Masaki paced the inside of the interrogation room. Pacing was the only thing keeping him calm enough not to go on a murderous rampage. He needed out of this room in the worst way.

Oshun was hurt.

How badly, he didn’t know. That fact alone was making him come unhinged. She needed him. She’d sacrificed herself to save him. Masaki wouldn’t rest until he knew she was all right.

He heard the creak of the door and watched as a silver-haired Caucasian man, tall, with a slim build, dressed in an expensive dark suit, walk into the room.

“Mr. Yamaguchi,” he uttered. Masaki held up his hand interrupting him before he could continue. Seth Stein was his lawyer. His legal skills had helped Masaki, and his father before him, stretch the boundaries of the law without consequence. Usually Mas would take the time to carefully listen to whatever the man advised. However, tonight’s events made it impossible for Masaki to do anything but focus on Oshun.

“It’s been three hours. Did you get me out of here? I need to leave.”

The older man took a breath, dropped his arms to his sides, and nodded his head.

“I suppose it would be foolish of me to expect you to go home and lay low until this blows over?”

“I’ve never known you to be foolish, Seth.”

Exasperation shone on the older man’s face as he shook his head. Seth knew Masaki well enough to know when to push and when to fall back. Tonight, pushing would yield him nothing but frustration. Masaki had no intention of running and hiding. Not when Oshun needed him.

“My car is waiting outside. Where can I drop you?”

“To County General Hospital,” Masaki answered. “I need to get there now.”

Seth escorted Masaki out of the precinct and into his waiting car. Masaki expected a lecture, but the elder man remained quiet, leaving Masaki to his own thoughts as they traveled the short distance to the hospital.

Masaki was grateful for the silence in the car. He needed it to pull his thoughts together. He was a strategist, often thinking ten steps ahead of where he needed to be. It was how he’d expanded his father’s empire so quickly. His moves were always calculated to outmaneuver his competitors. But tonight, he could barely think beyond the next second.

His thoughts were a jumble of sporadic flashes of memory. There was a glimpse of Oshun walking into that private dining room, then they were in darkness. The next frame in his mind’s slideshow was the two of them running for their lives in that dark parking lot, and then Oshun slumped in his arms with a bleeding bullet wound in her chest.

Masaki snapped his eyes closed, bracing against that memory. She was limp, almost lifeless in his arms, and he’d been helpless to do anything about it except scream for help and wait for an ambulance to arrive.

He’d wanted to ride with her to the hospital, but the paramedics wouldn’t let him. Instead, the cops had taken him into custody to verify his story, his gun registration, and license to carry.

Thank God he really was licensed to carry a weapon. If he weren’t, he’d be behind bars right now instead of pulling up to the hospital. Fancy lawyer or not, an illegal gun charge wouldn’t have been so easy to escape, even if he’d only fired it to protect himself.

When the car slowed in front of the hospital’s main entrance, Masaki half turned his head toward Seth and said, “Don’t tell anyone about what happened tonight. I don’t know who I can trust.”

Masaki swallowed the hard knowledge that someone who was supposed to be his family had betrayed him. It wasn’t lost on him either that the person who was designated as his enemy, was the person who’d saved his life tonight.

The older man nodded his head in response. “The guard on duty knows you’re coming in. He’ll conveniently be patrolling when you walk through. The nurse will buzz you through as soon as you get to the SICU.”

Masaki let out a brief sigh of relief. Having someone like Seth manipulate the system for him was a godsend. Otherwise, he’d never be able to get to Oshun.

“Her people haven’t been notified of her shooting,” Seth continued. “But once they have been, I don’t advise you to be here. As far as they will know, your people tried to kill her. Until she can set the record straight, it might not be a good idea for you to be around when they arrive.”

Seth wasn’t wrong. If the Brownsville Council found him at her bedside, he was a dead man. He had no idea what, if anything, Aesop had told the rest of her crew. Hell, for all Masaki knew, Oshun’s entire organization was in on it with Aesop.

This situation was dangerous for all of them. But, he couldn’t leave Oshun to brave this alone. More than that, he needed to be there for himself. If she didn’t make it through this… Unwilling and unable to entertain the idea of Oshun losing this battle, he winced in reaction to the thought.

Satisfied Seth would keep the details of the shooting quiet, Masaki put his game face on, stepped out of the car onto the curb, and headed through the automatic doors of the hospital.

His passage through the security checkpoint was simple. Seth’s plan was perfectly executed, and within moments, Masaki was walking through the glass doors of Oshun’s surgical intensive care room.

He pulled the privacy curtain closed, then walked further inside the room, sitting in the lone chair at the side of her bed.

Her long locs were spread all over her pillow in a messy heap.

She needs her satin pillow case and head wrap. She’d never allow her hair to rub against cotton with no protection.

They’d only been together three months. It wasn’t a long time. The fact that they were in this situation proved there were tons of things they still needed to learn about one another. But somehow, none of that seemed important as he stood looking down on her still body.

The way she pretended she was too hard to care about anything, but brightened whenever he did something thoughtful for her was important. The way she excitedly learned to prepare his favorite Japanese meals just to be able to surprise him with a home-cooked meal on his last birthday was important. The way she purred when he made love to her, and plastered herself against him during the night, that was important. But the rest of it, the rest of it wasn’t important enough that she should be lying here with a bullet wound in her chest.

A tap on the glass sliding door pulled his attention away from Oshun. “It’s Nurse Samuels. I need to check on your vitals Ms. Sampson.”

