The Yakuza’s Mute Bride novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88

The memory of my mother returned to me on the flight in a single, merciless flash.

3.9%0

55 vouchers

It was not a gentle recollection. It came the way grief always did-sharp, vivid, and without warning-like the scent of antiseptic in a hospital room that no longer existed, or the echo of a voice that had been silenced long before I was ready to let it go.

I could still feel her hand in mine, thin and warm, trembling faintly as she tried to be brave for me. I could still hear the way she whispered my name as if saying it too loudly might fracture what little strength she had left.

I had been eight years old when she died.

Eight years old when the only person who had ever loved me without condition had been taken from the world, leaving me in a place where love had rules, contracts, and hidden prices.

She had been my secret shelter. My gentle protector. The one person who looked at me and saw more than an inconvenience.

And when she was gone, so was everything that made me feel safe.

I remembered the day after her funeral with painful clarity. The way a child welfare officer had taken my hand because there was nowhere else for me to go. The way I had been brought to my father’s house like an unwanted package, wrapped in grief and handed over to people who did not want to open it.

My father’s wife-Melany-had looked at me the way one looks at a stain on clean fabric. Not with hatred, not even with anger. Just with quiet, resentful disgust.

Her daughter, Katrina, had been worse.

Children can be cruel in ways that adults cannot be. Katrina had been older than me, polished and perfect, like someone born into a life that expected her to be adored. And she had decided very quickly that I was something that should not exist in her world.

The syrup had been sweet.

Too sweet.

She had handed me the cup with a smile that never reached her eyes, and I had taken it because I did not yet know that kindness could be poisoned.

Later, she would tell everyone that I had always been greedy. That I took more than I deserved. That it was my fault.

After that day, my voice had become something I could no longer trust.

What came out of my throat was rough and broken, unable to carry softness or strength. The doctors had explained it in clean medical words: damaged tissue, scarring, nerves that no longer moved the way they should.

But what they could not explain was how it felt to lose the ability to speak the way everyone else did.

How it felt to have words trapped inside you, desperate and voiceless.

I learned to use my hands instead.

I learned to write.

I learned to survive.

1/4

17:27 Thu, Jan 22 G D D

Chapter 88

9%

55 vouchers

I learned how to pack my life into a suitcase and make myself small enough to fit into places where I was barely tolerated.

And then, years later, I met Tadashi Masayoshi.

The man who looked at me and did not see a broken thing.

The man who chose me exactly as I was.

Or so I had believed.

Now, standing inside the same mansion where my face hung on the walls like a memory he no longer owned, I felt that old, familiar loneliness creeping back into my chest.

The same quiet realization that had haunted me since childhood You are only loved until you become inconvenient.

Sad but true.

“Naomi-san?”

eyes

I turned and saw Sato, the elderly head butler who had been there the first time I came to this place. His widened in surprise and warmth when he recognized me, and he rushed forward, taking my hands with a gentle reverence that nearly made me cry.

“Oh, Naomi-san,” he said softly. “It truly is you.”

Others gathered when they heard his voice. Old members of the household. Faces that remembered me, even if Tadashi no longer did.

They greeted me warmly, bowing, smiling, welcoming me back as if I had never left.

For a moment, it almost felt like I belonged.

Then not long after that Tadashi and Yukito entered the room and the atmosphere changed instantly.

Everyone bowed, heads lowered, respect thick in the air. Tadashi’s presence still commanded the space like a force of gravity, even when he did not speak.

He walked toward me with Yukito at his side.

“Are you comfortable staying here for a while?” Yukito asked gently.

I nodded, even though I already knew the truth.

This was not my

choice.

This was Tadashi’s.

Yukito moved to leave with Ota and Gio, but before he did, I caught his sleeve. “You are leaving?” I asked quietly.

He nodded. “I have something I must take care of.”

I watched him go, unaware that Tadashi had not taken his eyes of me for even a second.

And then I realized something that made my breath catch painfully in my throat.

I was alone with him again.

The man who did not remember me.

2/4

Chapter 88

The man who had once loved me.

The man who now held me in a cage built from silence and possessive confusion.

Tadashi’s gaze felt like a weight pressing against my skin.

9%

55 vouchers

I could not read what he was thinking, but I could feel the tension in the air, thick and dangerous, like something waiting to

snap.

I took a slow step back, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I was his presence.

He did not move.

He did not need to.

His eyes followed me, dark and unreadable. “You look like you are planning to disappear,” he said quietly.

I swallowed but didn’t say anything to answer him.

“Is that what you want?” he asked again and yet I did not say anything.

Because the truth was too complicated to say out loud.

I wanted him to remember me, to love me again and to let me go. Yet all of those things hurt too much to choose between.

“You are not as invisible as you think,” Tadashi said again like he knows what I am doing by being silent.

The words sent a strange shiver through me.

“You leave when you think no one wants you,” he continued. “But you leave traces behind.”

I did not know how to respond to that.

“I do not remember what you were to me,” he admitted, his voice cold but strangely strained. “But my body reacts to you. My instincts react to you. My anger reacts to you.”

I felt my chest tighten.

“That makes you dangerous,” he said seriously. “And it makes you mine, even if I do not understand why.”-

The possessiveness in his voice was unmistakable.

It frightened me and warmed me at the same time.

But, it also broke me all at once.

“I do not want to belong to someone who does not remember loving me,” I finally said softly.

He stepped closer. “Yet, you are still here,” he replied. “So part of you must want me to remember.”

Damn… He was right.

Because, no matter how much I tried to tell myself that I should leave, that I should not stay where I no longer wanted, my heart still pulled me toward him like a tide.

“Do you know how much power that gives you over me?” Tadas asked quietly.

I shook

my

head.

3/4

17:28 Thu, Jan 22 GOD.

Chapter 88

“You should not,” he said. “But you do.”

The silence between us was heavy, charged with things neither of us could say.

And for the first time since everything had fallen apart, I realized something terrifying.

Even without his memories… Tadashi Masayoshi still belonged to me. And I still belonged to him.

And that bond, fractured and dangerous as it was, might destroy us both before it ever let us go.

4/4

AD

Comment

Send gift

No Ads

༥9% 』

55 vouchers