Homecoming - Chapter Eleven

She’d known that as soon as she uttered those two little words, the shit would be up. She’d have to tell everything, tell the truth; there was no way out of it. They needed all the facts if they wanted to find Noemi.

Still, Ryo’s reaction caught her by surprise. It shouldn’t have; if she were okay and not fretting about her child, it wouldn’t have.

His eyes shuttered, but not before she glimpsed hurt in their depths, and he jumped to his feet as if she had the plague. Then he rounded the table and sat in the chair opposite from her, putting as much distance between them as he could. She immediately felt the loss of his presence, his heat. Mick and Umibozu sat on either side of their friend, as if closing ranks, and Miki stared at her accusingly before she took her place beside her husband. Leaving her completely alone on her side of the conference table.

Ain’t that just peachy?

Kaori looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, clenching her fingers to keep them from trembling. So much for solidarity, for friendly ears. They’d all looked at her as if she was the bad guy, probably condemning her for involving them in a nasty custody battle. She shuddered. They were so very wrong.

“Explain.”

The quiet order brought her head back up until she could meet Ryo’s unreadable gaze. She lifted an eyebrow, and he smirked.

“Have you really forgotten, Kaori? We don’t judge until we have all the facts. And we don’t help until we have all the facts.”

“Since when?” she asked archly. She remembered very well all the assignments he’d taken without knowing squat back in the day.

“Since this company was formed,” he replied evenly, and she felt like a child being scolded. “We’re listening,” he prompted.

“Right.” She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze on a spot just above his left shoulder. “I went to New York.” She didn’t have to elaborate on when that was; they all knew. “I went to visit Sayuri for a while, but I had all intentions of coming back.”

She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his gaze change. She’d surprised him.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked softly.

She chuckled mirthlessly, her gaze still fixed on the wall. Wasn’t that the question of the century? “She needed me.” And after...Too much time had passed. She hadn’t known whether she’d be welcome.

“She had this boyfriend. I never met him, but she talked about him constantly. How attentive he was, loving and tender, how generous.” Kaori grimaced at the memory. “Until the day she came to see me with sunglasses on while it was raining.”

Soft curses sounded from the other side of the table, and Kaori knew they’ve all put two and two together.

“Turned out the attentive, loving, tender guy was the poster boy for an abusive boyfriend. She kept walking into cupboards, tripping over her own feet.” She shrugged. “You know the spiel.”

She swallowed, taking a moment to steady herself. “I kept telling her to ditch him, report him to the police, get a restraining order, but she kept covering for him. He was under a lot of stress, she was too demanding...Then one day I got a call from the hospital.”

“Fuck,” Ryo muttered.

“Half of her face was bruised, she had a broken arm, and there were scratches around her neck. The nurse had called the police, because no cupboard ever tried to strangle a person, but Sayuri still wouldn’t say anything.”

She finally looked at him, met his gaze squarely. “Until they told her about the baby.”

His eyes flared, showing his surprise, then narrowed, and she stomped onto the small spurt of satisfaction at his reaction. There was no time for satisfaction. Noemi was missing, and Kaori had yet to finish her story.

“When Sayuri found out she was pregnant, everything changed. She didn’t want him to hurt the baby, but she knew charges or a restraining order wouldn’t help. So we ran.”

“Why didn’t you come here?” Miki asked, her tone just shy of accusing.

Kaori chuckled mirthlessly. “This was probably the first place he looked.” And she hadn’t been sure they’d help her and Sayuri after she’d disappeared without a word. She shook her head and looked back down at her hands. “She needed to disappear for a while, at least until the baby was born. So we went to Europe. England.”

“You both could have disappeared here, Kaori,” Ryo said quietly, hurt evident in his voice. “One word from you, and you would have both been protected.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and looked at him. There was no anger in his eyes, only sadness that she hadn’t trusted him to keep her and her sister safe. “I know,” she whispered, wishing she could turn back time, wishing she had been able to think past the fear for her sister, past her own hurt.

“Then what happened?” he prompted.

Kaori sighed. “We holed up in a village in Cornwall, decided to stay until Sayuri was due. It was peaceful and quiet, and everybody was so very nice to both of us.” She cleared her throat as emotions tried to choke her. “Then Sayuri went into labor, right there in our rented cottage, and as we waited for the midwife to arrive, she made me promise I’d look after the baby if something happened to her. As if she knew...” she finished in a whisper.

Miki stifled a sob. “Oh, Kaori.”

Kaori took a shaky breath. “She died giving birth to Noemi. They tried to revive her, called the ambulance, but all they could do was pronounce her dead when they arrived.” She couldn’t look away from Ryo’s eyes. The swirling emotions in his eyes were like a lifeline. “Thinking back, I don’t think they even made a great fuss about the baby. The midwife placed her in my arms, told everybody she was mine, and that was it. And she was mine. The moment I looked into her eyes, I knew she was my child. So my name is on her birth certificate. Not my sister’s.”

“You could’ve come home then, Kaori,” Miki insisted.

She shook her head. “No, the bastard will have returned to Japan by then.”

Ryo narrowed his eyes. “He’s Japanese?”

“Yes. And even if he didn’t know about me, the resemblance was obvious, I couldn’t risk it. So I took her back to the States, raised her as my own, gave her the best childhood I could.”

“Does she know?”

“That she’s not mine?” Kaori nodded. “She knows I’m not her biological mother, but she also knows I love her more than anything. And that makes me her mother and her my daughter. In every sense of the word that counts.”

Umibozu finally asked the important question. “So who’s her father?”

Kaori stared straight at Ryo. “You are.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Your name is on her birth certificate alongside mine.” She shrugged. “It was the first one that came to mind. It also ensured she didn’t have an ’unknown’ father listed. Which could possibly come up in a search.”

“So you picked me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” There was a spark of satisfaction, pride even, in his eyes as he smiled gently at her. “I’m honored.”

Mick rolled his eyes. “That’s nice, but you still haven’t told us who her biological father is. And how did he know about her, about you? Why he decided to kidnap her now.”

Kaori swallowed. “I made sure I didn’t associate with anyone who could’ve possibly known Sayuri. All my friends in the States think I’m her biological mother. I named another man as her father. I don’t know how he could’ve possibly found out.”

“And why strike now and not before?”

Ryo looked at Mick. “Because he’s only recently found out.”

Umibozu nodded. “It makes sense. If he knew before, he’d have tried it by now. The question is, how did he find out?”

Miki placed both her palms on the table. “Maybe he’s finally decided to find out what really happened to Sayuri. A cursory search might not show much, but a deeper one could yield more results. Like the fact she died in childbirth. He continues to search and finds there was a recorded birth at the same time in the same village.” She muttered a curse. “It’s pretty easy to find information if you want to find it. It’s what we do all the time.”

Mick nodded. “And he took her, because he knew he didn’t have shit to present to the court. Both parents are named in the birth certificate.”

“He could demand a DNA test,” Umibozu supplied.

“But why bother if he can snatch her from the street?” Ryo finished. “The question is, why?”

Only silence greeted his question.

“Kaori, who the hell is this guy?”

“Kuroda Junichiro.”

“The billionaire?”

Kaori just nodded.

“Well, shit.”