She’d been born a preemie. We never even got to take her home. At thirty-three weeks, she needed to remain in the hospital’s NICU until her lungs and immune system finished developing. They told us to anticipate another month at the hospital, but by three weeks old, she still wasn’t gaining weight. The doctors wanted to run additional tests.
I still remember the first time I noticed her blood type on her chart. I’d rarely left the hospital at that time. Both Kalea and I were never far from our daughter’s side. Yet it took three weeks for me to notice.
I was no genius, but I had been a decent student. I’d even helped Kalea a time or two with her homework when she was still in high school. We both had the same teachers, so many of our projects and curriculums were similar—including a biology project in junior year about blood typing.
It was the only reason I even knew my blood type was B Positive. And yet there I stood, looking at my daughter’s chart that proclaimed her to be AB Negative.
I was so sure I was wrong. That project had been over a dozen years ago for me. Ihadto have been remembering my blood type wrong. I knew Kalea was AB Positive from helping her with that exact same project.
And when I confirmed I was in fact B Positive, then I concluded the doctors were wrong. I’d even accused them of being so and laid the blame of my daughter’s weak condition on their incompetence.
Only, they weren’t wrong…and neither was I.
The anger I had felt when I killed Kalea’s boyfriend wasnothingcompared to the rage that boiled through my soul when I stared down at the paternity test that stated the probability I was Pualani Ano’s biological father was zero percent.
Many things crossed my mind in that moment. Many dark and dangerous things. I had never understood my parents’ hatred for each other. How could they vow to love and cherish one another one day and then be at each other’s throats the next? How could anyone, man or woman, get to the point where they were so angry, so spiteful, so hateful that they could murder the person they professed to care about most in the world?
I understood now.
Mywahine, my wife, the woman who I looked after, protected, adored, and loved beyond measure, had slept with another man. A man who fathered the child who now held my last name.
Pele, goddess of fire and volcanos who was known for her temper, fury, and destruction, had never felt the rage that now burned inside me.
I could have killed Kalea. To this day, a part of me does not understand why I didn’t. It wasn’t because she was Aloiki’s sister, nor was it because she was now a new mother with an innocent child that relied on her. The thoughts were there, the rage was there, and while I was armed, I certainly didn’t need a weapon to complete the deed.
And yet, I didn’t.
I walked out. I left the paternity test next to Kalea, where she sat sleeping in the rocking chair while nursingherdaughter, and Iwalked out. I went home to the house I had bought a decade ago for her—for us—and I packed my things. I took no furniture or anything petty. I didn’t destroy our wedding portraits or set fire to our marital bed. Due to the nature of my business, I never brought work home with me. I didn’t have an office or sensitive information that needed to be removed. I literally packed my clothes and toiletries, and left.
I moved in with Aloiki. Maybe I did it because I literally had nowhere else to go and maybe I did it so he could be there to stop me if I ever did follow through with my dark desires to see Kalea pay. My best friend and brother-in-law was now my best friend and ex-brother-in-law. Aloiki asked me no questions, nor did he push for me to reconcile with his sister. He abided by my rule to never mention either of their names to me again.
I felt no different after the divorce was finalized and my name was removed from the birth certificate. Every happy memory from the time I was nineteen was now tainted. There was no happiness left within me. I dove into work. I distracted myself with booze, women, and the sea.
I didn’t look for love again. There was no love in this world. As for fatherhood, that dream had been broken, smashed, and eviscerated.
I was Tangaloa Ano.Kanaka Maoli, arms dealer of both illegal and legal weapons, murderer, warrior…and now eternal bachelor.
Chapter One
Three Months Before the Wedding
Yonkers, NY
The plane we’d borrowed from the Los Angeles Chapter of the Royal Bastards touched down at Teterboro Airport a little after eight in the morning. We were all beyond exhausted, but none of us let it show. After nearly three months of searching, we finally had a lead—no, we hadproof—of where Nishi was.
A lot had happened since a co-ed’s gangbang had been interrupted by Aloiki’s phone. A lot good, a lot great, and a lot not-so good. Personally, I felt like Maui, the demi-god of tricks, was fucking with us.
The six of us descended the plane with malice in our steps. We had no luggage other than our weapons and Tommy’s medic bag. I followed right behind Aloiki, throwing my leather cut on over the thermal shirt I was wearing. None of us, even Tommy who’d been born in the United Kingdom, was happy about the cold weather of New York. As we approached the three men who waited for us by two motorcycles and an SUV, I had the oddwonder if “downstate New York” was somethinghaolessay. I’d heard of “upstate New York” before, but what did they call the southern part of the state where we were?
Then again, I was never planning on coming back to this frozen hellscape, so I really didn’t need to know. It was just an absent thought brought on by little sleep and leftover adrenaline.
We’d been on the right track for several days, leaving our home paradise of O‘ahu to a brothel in Russia, to the streets of Los Angeles, and now to Yonkers.
Aloiki had an interesting past with Lu Palakiko. They were together for five years, broke up for over four, and now he’d not only claimed her again but also successfully knocked her up. I liked Lu, and not just because she had a way of calming Aloiki that even I couldn’t do. Then again, I’d never offered to suck his dick. But it truly was more than sex with them. They fit, pure and simple, and I tried not to think bitterly toward either of them for that.
Lu was a sweetheart, and she could dowaybetter than my best friend. Sometimes, I questioned her sanity, along with her taste in men, but there honestly was no other woman in the world for Aloiki. In a word, he was an asshole.
But not to her, andthatwas how I knew I could trust the depth of his feelings.