Francisco Bay cut through her black
leather jacket, and she curled her body tight as they headed toward his car,
parked a block down the street.
They walked past the homeless man. Even though she remembered
seeing him an hour ago, she still cast a furtive glance at him through lowered
eyelashes. His clothes were worn and dirty, and his body was coated with mud,
but in streaks — as if he’d slathered it on himself. His hair was dirty, but maybe
not quite as oily as it would be for someone who hadn’t washed in weeks. And as
she drew closer, she realized he also didn’t smell ripe enough.
Her muscles bunched just as the homeless man jumped at them.
She reacted faster than Itchy, so she couldn’t be sure who the
man meant to attack first. She stepped directly in his path and captured his
arm in an armbar.
However, instead of the counter-move she expected from an
assassin, he yelped like a dog. “Ow! I’m sorry, it was just a joke!”
“What do you mean, a joke?” She didn’t immediately release him.
“My dormmates ... a stupid bet ... how much I could get
panhandling as a homeless person in one night . . .”
A college prank? Tessa thrust him away with disgust.
“He was only going to ask you for money?” Itchy smirked as they
walked away, leaving the man moaning and clutching his tender arm. “Your
paranoia is getting psychotic, cuz. You could have killed him.”
Maybe he was right. She’d been working for Uncle Teruo for seven
years, since she was sixteen, and seven years was a long time to be always on
the alert, to be expecting attacks from her uncle’s enemies and her own.
Uncle Teruo had never given her orders to kill anyone, but she
knew it was only a matter of time. She could take down a 250-pound man and
knock him out with a rear-naked choke in less than thirty seconds, but she
wasn’t sure if she’d be able to take a killshot or snap a man’s neck.
She rubbed her forehead. She realized that she was tired of all
this. And she could see that her lifestyle and the danger in it was going to
make her seriously crazy.
She had Itchy’s car keys since she hadn’t drunk anything
tonight. She fumbled for the remote in her pocket when movement from a shadowy
building made her spine stiffen. Itchy saw it a few seconds after she did and
pulled his gun. She did the same with hers.
A scuffed sound came from the alley between a nail salon and
Chinese restaurant, both of them dark with their windows glinting in the dim
street lights like glowing orange eyes. Itchy raised the gun.
“Tessa,” came a reedy voice.
She recognized it, although she almost didn’t because her cousin
Fred usually had a snarling, sneering tone when he said her name. She holstered
her gun. “Itchy, it’s Fred.”
Itchy hastily stowed his gun, not wanting to get in trouble by
accidentally shooting the son of the Japanese mafia boss.
Tessa approached the alley carefully, because even though she
knew it was Fred, she didn’t like the darkness shrouding him or the strange
thinness of his voice. “Fred?” She paused, allowing her eyesight to become
accustomed to the darkness before moving any closer.
“I’m here.” He sounded tired. “You have to help me.”
She listened, and caught the sound of movement in the distance.
Footsteps. Maybe boots. Men’s voices. Then she heard something she had never
heard before—Fred sobbing. Alarm shot through her and she walked quickly toward
him. “Fred, what’s wrong?” The acrid smell of garbage burned her nostrils as
she passed a dumpster.
He seemed to materialize in front of her, his face a pale moon,
but she could see dark splotches across his chin and cheeks, like black paint
had splashed at him. This close to him, she could detect a sharp metallic scent
that filtered its way past the smell of garbage.
“She’s dead,” Fred moaned, his eyes becoming crumpled lines in
his face. “I killed her.”
“Who’s dead?” This wouldn’t be the first dead body she’d had to
dispose of, although most of the time, it was for her uncle, Fred’s father, not
for Fred himself.
“Laura.”
It took a second for her to realize why the name was familiar.
Fred’s girlfriend. That’s right, Laura Starling lived in a loft apartment in
this area.
“What happened?” Itchy asked.
“We got into a fight. And I got so mad. And the next thing I
know, she’s dead and there’s this in my hand.” Fred held up his right hand,
holding a bloody steak knife. He glanced behind them. “Where’s your car? We
have to get away.”
“It’s fine,” Tessa told him. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get rid of
the knife — ”
“The police are after me.”
“What?” Itchy cast frantic glances around them.
“A neighbor called them when we were fighting. I ran.”
“Did they see you?” Itchy asked. Tessa already knew they had.
The booted footsteps were
sounding closer, probably coming from the narrow street that ran
behind these buildings. They were pursuing Fred.
They only had a few minutes.
They could take Fred in the car and go, but Fred’s fingerprints
were all over Laura’s apartment, and the police would come to question him
right away. How likely was it that he hadn’t been seen running away by a
neighbor? Maybe the police would lie and tell him someone saw him, just to get
him to confess. Regardless, Fred would crack like a crystal glass. He just
wasn’t strong.
Not like Tessa. The only way to save Fred was to deflect
suspicion away from him.
Did she really want to save Fred? No. But she loved her uncle,
and she’d do it for him, because he loved his only son.
“Give me the knife.” She spotted a gallon container of bleach
against the wall of the restaurant and nabbed it. It had maybe a half cup left,
but that was enough.
