1.1 | The Yakuza Bride

Chapter 18

A/N: Wow Hana asked about Leon's girlfriend? What's happening?

~

Hana's abrupt question had been met with an odd stare.

'A girlfriend?' Vera echoed with visible confusion in her eyes.

'I mean,' she muttered, stumbling over her words as she tried to collect her thoughts.

Was she wrong?

The name he had spouted when drunkenly kissing her, and the photograph she had chosen out of a stack of others. Thinking back, maybe she should have given it a closer look before she made her choice. She was almost sure the person beside him was the girl called Sofiya.

Now she wished she hadn't said a thing. She couldn't just explain to his sister her assumptions based on his mention of a name.

'You'll have to ask him,' Vera said carefully.

Ask him! He was one who clamped up easily. How would she ever get a straight answer from him? Besides, it was such a private question. It wasn't something she could just casually bring up in a conversation.

'So the girls had a party and didn't invite us?' came a familiar drawl.

As if by prearrangement, bright grins returned to their faces, chasing away all traces of what they had been speaking about. He wore an easy smile as he sauntered to them with Mosay at his side. They were both dressed in white button-up shirts and black pants, having come from a meeting with their father and his associates.

'Hello to you too,' Vera pipped up. Then she patted the space beside her. 'Come join us. We have more than enough.'

'And when they do want us,' he went on, 'we become garbage bins.'

Mosay dropped down beside Vera, gleefully receiving a plate piled with a cucumber sandwich and an earl grey macaron. Leon squeezed in beside her with a sigh. His knee brushed hers, and she scooted a little to give him more space.

'Any recommendations?' he asked her when she handed him a plate.

No, she corrected herself.

He clamped up when it was just them. But when it came to his own family, she thought with a sad tug in her chest, he could be carefree.

'I like this,' she said, pointing out the earl grey macaron to him. 'And the raspberry tart is nice.'

'Mm, you've tried all the sweets, haven't you?' he murmured fondly, his eyes resting on hers for a moment.

And when they were around friends and family, he was friendlier too. But this was all part of their pretense, wasn't it? Icons of peace?

~

'We need to talk,' he said abruptly just before they could part and return to their own rooms.

The tea party was over, and she wanted to nap before dinner.

'About?' she asked, her voice sharp and her senses on high alert. What was it now?

'Shall we go into your room?' he suggested.

Hana nodded and stepped in.

He wasn't angry, she realised, but tired. This trip had been a holiday for her, but it was work for him, and those hours of showing her around his city when he could have rested seemed to be making him moody.

'You've been uncomfortable around me,' he stated. He hovered by the door as she strode further into the room.

She could say the same about him too.