Ricco touched the wicked scar. He hadn’t even felt the pain of that cut. He’d been desperate. Kenta was good with the sword. “I kept moving into him. Akiko must have been doing homework when they attacked and her desk had turned over. I found a pen on the floor and I shoved it into his eye, hard. He dropped the sword. I picked it up and slammed it down over his head, splitting his skull in two.” The aftermath had been horrific, with blood and brains everywhere.

He hadn’t had time to think about those first lives he’d taken when he’d killed the boys he’d trained with. It was only later, when he tried to sleep, that he remembered their eyes, wide open, the horror in them, the light fading away. His stomach lurched. He’d brought many men to justice since that time, but nothing had affected him the way the deaths of those boys had.

“I didn’t have much time. Nao had caught the little girl by the hair, pulling her through the blood to his lap. He was going to cut her throat. I lifted the sword again and jammed the blade into his back, down low, with every bit of strength I had left, which wasn’t much. The sword was sharp and it went in.”

He took a deep breath and pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples. “I’ve never seen anything so horrific before or since. Nao kept screaming and screaming. The baby was absolutely silent. We both collapsed right there on the floor. I crawled to Akiko. There was blood bubbling around her mouth and she couldn’t talk. I didn’t move until she died. The little girl had crawled to her brother and she was holding him like a rag doll and rocking him back and forth.”

He couldn’t look at his siblings. All he could see was the blood soaking into the floor of the Tanaka home. So many dead around him. He hadn’t saved Akiko. He had felt numb. He hadn’t known he was shaking until the sword slipped from his nerveless fingers. It hit the floor and was instantly coated from blade to hilt in red.

“I don’t know how long I sat there before I realized the boy was still alive and needed medical attention, as did Nao. I called Isamu Yamamoto and told him what happened and we needed help fast. They came, and I don’t remember too much after that. I was taken to a room back in the host home with orders not to speak to anyone. I didn’t want to. I wanted to come home, but they refused to allow me to call you, Stefano.”

“I’ll just bet they didn’t let you call me or Eloisa.” Stefano’s voice was a lash of pure anger. A promise of retaliation.

Ricco winced. “There was an investigation and I was questioned repeatedly by the council members.”

“The council members? Not investigators?” Stefano clarified.

“Council members,” he reiterated. “I honestly expected them to kill me. It was clear they weren’t going to allow outsiders to know what happened. The dishonor would be too much for the three families. They called me in and told me if I dared to tell my family or any other council the truth of what happened, the three families would unite to wipe out every member of my family in retaliation because if I brought them that kind of dishonor, they wouldn’t have anything to live for. They said that they would tell the rider world that I had killed their sons. They also said they would make it known that I had murdered those boys in cold blood when they caught me raping Akiko. That I had been the one to kill her family.”

“Those fucking liars. Any of us would have heard the lies they told. If we’d brought them up before the international governing body they couldn’t have made those charges stick.” Stefano’s eyes blazed with anger. “They would have been stripped of their abilities. Only a member of the family of the international governing family can do that, but Yamamoto knew that would have happened immediately if this came to light. He fed crap to a fourteen-year-old boy and then forced him to stay there for appearances.”

Ricco nodded. “They wanted me to know just how powerful they were. It was a difficult time, but I was determined that nothing would happen to any of you. When I came back, I trained even harder than I had in Japan, every day, to make certain I would never make another mistake. I guarded you at night as best I could just in case they decided to come after all of you.”

“You should have told me, Ricco,” Stefano said. “I would have put a stop to this nightmare for you.”

Nothing could stop the nightmare. He’d have those deaths on his hands until the day he died. The images were branded into his brain. “We don’t want to start a war with the families in Japan,” he cautioned. “My host family were good people. They, at least, treated me right. From there I went to Mikio Ito’s home for six months. The rest of my time was spent with the Yamamotos.”

Stefano went into another round of inventive curses.

Ricco kept talking. He wanted it all out and over with. “Nao was in a wheelchair and very, very bitter. His mother and father were bitter. It was an extremely difficult situation, with constant beatings and threats, but I had resolved to learn as much as I could and all those beatings were done in the training halls by Isamu Yamamoto, and while he bested me time and again, it only served to make me train harder and grow stronger.”

Stefano was the one to begin pacing across the floor. “It doesn’t make sense that they would send someone after you at this late date. The Saitos retired years ago. I believe Dai and his wife Osamu live in their home in Tokyo. He gave up riding the shadows after his sons were killed. Mikio Ito stopped riding after his son was killed as well. His wife is still alive, and I believe they retired to a small cottage in the country. She never was a trained rider. It was an arranged marriage. And Isamu Yamamoto lost his wife to suicide. She walked out in front of a train. They said he began to drink heavily. A few months ago, he committed suicide by disembowelment.”

“I heard about that,” Ricco said, slightly ashamed that he’d wished they were all dead and the threat to his family was over.

“Nao Yamamoto has run their company here in the States for the last ten years or more,” Vittorio volunteered. “They’ve been losing money. According to their publicist they’ve been under attack by an industrial spy. Nao spent money like water, and I think he ran the company here into the ground.”

“The shadow riding lines of these families are gone,” Stefano continued. “It was rumored Saito and his wife had two other children, but neither was suited for shadow riding so they were never talked about publicly.”

Ricco frowned. He was already putting pieces of the puzzle together, although it still didn’t make sense. “She said she was claustrophobic, that when she was a child she’d been locked in a closet. Mariko. She could have been that little girl.”

“Nothing was ever said about any of the Tanaka line remaining,” Stefano objected.

“I study the history of all the rider families,” Vittorio said. “There was a rumor that there were other children, babies, but they died in the accident as well.”