She slid off her jacket and pulled off her black long-sleeved
shirt, shivering in her sports bra. Tessa used the shirt to wipe the knife
down, then cleaned it again with bleach. Luckily, the steak knife was one of
those fancy modern knives that had been forged from one piece rather than
having a tang and handle. She hoped she could compromise the blood so any of
Fred’s blood wouldn’t show up on a DNA swab.
She tossed the bloody shirt to Itchy along with his car keys.
“Take Fred and go. Put him in the backseat and make him lie down so no one can
see him — knock him out if you have to.”
“Hey,” Fred protested weakly.
Tessa slid her jacket back on and gave Itchy her gun. “Tell
Uncle Teruo. Make sure he has your car cleaned so there’s no blood, and give
him the bloody shirt to burn.” She didn’t trust Itchy to do a thorough enough
job of it.
“What are you . . .” Itchy’s eyes were incredulous as he stared
at her. “What are you going to do?”
“What I have to.” She tossed the knife in the dumpster. It would
have her fingerprints on it and it would take them a few minutes to find it.
The footsteps were coming closer. “Go, hurry!”
Itchy dragged Fred with him. Luckily he was smart enough to
drive sedately away rather than burning rubber and attracting attention.
Within a few minutes, she heard the footsteps at the other end
of the alley. “Stop!” someone called to her.
She broke into a run.
A cruiser pulled up in front of the alley, lights whirling. She
hesitated, then tried to run around the car.
Someone rammed into her from behind, slamming her into the
asphalt, scraping her cheek and smearing motor oil on her face.
As they cuffed her, the full realization of what she was doing
finally hit her.
She was going to prison for a murder she didn’t commit.
CHAPTER ONE
The young woman was as out of place here as a Ferrari in a used
car lot. The first thing Tessa Lancaster noticed about the mother watching the
kids in the game of Simon Says were her expensive shoes, gold and pearl colored
heels with a dark gold rose over the peek-a-boo toe, which sank into the grass
of the tiny backyard.
The second thing Tessa noticed about her was the gigantic black
eye swelling the entire left side of her face.
She must be new at the San Francisco domestic violence shelter,
because when she noticed Tessa looking at her, she smiled instead of turning
away with a nervous glance.
With shoes like that, she didn’t quite look like she belonged.
Then again, the shelter was for any abused woman needing a place to stay, and
who said rich women didn’t get knocked around the same as prostitutes or
waitresses?
Tessa raised her voice above the boisterous throng of children.
“Simon Says . . . jump on one foot while patting your head and rubbing your
tummy and turning in a circle!” Tessa bounced around in front of them, her hair
flying out of its ponytail and hitting her in the face, while the kids giggled
and screamed and twirled in circles. They loved her. They didn’t care who she’d
been or what she’d done. They only cared that she would play with them for her
entire volunteer shift at the shelter.
“Snack time!” Evangeline, one of the shelter volunteers and one
of Tessa’s only friends, called to the children from the doorway behind Tessa
which led back into the main building. Like a gigantic blob, the kids raced
into the shelter from the building’s tiny backyard, still screaming, and some
still whirling around from the Simon Says game.
One tow-headed boy ran toward the woman with the expensive
shoes, clasping her around her knees and laughing up at her. She smiled as she
reached down to pick him up, but he squirmed to be let go. He scurried after
the other kids.
“He hasn’t laughed in so long,” she said wistfully as Tessa
walked up to her. Her accent was like maple syrup. Southern. She could have
been Scarlett O’Hara in the flesh—flashing eyes, graceful hands, svelte figure.
Tessa squelched a sigh of envy. “What’s his name?”
“Daniel.”
The sight of the woman’s black, yellow, and purple mark in the
distinct shape of a fist made a dark, growling blaze burn in Tessa’s gut. She
tried to keep her voice light. “He’s made friends quickly. One of the little
girls was already flirting with him.”
“He’s just like his fa . . .” Her smile faded as her voice
caught on the word.
The boy’s father? “Is he the one who gave you that shiner?” The
words burst out of Tessa’s mouth before she could think to temper them.
Oh, no. She looked away from the woman’s shocked face and breathed in
deep through her nose, trying to calm her temper.
The one thing she’d battled the most since giving her life to
Jesus three years ago, and it still rose like a gladiator in her soul. “I’m
sorry, that wasn’t very sensitive of me.”
A beat of silence. Then Tessa asked, “So, where are you from?”
“I grew up in Louisiana, but I’ve been in San Francisco for five
years. Daniel was born here.”
“Oh. What do you, uh, do?”
The woman gave Tessa a small smile. “I can shop like nobody’s
business.”
Tessa laughed. It seemed like that’s what she wanted her to do.
But someone affluent like this . . . “How’d you find the shelter?” Wings
Shelter wasn’t exactly in the Presidio area of San Francisco.
Tears gathered like jewels on her long, dark lashes. “I was at
the San Carlos Motel, but we had to leave.”
She didn’t have to say it, but Tessa knew her story, the same
story as many other women here. She’d probably left her home and checked into a
hotel under a false name, but the man who abused her found them there.