She entered the room, taking care to secure the privacy curtain once the door was closed. The young nurse walked in the rest of the way, acknowledging Masaki with only a brief nod.

“How is she doing?”

The nurse didn’t face him as he spoke. For the most part, she attended to Oshun, ignoring him as if he weren’t there.

“I’ve risked enough sneaking you in here. I can’t tell you anything about her condition. The only thing I can tell you is she is in serious, but stable condition.”

“But she’s not awake?”

“She’s had a pretty exhausting day, don’t you think? A girl is entitled to a little beauty rest at the end of such a long day.”

She smiled at him as she was leaving, stopping once she reached the curtain again. “Don’t stay too long. Her regular nurse will be returning in another thirty minutes.”

The nurse disappeared behind the curtain, and slid the glass doors closed, leaving Masaki alone with an unconscious Oshun and all the beeping machines in the room. He caressed the back of her hand with careful fingers, before gently bringing it to his lips. He cradled her hand, linking their thumbs, as he closed his eyes and pressed her hand against his cheek.

“I don’t know how I missed any of this, Oshun. I was so worried about fixing things to prevent you from getting hurt, I didn’t see the treachery in my lieutenant’s eyes. I promise you I’m going to make this right.”

“You’d better,” she whispered. “Otherwise us living together is going to get very complicated, very soon.”

He slowly opened his eyes, hoping he wasn’t conjuring up her voice. When he found heavy lidded chocolate eyes staring back at him, his fortitude crumbled, and his body shook with relieved tears.

“Are you in pain? Do you need anything?”

She squeezed his hand, as if she were lending him her strength in his weakened state. It was the nurturing side of her checking to make certain he was all right.

“I’m in pain,” she answered. “But, I’m alive, so I’ll deal. The bullet entered the side of my chest at an angle.” She stopped, taking a slow, but deep breath before she continued again. “It tore a hole in my chest cavity. They got it out, and put a chest tube in me to keep my lung from collapsing.” She paused again, drawing in another slow breath through her flared nostrils. “As long as I don’t go and do something stupid like throwing a blood clot, or trying to move, I should be fine.”

There she was, the young, snarky goddess he’d fallen for. The woman whose quick wit and aloofness had pulled him in that very first night he’d laid eyes on her

“When I realized you’d been shot…I thought I lost you.”

She shook her head, adjusting the slipping oxygen cannula in her nose as she did. “You’re not that lucky.” She stopped to take another deep breath before continuing. “You gave me a key. You’d have to change the locks to get me out.”

He chuckled as he stood up, placing a gentle kiss on her smiling lips. The small gesture reminding him just how lucky he was to still have her in the land of the living with him.

“I gotta tell you, I don’t really see a way out of this mess for us. Izzy and Aesop set this up good. Even if your council believes I had nothing to do with this, we may still never be free of this night. I don’t know who, if any, were a part of Izzy’s attempted coup.”

“I have the same concerns, Masaki. But.” She paused another moment, holding her hand to her wounded side, taking another slow, deep breath before she attempted to speak again. “You’re my enemy Masaki. Yet, my instinct was to protect you tonight. I can’t ignore that.” Her words warmed him from the inside. Those words calmed the raging waves of anger and fear seeing her in this condition caused. He held her hand tighter, and delighted at the weak smile pulling at her lips.

She repositioned herself in the bed, taking a moment to catch her breath as she did so. “I want you, and I’m not about to lose you to the war that’s coming,” she continued. “A war neither of us started.”

“Oshun…” His words faded as she shook her head, holding up a lone finger in the air to silence him.

“If we’re ever going to have a chance at surviving this thing as a unit, then we’re going to have to figure this out together. Both our houses are in flux. Until we know how deep this deception flows, neither of us can risk letting our guards down.”

For a few moments in that diner he’d doubted her. He’d doubted what they were building, he’d doubted what he felt for her, and most importantly, he’d doubted what she’d felt for him. But when she saved his life, she’d put any doubts he had to rest. He knew Oshun well enough to understand she was probably never going to be the “I love you” type. But, nearly getting herself killed to protect his life was all he needed to believe that what they shared was mutual, and deeper than any spoken declaration could ever be.

“I’m in,” he answered. “Give me a few days to get things rolling. We need to get medical attention setup for you wherever we’re headed.”

She shook her head. “No need, arrangements for everything we need have already been taken care of. You just have to decide if you’re ready to leave it all behind for however long it takes us to figure this mess out, or if you’re going to walk away from us.”

Walking away from her, from them, wasn’t a possibility. This night had proven she would have his back harder than any of the men he employed. Letting this woman slip through his fingers wasn’t an option.

Besides, he’d learned a simple fact tonight in that parking lot. They were strong independently, but together they were unstoppable. If any two people could figure this out, stop their enemies, and manage to stay alive, it was the two of them. His enemy had become his best asset, and he’d follow her into the bowels of hell.

He felt his lips curve into his signature lopsided grin; the one that danced on his lips when he needed to show the world he had nothing to worry about. And, he didn’t. He was confident this partnership was going to yield great results, and the matching smile Oshun gave him from her bed, expressed the same confidence.

She’d started out being a piece he just wanted to have a good time with. She’d ended up being his peace, the other half of his gangster’s soul.

Masaki leaned down over her, still smiling, until his lips pressed against hers, and he heard a relieved moan escape her mouth.

“We’ll burn this motherfucker down together, Oshun. We’ll kill them all.”