Chapter 6: Jealousy and Fire
The banquet unfolded like a slow, toxic bloom. Plates of delicate fish and sculpted vegetables appeared and vanished. Ron’s arm remained a steel band around Leila’s waist, anchoring her to his lap as if she were an extension of his own formidable presence. He would nod, and she would lift a morsel to his lips with trembling fingers. He sipped sake from the cup she held, his eyes never leaving the faces around the table, a lazy panther surveying its domain.Then, he turned the tables. With a casualness that sent a shockwave through the assembled officers, he picked up a piece of glazed eel with his own chopsticks.
“Open,” he murmured to Leila, his voice meant only for her.Her eyes widened. To be fed by him, here, in front of all these men, was a violation of a different order. It felt more intimate than anything in the bedroom.A soft, stunned gasp escaped a nearby wife. Leila’s lips parted, and he placed the food on her tongue, his thumb brushing her lower lip.The act was a branding.See?it screamed. Mine to nourish.Mine to spoil.
The smart ones, the older colonels and the attachés with wary eyes, understood immediately.They kept their gazes fixed on their own plates, their conversations subdued. Their respect for Ron was laced with a fear that kept their thoughts in check.
Then there were the others.
They were clustered at the far end of the table, younger men with captain’s and lieutenant’s bars, their faces flushed with too much drink and the borrowed courage of proximity to power.Their whispers, meant to be private, slithered across the lacquered wood.
“...see how small her waist is in that obi? You could break it with your hands...”
“...the best ones are always the sheltered ones.Never touched. Tight as a vice...”
A harsh laugh.“Chinese cunts are all the same.Warm, wet holes meant for sharing. The emperor’s soldiers deserve their recreation.”
The words were viscous, obscene. Leila felt them like physical blows.Her breath hitched. The room, already a prison of perfume and politics, seemed to constrict, the walls leaning in.Instinct overrode Ron’s command. She turned her face from them, pressing her forehead into the hard curve of his neck, hiding in the only shelter she had. The silk of his kimono was cool against her burning cheek. She felt the low rumble in his chest before she heard his voice.
It was conversational, almost pleasant, but it cut through the ambient noise like a scalpel.“Captain Sugimoto.Lieutenant Fukuda. Is the entertainment lacking?”
The young officers froze. One, Sugimoto, a man with a narrow face and bold eyes, puffed up slightly.He mistook the question for engagement. “The entertainment is exquisite, Nakamura-san. We were just admiring... the rare quality of your personal scenery.” His smile was a leer.Ron didn’t move.He didn’t look away from the man. But the air around him changed, growing dense and cold. “My scenery.”
“Indeed,” Fukuda, emboldened by his companion, chimed in.His words slurred slightly. “A man of your stature must have sampled many gardens.We were merely discussing... the particular fragrance of this local blossom. Perhaps, if you ever tire of it...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
Ron’s hand, which had been resting on Leila’s hip, slid slowly up her back, a gesture of comfort that was utterly at odds with the glacial fury settling into his features.He leaned back, extracting Leila gently from the crook of his neck. He looked at her face, pale as the moon, her eyes tightly shut.
“You’re scaring her,” he said, his voice still soft.Then he looked at the five young men. “You are scaring what is mine.”
The final word hung in the air, final as a guillotine blade.General Yamashita cleared his throat, a nervous, wet sound. “Nakamura-san, these boys have drunk too much.They speak nonsense.Pay them no—”
Ron ignored him. He kept his gaze locked on Sugimoto. “You want to taste what is mine, Captain?”
Sugimoto’s bravado faltered under the sheer weight of Ron’s stillness. “I... I only meant—”
Ron moved.
It was not a blur of violence, but a deliberate, terrifyingly calm series of actions. He lifted Leila from his lap and placed her firmly in his vacated chair.“Do not move,” he whispered to her.Then he stood.
He walked around the head of the table, his steps measured on the polished floor. The entire hall was silent now, save for the frantic pulse beating in Leila’s ears.Ron stopped before Sugimoto. The Captain had half-risen, his chair scraping back.
“You mentioned hands,” Ron said, his tone almost scholarly. “You said you could break her waist with your hands.”
Before Sugimoto could react, Ron’s own hand shot out.Not a fist. An open-handed grab that seized the front of the captain’s uniform, knuckles digging into his sternum. With a wrenching heave, he hauled the younger man clear out of his seat and slammed him down onto the surface of the banquet table.Plates shattered. Bowls of soup overturned, sending hot liquid and porcelain skittering.Sugimoto cried out, a short, sharp sound of shock and pain.
Ron leaned over him, his face inches from the captain’s. “These hands,” Ron said, his voice finally allowing a thread of venom to show, “build empires.They break contracts. They decide who breathes and who drowns in the harbor.” He increased the pressure on the man’s chest.A rib gave a sickening pop. “They do not break tiny waists for your amusement.”
He released him. Sugimoto gasped, clutching his chest, scrambling backward off the table like a crab.Ron didn’t watch him go. He turned his eyes to the other four.They were statues, their drunken color drained to ash.
“My business is logistics,” Ron announced to the frozen room.“Supply lines.Movement of goods.You are all goods. Your commissions, your postings, your very breaths in this city are part of my supply line.” He picked up a pristine, untouched bottle of French champagne from the wreckage beside Sugimoto. He examined the label.“I can reroute goods.I can lose them. I can have them boxed up and sent home in pieces.”
He looked directly at Lieutenant Fukuda. “Do you understand the metaphor, Lieutenant?”
Fukuda nodded, a desperate, jerky motion.
“Good.” Ron placed the bottle back on the table with a soft clink. He dusted his hands together, a fastidious gesture.He walked back to the head of the table, the crowd parting before him. He didn’t sit.He placed a hand on Leila’s shoulder. She was trembling, her eyes wide open now, fixed on the shattered remains of the meal and the humiliated, terrified officers.Ron addressed General Yamashita, his voice once more smooth and conversational. “The evening was delightful, General.My compliments to your chef.I believe I will retire. I find the conversation has grown... coarse.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He guided Leila to her feet, his grip firm but not painful, and led her from the dais. Not a single person spoke. The silence was total, broken only by the sound of their retreating footsteps and the wet, pained breathing of Captain Sugimoto.
In the car, the world outside the window was a smear of darkness and occasional light. Leila sat bolt upright, the stiff golden dragons on her chest rising and falling with her rapid breaths.Ron was silent beside her, watching the city pass.