“A man on the street saw us. He led us to the shelter.”
Wow, how likely was that? God really had led this woman here. An
otherworldly stirring in Tessa’s heart made her suddenly feel both small and
huge at the same time.
“Tessa!” Evangeline called to her from the shelter doorway. “I
know your shift is over, but Mina wants to see you.”
Ooh, good news? She couldn’t think of any other reason the
shelter’s employment coordinator would want to talk to her. “It was nice
chatting with you.”
“I better make sure Daniel doesn’t get into trouble.” The woman
smiled at Tessa and then headed into the shelter.
She didn’t even know the woman’s name. But it didn’t matter —
the other women here would eventually tell her who Tessa was—or specifically,
who her uncle was—and then the woman would delicately avoid Tessa the next time
she saw her.
The thought made her feel like a thin glass ornament. She should
be used to it — now that she’d been out of prison for three months, women still
feared her just as they had seven years ago when she’d been an enforcer for her
mob boss uncle and her dangerous reputation on the streets had been slightly
exaggerated.
Now they feared her because they weren’t quite sure what she was
doing here at Wings.
Tessa took the stairs of the old Victorian house two at a time,
each step punctuated by a creak. The second floor landing opened up into a long
narrow hallway, and she remembered to skid to a stop and knock on the office
door before entering.
Tessa had to wiggle between two of the three desks crammed in
the small office — once a bedroom — to plop herself in front of Mina’s desk.
“You wanted to see me?”
Mina’s light brown eyes clued her in—not the joyful, we-
found-you-a-job look, but a sad, these-employers-are-idiots look.
“Oh.” Tessa sagged a bit in the narrow folding chair. “What
happened?”
“Well, I’ve been the one taking calls from employers because you
put the shelter down as a reference.”
Tessa wasn’t supposed to know that. She straightened at the
information. Why would Mina break the rules by telling her?
“There’s a, um . . . theme to the questions they ask.”
“Theme?”
“They almost all want to know if you’re the Tessa Lancaster. The niece of Teruo Ota. The head of the San
Francisco yakuza.”
“Seriously?” Tessa closed her eyes, leaned forward, and bonked her
forehead on Mina’s desk a few times. She just couldn’t get away from her past
with the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Would she ever be able to?
She suddenly sat up again. “They’re not journalists, are they?”
“No, although I had a few of those. I always check the caller
name and company with the list you give us each week of where you’ve applied
for jobs. If the person isn’t on the list, I tell them to go away.”
Whew. The last thing she needed was some rabid dog reporter with
grandiose dreams of using Tessa to somehow take down the entire San Francisco
Japanese mafia. Or worse, some gossip mag wanting the scoop on why one of the
yakuza’s unofficial strong-arms was now volunteering at a battered women’s
shelter and applying for a janitor position at Target.
Tessa bit her lip. “You, uh . . . tell them the truth?”
Mina’s eyebrows raised. “Of course I do. Well . . .” Her eyes
slipped away from Tessa’s gaze. “I’ll admit after the third one of the day, I’m
always tempted to tell them you’re Amish.”
Tessa giggled, then sighed. “I wouldn’t want you to lie. If
there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I have to take the consequences.”
“It’s just unfair, because you really have changed, but they
don’t believe it.”
“No, it’s more like they don’t want to get involved.” Tessa had
known it for a few weeks now, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself. She
seemed to have acquired a highly developed ostrich mentality lately. “They
don’t know why I’m applying for these minimum wage jobs, if I have an ulterior
motive or if I’ve had a falling out with my uncle. They’re not stupid — they’re
not going to hire someone who might cause problems for them, and they’re not
going to hire me if it’s going to make my uncle mad.”
Mina pitched her voice low and leaned in to ask, “What exactly
did you do for your uncle? You didn’t . . . kill anyone, did you?”
“No, never. Aunty Kayoko saw to that.”
“Who?”
“My Aunt Kayoko. Uncle Teruo’s wife.” More of a mother to her
than her own mother. An ache blossomed under her breastbone, and she rubbed at
it. “She protected me. She dissuaded Uncle from giving me any job that crossed
some invisible line she had in her head. She was closer to me than my own
mother, in some ways.”
“Was?”
“She died last year.” And Tessa had cried in her cell all day
the day of her funeral, wanting to go but not allowed to. If Tessa had been
released a year early, she’d have been able to say goodbye.
Mina cleared her throat. “So, you roughed people up?”
“I did whatever my uncle asked me to do.” Tessa looked down at
her hands. “It’s probably best I not talk about it.”
“Oh, of course. I was just thinking ...” Mina flipped through a
stack of file folders on her desk, then grabbed one and skimmed through the
pages. “You can ... basically take care of yourself, right?”
“Uh . . . yeah. I studied Muay Thai from when I was in grade
school, and I also studied Brazilian jiu-jitsu, tae kwan do, and a little
Capoeira.” And basic no-holds-barred street fighting too, with a reputation
among her cousins and her uncle’s kobuns
for having a streak of creative ruthlessness.
Mina’s eyes widened at the list, but they also shone with
excitement. “So how about a bouncer?”
