Page 96 of Phantom Flower

I did not want to stay. I turned toward the door without another word, already regretting stepping foot in this place. “Then I’ll come another time.”

I reached for the handle. It did not budge. I yanked on the door again, harder this time. Nothing. Locked tight.

I spun around fast.

Daniel was pointing a gun at me.

My eyes widened. Fear slammed into me.

“What the hell are you doing?” The words came out trembling in a panic I could not hide.

He tilted his head slightly. “Sit down, Rei.”

I did not want to. But the fear was bigger than my pride right now. I was scared. Really fucking scared. So I moved slowly and sat down.

Is he going to kill me?

Daniel lowered the gun a fraction but kept it ready, then sat across from me in the armchair like we were about to have a civilized conversation. One leg crossed over the other. Completely at ease while my heart tried to beat its way out of my chest.

“Your mother hasn’t been texting you,” he said. “It was really foolish of you to think she would, when she has me to distract her.”

Of course. How could I have been so stupid?

“Your mother thought you were at Marco’s. Even though it has been two months since you last set foot in this place, she did not care how long you stayed away. She has always been like that. When you are here, she smiles and plays the perfect mother. But the second you walk out that door, you cease to exist to her. She is too busy with her distractions. With me.”

I had believed her. Texted back the night before like some pathetic kid still starving for scraps of attention after everything. I had still held onto the stupid, childish hope that Mom gave a shit. That maybe this time she would actually want to see me. But no. She was too wrapped up in Daniel’s lies and whatever the fuck he was doing to distract her to even notice I had been gone for months.

I felt small. Pathetic. Ashamed for ever thinking I mattered beyond being the son she could parade when it suited her and forget the rest of the time.

“Why? What the hell are you trying to do here? Pointing a gun at me in my own home like this. What’s the fucking point?”

He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “In three months, you turn twenty. And when that day comes, everything changes. The entire Kurosaki empire your father built before he died. It all transfers to you. Everything currently sitting under your mother’s name becomes yours the moment you hit that birthday. I cannot let that happen. I have spent so long positioning myself here, marrying into this family. You are going to steal it all from under me the second you are of age. I will not allow it.”

I felt my blood turning cold, but at the same time I was connecting dots I had tried to ignore. The inheritance. I had known it was coming. It was buried in legal papers and family meetings I had never wanted to sit through. For now everything was under Mom’s name, but the companies, the fortune, the real power. It all went to me when I turned twenty. Three months. He was scared I would take it all from him. Scared I would cut him out the way he deserved.

Originally it was supposed to all go to Kento, but Kento had always been distant, even with my dad, and had made it clear he did not want anything involving the family business. So my dad made me the heir. I did not particularly want to do it either, but when he asked me when I was young, I did not say no. I loved him and I did not want both of his sons to refuse him.

I swallowed hard, the gun still a black hole in my vision, and pushed back even though my voice cracked. “And you are going to kill me to stop that? Do you really think you can get away with it? People will notice. Kento will come for you. The lawyers will—”

He chuckled, like I had said something amusing. “Your mother is easily managed. She already believes whatever story I feed her. As for the lawyers and the rest of them… accidents happen in families like ours. Tragic suicides. Mental breaks that no one questions when the heir has been spiraling for months. It is all very believable.”

I stared at him, fear twisting tighter in my gut, but underneath it something else was starting to click.

As he talked about killing me, about stopping me from taking what was mine, my mind flashed back to things that had happened over the last few months. Daniel. He had hired that man to drug me. He had arranged it. And the dead fingers showing up in my locker at school. Those grotesque, rotting things that had made me gag and run to the bathroom to throw up. Those were not random harassment either. He had put them there. Or had someone do it. He wanted to terrorize me publicly so that I would either kill myself or get declared unfit. So he could keep the fortune. Keep the power. I felt sick.

My vision tunneled for a second, the gun blurring in front of me while memories I had tried to bury came back.

If Dimitri had not held me in his house for so many weeks, he would have probably tried terrorizing me at home too.

Daniel kept talking, proud of how elegant his original plan had been. “Originally, I wanted to take a gentler approach. You are already mentally fucked, aren’t you? If I pushed around a little, you would do me the favor of either killing yourself or being declared mentally incapable of leading anything. It would have been clean. Just another unstable heir who could not handle the pressure of his legacy. No one would have questioned it. Your mother would have grieved in public and moved on in private. And I would have had everything.”

It felt like he was pouring acid on open wounds.

Daniel leaned forward slightly, gun still steady in his hand, eyes flat and empty. “But that Russian boyfriend of yours has been ruining my plans.”

He leaned back in the armchair.

“He took you,” he said, “and I had no way to get to you while you were hiding behind his walls. That mansion of his is locked down like a fortress. I really thought texting you from your mother’s phone would not work. I figured you were smarter than that. But after some pushing… here you are. You came crawling back after all.”