Cunning Lies: A Dark Mafia Romance (The Endo-kai Mafia Series Book 1) by Audrey Rush

Author:Audrey Rush [Rush, Audrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

VI

After a crappy movie, Uncle Jay and I get ice cream. His partial pinky twitches the whole time, like he’s shivering in anxiety but trying not to let it show. Still, Uncle Jay refuses to talk about Patrick. Tears shimmer in his eye, and his fists tighten at the mere mention of my husband, but we pretend like everything is normal. Patrick is on ‘vacation,’ just like my mom and dad.

Night comes, and I’m back at the penthouse when Kenzo returns. I’m in jeans and a cream button-up sweater, and Kenzo is still in his white dress shirt and slacks. His sleeves are rolled up, revealing his colorful skin—another fish fighting the waves. He drinks me in from head to toe, and my chest seizes under his gaze.

“You look fancy,” he jokes.

I cross my arms. “A sweater is fancy?”

“Fancy for this, yeah.”

He grabs my hand, and we take his car, but no matter how many times I ask where we’re going or what we’re doing, Kenzo yells, “It’s a surprise!” Then he turns up the music so loud that I can’t talk, and we drive down the 15. Lights flash to the sides of us—themed casinos, cheap hotels, seedy nightclubs, all of them bright and hypnotizing—until they fade into darkness and it’s pitch black desert. Cacti and Joshua trees hover in the shadows. The car’s headlights are our only guide.

Finally, Kenzo lowers the volume of the radio.

“This song is called ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love.’ Bad Company. You know this one?” he asks. He hums along to the lyrics, and I smile, wondering if he’s somehow implying that it’s our song. I must be staring a little too hard, because he reaches over and pinches my arm. “It just fits us, right?”

My shoulders sink. “You want to make love?” I ask. “That’s not you.”

“Baby, you don’t know all of me yet,” he winks. “Just listen.”

I listen to the lyrics, but my mind is so buzzed with anticipation that I can’t focus, even though I like the guitar portion of the song. It’s somehow hard and soft at the same time, just like Kenzo. He’s got such different sides to him: harsh, and easygoing. Completely controlling, and protective.

Maybe the song does fit in a way.

Forty-five minutes later, we take the ramp to another highway, and nerves twist in my stomach. I bite my bottom lip and Kenzo stretches his arm over the back of my seat, his fingers tickling my neck.

We pull onto a gravel road. The wheels crunch over the rocks, then there’s a slab of pavement, and he parks there. A few yards away, there’s a big centerpiece, surrounded by cement. A firepit, maybe.

Kenzo pops the trunk and gets out. He slings black garbage bags in his hands, carrying them over to that concrete circle. I reach to help him with the cargo, but he stops me.

“Stay here for a second,” he says. “I’ll tell you when.”

I fiddle with my outfit, impatient that I can’t even dump garbage bags with him, but I’m not going to argue about work with a yakuza gangster.

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