Tessa wasn’t sure what to think about that. “You really think
someone would hire me as a bouncer?”
Mina made a face at Tessa’s job applications folder. “They
obviously won’t hire you as a janitor, a burger flipper, a cashier, or a stock
boy. Why not a bouncer?”
Why not? “I guess . . . although I don’t know if I’d be
comfortable working for a particularly shady nightclub. I’ve known the girls
who work there, and sometimes it’s only a step above slavery.”
“It might be a step toward doing bodyguard work.” Mina was on a
roll. “You’d be perfect for that. Your own private company, you can pick and
choose what clients you’ll take, and you can more than take care of yourself.”
Wow. That would be really cool. “Yeah. Okay, got any leads on
bouncer jobs?”
“Uh ... no.”
“Oh, right. Battered woman not at the top of the bouncer
qualifications list. I’ll look online.” Tessa rose and held out her hand to
Mina. “Thanks for the idea.”
“I’m sorry about those other jobs. I thought for sure that Fat
Burger would hire you, but . . .”
Yeah, but was she really surprised? Aside from the fact she was
an ex-convict, being an ex-yakuza didn’t place her high on anybody’s hiring
priorities.
She walked down the stairs much slower than she’d gone up, and
she headed to the quaint living room on the first floor, situated near the back
of the house. A fire might be lit in the antique fireplace, and she loved the
crackling sound and the smell. As she entered the room, she spotted the
Southern woman’s glossy dark head next to a couple other women at the shelter.
They all glanced at her with identical Oh-my-gosh-there-she-is-stop-
talking-about-her expressions.
Tessa looked away, just in case they could see the sting in her
heart reflected in her eyes. She didn’t want to be feared anymore. She wanted
to have friends who didn’t know how to shoot an automatic weapon or boost a
car. She wanted somewhere she belonged ... but where would that be? She was
drifting in between the world of the yakuza and the world of normal, and she
wasn’t in either one. She didn’t want to belong to the yakuza world, but she
was starting to think she’d never belong to the normal world either.
A stampede of footsteps. Tessa expected to see a rampaging gang
of suspiciously quiet kindergartners come to attack their favorite playmate.
Instead, the woman’s perky head popped up in front of her.
“Tessa? Hi, I didn’t introduce myself earlier, I’m Elizabeth St.
Amant.”
Tessa took the smooth, manicured hand. “Uh, hi.” She glanced at
the women Elizabeth had been talking to, and they had alarmed looks in their
eyes.
“Oh, don’t mind those cats,” Elizabeth said. “They thought they
were warning me off of you, but as soon as they talked about your unsavory
past, I just knew you were perfect.”
“Excuse me?”
“Even though they don’t believe you’ve changed, why, as soon as
I saw you with those children, I knew that you’d done a 180 like a flapjack on
a griddle.”
Flapjacks? Elizabeth had a way of
talkingreallyfastanddraaaawlingatthesaaaametiiiiime that made it hard for Tessa
to follow her. “What exactly did they tell you?” Tessa asked carefully.
Elizabeth actually started ticking them off on her fingers.
“Let’s see. First, you used to do some nasty things for your uncle, who’s some
sort of head for the yuck ... yak ...”
“Yakuza. Japanese mafia.”
“Second, you’ve been in prison for murder.”
“Manslaughter,” Tessa automatically corrected. Not that it made
that much difference, since she hadn’t done it in the first place.
“Third, the only reason you’re volunteering at this shelter is
because Evangeline, who used to be your cellmate, stayed here a few months ago
because of an abusive boyfriend, but then she started volunteering here, and
she vouched for you when you wanted to volunteer here too.”
The problem was that some of the women here didn’t trust Tessa
because she wasn’t really one of them. Tessa had never been abused, had never
been a mother. In fact, because of her background, she had never been afraid
for her own life.
“Fourth, you’ve been going to the church here at Wings. And
after hearing that, and seeing you with my Daniel, I knew you must be trying to
turn your life around. You’re exactly the kind of person I need.”
“What do you need?” The woman didn’t seem too loco, so Tessa
wouldn’t mind helping her. She guessed.
“My husband is trying to kill me,” Elizabeth announced, “so I
want to hire you as my bodyguard.”
CHAPTER TWO
Heaven must smell like homemade ramen noodle soup. Tessa stood
in the doorway of the Japanese restaurant and breathed deep, closing her eyes
and picking out Jerry’s signature spices in his ramen broth. She was drooling
and she didn’t care.
Well, it had been seven loooooooooooong years. Considering she’d
eaten Jerry’s ramen once a week up until then, she ought to be excused an
excessive Pavlovian reaction. Since she’d gotten out of prison, she’d moved
into Mom’s house and began looking for a job, so she hadn’t had time to come
here to get her fix.
“Can I help you?”
The young, perky voice interrupted her olfactory cloud of
ecstasy and made Tessa open her eyes.
The restaurant hostess, a young woman with long, glossy black
hair, stood in front of the wooden hostess podium just inside the restaurant’s
glass doors. She had a plastic smile and her eyes were just a little wary of
the crazy lady smelling the restaurant. Tessa realized she knew her—Karissa
Hoshiwara, one of Jerry’s granddaughters. Of course she wouldn’t remember
Tessa, she’d only been a high school freshman when it all happened.
