That’s what I’ve always respected about Hino. No bullshit. No sentiment. Just results.
Word is, he used to be Yakuza back in the day. Ran with one of the families in Little Tokyo after he immigrated to the States decades ago.
From there he somehow ended up setting up shop as an underground physician for anybody with enough cash and sense to keep their mouth shut. In other words, those of us in the underworld.
The only one he’s not treating tonight is my father.
Dad took the worst of it. Dren got him with a bullet to the chest that grazed his lung. Stubborn as ever, he insisted on walking out of the warehouse on his own two feet, oozing blood everywhere and all.
It wasn’t ’til he was inside one of our SUVs that he really collapsed.
Last I heard, he’s in surgery at Mount Sinai. Teagan’s been texting me updates every hour, but there’s nothing to do now except wait and hope Seamus Callahan is too stubborn to die.
Knowing my father, he probably is.
I’m sitting on the edge of a leather armchair, my shirt stripped off, while Hino examines the damage. My ribs are bruised to shit, probably cracked in a few places. My face looks like it went through a meat grinder. There’s a gash on my wrist that needs attention, and my knuckles are split open and swollen from all the punches I threw tonight.
“You never stay out of trouble for long,” Hino remarks as he threads a needle, his Japanese accent heavy but his English precise. “Every time I see you, more holes to fix.”
“What can I say? Somebody’s gotta keep you in business.”
He doesn’t smile in answer. He simply starts stitching a gash on my arm with quick, practiced movements. The needle pricks into my flesh, and I grit my teeth against the sting, focusing on the far wall to keep from flinching.
“How’s your son?” I ask out of distraction more than curiosity. “Haven’t heard you mention him in a while.”
Hino’s hands pause for a fraction of a second. So briefly I almost miss it. Then he continues stitching, his expression unchanged.
“He walks his own path. Sometimes it’s one of danger,” he says ambiguously. “A path I know too well.”
I don’t push further.
Another rumor about Hino is his son has followed in his criminal footsteps; he’s joined the Yakuza and is currently wreaking havoc and rising up the ranks.
I wouldn’t know personally—I’ve never had a direct run-in with the Yakuza. They’re usually respectful enough to stick to their territory, and we stick to ours.
Hino finishes the stitches and wraps my arm up in bandages, then moves on to examine my ribs. He prods and pokes, ignoring my hisses of pain, before finally stepping back with a curt nod.
“Nothing life threatening. Rest. Ice. Don’t get into any more fights for at least a week.” He packs up the supplies in his medical bag. “But you won’t listen to that advice.”
“Probably not.”
The look he gives me is a cross between dry humor and resignation, then he’s tending to the next wounded soldier without another word.
I push myself to my feet, wincing as my battered body protests, and make my way out of the den.
The halls of Callahan House are quieter than the makeshift hospital room, the sounds of groaning men and Hino’s murmured instructions fading behind me as I walk.
My mind churns through the events of the night, trying to make sense of how we got here.
I didn’t expect Dad to show up at Dren’s warehouse. When I walked through those doors, I was fully prepared to die. Even if it meant going down taking him out so long as Simone survived.
It was a suicide mission and I knew it, but I didn’t give a fuck. Not when she was the one with a gun to her head.
Turns out, the old man had other plans.
His meeting at Gossier’s wasn’t just business as usual. It was a last-minute scramble to form an alliance after Rurik Raguzin came to him with some very interesting intel.
Word on the street was that Eddie was a traitor—he’d been shopping around crime families for months looking to ally himself with somebody and the Albanians took the bait—and Dren was abandoning his compound to get ahead of my planned attack.