“I’m a friend of Jerry’s. Is it okay if I go in back to see
him?” The politeness sounded stiff on Tessa’s tongue, but after so many years,
she didn’t really have the right to barge into Jerry’s over-heated kingdom
unannounced.
“Oh.” Karissa’s smile lost its edge, as if being her
grandfather’s friend explained all sorts of you-ought-to-be-in-therapy
behavior. “Sure, go ahead.”
As Tessa turned to head back to the kitchen, Karissa suddenly
asked, “Do I know you?”
Tessa turned to meet curious eyes. Innocent. My eyes were never that innocent.
No, she had to remember that she was a new creation in Christ!
With copious exclamation points! She had to act like it! “Yeah, actually, your
mom is friends with my mom.”
“Oh.” Karissa’s brow wrinkled faintly, marring the perfect skin
of a young twenty-something. “What’s your name?”
“Tessa Lancaster.” She couldn’t help the tension in the back of
her neck, waiting for the reaction.
Karissa’s dark eyes blinked. Then widened. And then she smiled.
“Oh! You’re that Tessa.”
She’d provoked a lot of reactions in her life, but never one
like this. “Excuse me?”
“I saw your picture from that old newspaper clipping.”
So did everyone. Still didn’t explain the one-step-below-
rock-star glow in the girl’s eyes. Tessa wasn’t sure what to say, so she smiled
weakly. She probably looked like a sick pig.
“Evangeline showed me the clipping,” Karissa added.
“Evangeline?” The name made Tessa’s smile widen. “How do you
know her?”
“I, uh . . . I met her at Wings.” Karissa’s cheeks were faintly
pink.
“You went to Wings?” Karissa didn’t look old enough to be
married, let alone at a domestic violence shelter.
“I used to live with my boyfriend,” Karissa confessed. “He
started getting rough with me, and we lived nearby the shelter, so I went there
one night. Evangeline was volunteering that night. The shelter asked me about
my family, and when Evangeline found out my Grandpa Jerry worked for the Otas’
restaurant, she told me about you.”
“She was my cellmate for three years,” Tessa said. “Oh. I liked
her. But I haven’t seen her in a few months.”
“You moved out of your boyfriend’s apartment, right?” Tessa
hated that she sounded like a mother but she’d seen too many horrible stories
at Wings.
Karissa nodded. “I’m living with a girlfriend in an apartment
near San Francisco J-town.”
“You drive from San Francisco to San Jose every day to work?”
“Oh, no. I’m only here today to help Grandpa Jerry out. He’s
short-staffed today.”
“That’s nice of you, to give up your Saturday to help him out.”
Her eyes flickered away. “I didn’t have anything else planned.”
Tessa recognized that look, and the meaning behind Karissa’s
words. Many of the women at Wings had lost touch with their friends during
their abusive relationships, but in trying to regain their normal lives, they
battled loneliness and the struggle of making new friends. She wondered if
Karissa was the same way.
“Lots of the women staying at Wings could use someone to chat
with,” Tessa said. “Uh . . . if you came to church at Wings with me and
Evangeline one Sunday, you could meet them, maybe ... be a friendly face.” And
maybe Karissa wouldn’t be as lonely herself. Evangeline had helped Tessa find
the church at Wings soon after being released, but this was the first chance
she’d had to invite someone else.
Karissa looked uncertain.
“You don’t have to,” Tessa said. “But in case you wanted to. You
could see Evangeline again.”
“I . . . I think I’d like that.” She looked like she even meant
it.
“Call me and I’ll pick you up. This is my mom’s home phone
number,” she added with a pained sigh. No job, no cell phone. Mom’s cell phone
was on one of Tessa’s aunts’ plans and Tessa didn’t want to utilize yakuza cell
phone minutes.
A harsh voice gave a short bark of laughter. “Still living with
your mom, Tessa?”
Rita, one of the waitresses, approached them with two steaming
bowls of ramen. Rita had always been jealous because Tessa’s close relationship
with her uncle caused her to receive a kind of respect not typically given to
women in the world of the yakuza. In contrast, Rita, the sister of one of the
older yakuza members, had only received this waitressing job at Jerry’s
restaurant. “It’s been what, four or five months? Still haven’t moved out yet?”
Rita managed to say the innocuous line with a sneer in her voice.
Tessa reached out to oh-so-accidentally knock those bowls into
Rita’s . . .
No. Tessa drew her hand back, blinking to clear her head. She
had to control her temper better. She wasn’t that person anymore.
“Get back to work, Karissa,” Rita hissed, with a significant
glance over Tessa’s shoulder. A couple had entered the restaurant while Karissa
chatted with Tessa, they now stood waiting patiently just inside the glass
doors. Tessa hadn’t even noticed.
Karissa gave her a small smile and turned to greet the
new-comers. Rita wove through the tables to deliver her ramen bowls.
As Tessa headed through the main dining area toward the kitchen
at the back, passing patrons in teakwood chairs, her heart started tap dancing.
She’d met a new friend. Invited her to church. And in a few minutes, Jerry
would crush her in a ginger-scented embrace, then sit her down with a bowl of
ramen the size of a wok, stuffed with vegetables and his homemade noodles.
“Coming through!” Rita’s voice sounded almost at her shoulder.
Tessa jerked in surprise, and her elbow connected with something
hard. Then the sound of a shattering clay bowl sliced through the buzz of
restaurant patrons, and she felt a lash of pain against her ankles.
“Yow!” She grabbed her stinging leg and tried not to hop on her
other one as she spied steaming liquid streaming through the grout in the floor
tiles. Knowing her luck, she’d twist her knee and do a double back flip landing
square on her behind. She side-stepped the river of noodles.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Rita hissed.
“I’m sorry.”
“You did that on purpose.”
Tessa’s temper snapped. “What is your problem? I have better
things to do than waste calories making your life miserable.” Tessa’s raised
voice sounded abnormally loud in the small
restaurant. Rita’s face paled. It was the same fearful look
Tessa had seen
when fellow prisoners found out who she was and what she had
done for her uncle. Rita’s reaction made Tessa realize her reputation as a
bully hadn’t changed, even though she wasn’t working for her uncle anymore.
And that thought made her anger die away. Because she had changed. She wasn’t a bully anymore.
And she needed to act like it.
“Let me help you clean up,” she said.
The normal restaurant noises rose again, although some patrons
gave her sidelong looks. Tessa found a mop in the broom closet near the
restrooms at the back of the dining area and started cleaning up the spilled
ramen broth. Rita bent to pick up the clay bowl pieces, head down, but casting
occasional glances her way — filled with fear.
It hurt.
“Got a new job so soon, Tessa?” The taunting voice shot
adrenaline down Tessa’s spine and she snapped to attention. She whirled around
to face her cousin Fred, Uncle Teruo’s son, striding through the restaurant
like he owned it.
She had expected Fred to at least be obligated to come see her
or talk to her in the three months she’d been out, yet this was the first he’d
shown his face to her, and it looked like it was entirely by accident.
Fred had always hated her for being stronger, faster, and
smarter than him. Then one night she discovered him panicked because he’d
murdered his girlfriend. Because she knew her uncle would want her to, she’d
taken the bloody knife and shouldered the blame for Fred’s crime.
Now her cousin owed her, but rather than gratitude, it made his
hatred slice even deeper than before. That hatred glared out of his eyes as he
stalked toward her.
Fred had always unfairly lashed out at her with his nasty
temper, but Tessa had never let him get away with it. She wasn’t about to let
him get away with it now.
She’d never been so grateful for her Caucasian father’s tall
genes as she straightened and stared down at Fred’s beady eyes. He stopped a
few feet from her, probably because he’d have to crick his neck to glare at her
and that would just be embarrassing for him.
“Dealing with garbage suits you.” Fred’s lip curled.
“Don’t worry. I’m not after your day job.” Tessa smiled.
Her comment went over his head. “I don’t clean up messes.”
“No, I clean yours up for you.”
His neck reddened.
To think she’d gone to prison for this moldy tomato.
No, she hadn’t gone to prison for him. She’d gone to prison for
his father.
She flashed him a smile. “Fred, do you have a point to make, for
once in your life, or are you just here contaminating the air?”
She caught a few gasps from the quiet restaurant that had
stopped to witness their tense conversation. She realized that because of what
she’d done for him, she could freely insult this
rat dropping whereas others could not.
“You can’t speak to me that way,” he spat at her.
“I just did, you squashed slug.” And Fred knew that if he
touched her, she’d use his head to clean up the spilled ramen
instead of the mop in her hand.
He sputtered. Fred didn’t have many brain cells devoted to quick
comebacks. “You ex-convict.”
“What’s wrong, Freddy-weddy? If you’re going to insult the
ex-convict, you better be prepared to take what you dish out.”
“Tessa, leave him alone.”
A commanding voice filled the restaurant even though he hadn’t
raised his voice above its normal growl.
Rita and the other waiter scurried away, and patrons suddenly
turned back to their meals, although the volume was barely half what it had
been before. Subtly, the air became denser, as if blanketed by an invisible
fog.
Not a fog. The presence of the man walking into his restaurant —
one of several he owned — was more charged than a mere fog.
“Uncle Teruo.” Tessa stood her ground as he approached her,
aware of Fred scuttling out of his father’s way like a cockroach. She dropped
her eyes and bowed at the waist in a sign of respect.
He paused, acknowledging her greeting, then suddenly his large
square palms were cupping her face, rough against her skin but tender in their
touch, raising her gaze to meet his. His eyes, half-shadowed by eyelids puffy
with age and responsibility, gleamed with the familiar tenderness that was like
water to her parched soul. He shook her face gently, playfully, then drew her
to him in a brief embrace. “How are you, Tessa?”
“I’m fine, Uncle,” she spoke into his suit jacket, breathing the
familiar scent of his favorite brand of cigar. He had hugged her like this the
day she’d been released, and the smell brought back that feeling of being free,
of being home. Her fingers curled briefly on his back, then he straightened and
stepped away.
“Have you eaten yet?” he asked her.
Now those were the words she wanted to hear. “Nope.” There was
that drool again, right on cue.
He turned her by the shoulders and pushed her ahead of him
toward the kitchen, where Jerry was still blissfully unaware of the
almost-fight between the niece and son of the San Francisco yakuza boss.
***
Tessa had thought Uncle Teruo’s arrival was something along the
lines of a rescue from a fate worse than death, but now she wasn’t so sure. She
felt a bit like she’d jumped from a wok into hibachi coals.
She’d gotten her hug from Jerry — today, more garlic-scented than
ginger-scented—and her massive bowl of ramen, which was thankfully very
garlic-scented.
Eating in Jerry’s office with Uncle Teruo sitting across the
desk from her . . . not such a happy place.
Normally she loved talking with Uncle Teruo. Except not when he
asked things like, “How are you feeling?”
Read: Up for anything more strenuous? Like something that
involves beating the stuffing out of somebody?
“I’m doing fantastic now that I have this.” She indicated her
bowl, peering through the steam at the floating bean sprouts. She wanted to say
grace, but somehow saying grace in front of her sociopathic cellmates had been
easier than saying grace in front of her Buddhist, gangster uncle.
“You’re still staying with your mom?”
Read: So I know where to find you if I want you to do something
for me, especially anything involving breaking fingers.
Tessa nodded at the corner of a gigantic cube of tofu peeking
out of her soup. “Until I can get a job and move out.” She closed her eyes and
bowed her head. Maybe Uncle would get the hint . . .
That would be a no.
“What kind of job are you
looking for?”
Read: I’m delighted
you’re willing to return to the workplace, because I have the perfect job for
you.
Inspiration struck for
how to neatly avoid the question. “Uncle, hang on a second. I need to say
grace.” She jerked her head down.
DearLordThankyouforthisfoodAmen.
“Grace? What grace? Who’s grace?” His bushy salt-and-pepper
eyebrows lowered over his eyes.
Read: You don’t tell your uncle to “hang on.”
“I needed to pray before I could eat.” Tessa picked up her
chopstick and the boat-shaped spoon. She took a magical sip of broth, ignoring
the stinging heat, rolling the salty, savory goodness on her tongue before
letting it slide down her throat, warming as it went down. She didn’t need
crack — she had Jerry’s ramen.
“Are you done eating? I need to discuss things with you.”
Tessa froze with the noodles on her chopstick only inches from
her mouth. She sighed and let them plop back into the soup. So much for the
hoped-for casual chat, non-related to the work she’d done for him before
getting arrested.
Uncle reached over and took her hand. “I want to say again,
thank you for what you did.”
It took her a second to realize he was referring to Fred, to
inserting herself under suspicion for his son’s crime seven years ago. Despite
his humble words, the cool, dry skin of his palm lay heavy over her knuckles.
“You’re welcome, Uncle,” she replied.
He released her and leaned back in Jerry’s chair. “I can give
you a job.”
From anyone else, it would have been a generous, innocent
offering. From Uncle Teruo, it carried the weight of a royal statement and deep
undercurrents. “Uncle, I already explained this to you.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “You’re just worried. You’re too
smart to get caught again.”
As opposed to Fred, who was stupid enough to have been wandering
around with the bloody knife in his hand when Tessa found him that night. Fred
would have folded under police questioning and led to trouble for Uncle if he’d
actually been arrested.
“And I would not ask any more favors from you,” Uncle continued.
If she’d been eating, she would have snorted ramen noodles. That
was a loaded promise. Uncle might not actually voice any requests for Tessa to
take the heat for someone’s crime again, but the situation and Japanese sense
of duty would compel her to offer to do it or be held in disfavor by the
old-fashioned oyabun.
She wasn’t sure how to put this delicately, so she plunged
full-steam ahead. “Uncle, I told you in my letters from prison and when I first
saw you after I got out. I am a Christian now, and I’m trying to learn to love
people, not break their kneecaps.”
His frown looked suspiciously like a pout. “I never asked you to
break kneecaps.”
She rolled her eyes. “Unnnncleeeee ...” Her exasperation drew
the word out into six syllables. “You know what I mean.”
He lifted a forefinger as a thought came to him. “Your cousin
Ichiro became a ‘Christian,’ too, but he still works for me.”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “Itchy’s girlfriend grew up Episcopalian
and has no idea what he does, so he went to church with her so he could get
into her pants.”
He glowered at her. “Are you saying you’re going to church so
you can . . .” His mouth worked silently while red stained his cheeks. “. . .
with some boy?”
Tessa choked. “What? No.” This was not going the way she’d
hoped. “I go to church because I’ve become a different person.” She’d been
tempted to say better person, but the way her luck was going, Uncle would think
she was insulting him and order a hit on her. Or just send Fred to poison her
air space.
An indulgent smile hovered around his stern mouth. “This is new
for you. Don’t be so hasty to make a complete life change until you know this
is who you want to be.”
Three years as a Christian wasn’t long enough? Then again, she’d
had only a few months as a Christian outside the prison walls, so maybe he was
justified in thinking it might be a temporary thing.
Except it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t, with a knowledge deep in
her gut, a knowledge deeper than the secret places of her heart. A knowledge
that gave her both peace and strength to say, “Uncle, I’m not going to change
my mind.”
“Be reasonable. What kind of job can you get?”
She mutinously glared at her cooled bowl of ramen. “I got my
college degree in prison.” Psychology. It had fascinated her because she’d
spent so much of her life reading the emotions and thoughts of the people she
talked to on behalf of her uncle. She wasn’t exactly proud of what she could
do—knowing when people were lying, what they were feeling, being able to
manipulate their emotions—but she wanted to use that skill for helping people
rather than making or collecting money for the yakuza.
Uncle Teruo’s face gentled. “You know that I believe you can do
well at anything you set your mind toward, but with only a Bachelor’s in
Psychology, there aren’t many jobs available. Plus . . .” He sighed. “I’m sure
you’ve realized by now that there aren’t many people who would hire an
ex-convict, especially for any type of psychology job.”
She had known that even when studying for her degree. She just
hadn’t really wanted to admit it to herself because her studies had been so
fascinating and she hadn’t wanted to switch to a different degree program.
“Don’t be stubborn,” he said. “You haven’t had any job offers,
have you?”
Telling her to stop being stubborn did what it usually did —
made her completely pigheaded. “I have had offers. I just chose not to take
them.”
“Oh? What?”
“A woman offered me a job
as a bodyguard.”
“Paying how much?”
“Er . . . we didn’t
discuss it.”
“Why not?”
“Well . . . her assets
are still being held by her husband, whom she ran away from because he was
using her as a punching bag.”
“So she couldn’t pay
you?” he said slowly. Uncle’s face had that expression that wondered where his
niece’s brains had suddenly dribbled to.
“She said she’d pay me as
soon as she got her money back. She called some family friend who was going to
get her a really good lawyer.”
“I see.” He stared at her for a moment, eyebrows raised, mouth a
thin line. “And you turned down this incredibly lucrative business deal because
. . . ?”
She stared down at her soup bowl. “She has a three-year-old son.
And I wasn’t sure about the kind of trouble I’d attract, considering what I
used to do.”
“Your ruthlessness is what makes you an Ota,” he said proudly.
“But it does collect some enemies.”
Only her uncle would praise her for her ability to cause
physical pain.
Tessa had been sorely tempted to take Elizabeth up on her offer,
especially after talking with Mina about her own bodyguard business, but she
realized that it wasn’t fair to Elizabeth to saddle her with an even more
dangerous person than her fist- flying husband. Tessa would rather try to find
a legitimate job first and prove to the world that she was no longer working
for her uncle. Once Tessa was off people’s radar, then she could protect her
clients without bringing even more danger to them.
The old Tessa wouldn’t have cared who she put in harm’s way, but
the new Tessa hopefully thought about other people more than she used to.
“And this is the only job offer you have?” Uncle Teruo asked. He
settled back in his chair, the very picture of an uncle indulging his niece’s
pipe dreams.
“I’m interviewing at OWA tomorrow,” she said.
“Didn’t you already apply
to OWA?”
“Yes.” Twenty-two times.
“So?”
“This is for another
salesperson position?”
“Uh, no. Janitor.”
His brow darkened. “My niece is not a janitor.”
She was when even McDonald’s wouldn’t hire her. Maybe they
thought she’d kill someone by flipping a burger in their eye. “It’s a foot in
the door,” she said. “From there, I can get promoted. Outdoors and Wilderness
Adventures is my favorite store.” Just the name made her want to smile.
He sighed heavily and opened his mouth to protest, but she said
softly, “I really want this job, Uncle.” I
really want to go legitimate.
He surprised her by reaching across to grasp her chin between
his square fingers. “I miss having you around,” he said.
Tessa stilled. Uncle Teruo and his wife, Aunt Kayoko, had always
given her more affection than Tessa’s own selfish mother and irritable sister.
With Aunt Kayoko gone, Teruo was her family. She may not want to do illegal
things anymore, but she couldn’t deny his hold on her heart. She knew that as
long as she had him, she’d never feel alone.
“Uncle.” She swallowed. She hated denying him. “Please
understand.”
“I do.” He sighed heavily. “I do. And I owe you a debt I can
never repay.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe you lunch.” He gestured to the soggy noodles in front of
her. “Eat. I don’t want to be accused of starving my niece.”
He stood with stately grace. On his way to the office door, he
paused as if suddenly remembering something. “You said you’re still staying
with your mother?”
“Yes.” The tightness of her voice gave her away.
Uncle Teruo found that vastly amusing. He chuckled as he turned
the door handle, he chuckled as he exited the office, and he was still
chuckling as he turned in the doorway to lean into the office to tell her, “Six
more months.”
“What?”
“You’ll come back to me begging for a job so that you can move
out, because I know my sister. You won’t be able to live with Ayumi for longer
than six more painful months. Have fun!” He shut the door with a soft click.
© 2011 Camy Tang
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