I watched the minutes tick by on the clock on the dashboard of the van. We drove for nearly three hours after the men took me from the restaurant. Out of the city and into the country, past small towns and fields and through forests. I felt as if I were trapped in a bubble. The only sounds that reached me were my own breathing. Whatever the men around me were saying was distant and far away. I was frozen within myself, suspended in ice, counting the minutes and gazing out the windows. Everything seemed so far away.
I'd really never been out of Tokyo before. It was a surprise to me that I was almost as afraid of the stands of trees and the flat open spaces of the fields and rice paddies as I was of the men in the van. The openness of the fields made me feel insecure, I wanted buildings to loom over me protectively. The forests seemed like something out of an eerie fairy tale, endless trees shrouded in darkness even in the bright of day.
The van finally pulled up to some sort of farm. I couldn't guess what was grown there, the crops had already been harvested and the fields were bare. A group of men came out of the house to meet us as we got out of the vehicle. Two men held me by the arms and one of the men from the house stepped in front of me.
The man was tall and muscular, a long scar ran down his cheek. His air of confidence and cruelty and the arrogance in his eyes said that he was the boss. The icy blankness in his gaze said that he didn't even see me as human. I felt a shiver run down my spine. This man was truly dangerous. To this man I was already dead. I felt as if I were melting with fear.
"She handed herself over, Boss," one of the men holding me said. "We fired some shots in the restaurant, but no one got hurt."
"Yeah, I got the message," the boss said, looking me over. "So you're Simon Lee's daughter. Let's take a few pictures to send to your Dad."
The two men stepped away and the boss moved to put his arm around my shoulders. I felt my skin crawl as he touched me but I knew better than to pull away. This was the sort of man who would strike first and speak later. "Smile, Princess," he said. "These are probably going to be the last pictures that your father sees of you. You'd better pray that we don't need to take more."
I felt my stomach turn as another man stepped in front of us and held up his phone to take pictures of the two of us. The boss's words replayed over and over in my head. 'The last pictures…' He must be planning to kill me. Would he do it now or would it be later? Would Soryu have time to rescue me? Would he be able to rescue me? What if the tracking device was faulty and he didn't even know where I was? If that were the case, he would never come for me.
While I was lost in thought the man finished taking pictures and the boss pushed me over to one of my original kidnappers. "Take her to the barn and keep a close guard on her. I don't want Bell Cricket trash in my parents' house. We'll see what answers Simon Lee has for me. We may need to make a video of her getting roughed up, so don't touch her for now. If Lee isn't willing to get out of Niigata Prefecture entirely, I'll let you play with her all you want," he said before turning and walking away without a backwards glance.
A group of men led me to the barn. I felt as if my heart were going to cave in with fear. I wasn't really Mei. Simon Lee had no reason to make any promises or concessions in order to save me. He'd probably just laugh in the boss's face and tell him that I wasn't Mei. What would the boss do when he realised he had the wrong person? That he'd been tricked? He'd probably kill me. He'd let his men do whatever they wanted with me and then they'd kill me. If Soryu didn't come in time, I was as good as dead. There was no telling how long it would take them to send the pictures to Simon Lee and get a response. It could be as little as a handful of minutes. There was every chance that Soryu wouldn't have time to find me before bad things started happening.

In the barn they gave me a chair to sit in. I wasn't tied up or anything, they just had a man standing next to me at all times. A couple of men stood at the entrances to the barn, but mostly everyone was relaxed. The other men wandered around, just talking and hanging out. They obviously didn't think I had any real chance of escaping or being rescued.
I sat on the chair, miserable with fear. I could see out the windows and the large open door of the barn. If I could escape, I'd have no choice but to run across the fields and into the dense trees. I could hear dogs barking in the distance. Would they have the dogs chase after me and find me in the woods? I closed my eyes tightly against the image of men and dogs chasing me through the dark forest. If I was given the chance, I would have to try to escape no matter how much the idea scared me.
I couldn't see the time in the barn, so I had no idea how long I sat there. It was a while, at least over an hour, before the man standing next to me muttered, "damn" and a few seconds later sank to the ground. I frowned down at him in surprise, wondering if he was sick. Around the barn more men were crashing to the ground. A few started running, pulling out guns and looking around, but they soon fell down, too.
I stood up and looked around as I realized that I was being rescued. Two figures appeared in the hayloft and moved to climb down a ladder. Soryu and Baba. I started trembling. I wanted to run to Soryu. I wanted to sit back down in the chair because I felt like I was going to faint. I ended up standing there and crying silent tears as the two men rushed towards me.
Soryu grabbed me by my upper arms and stared down at me. "Are you okay?"
I reached up to wipe the tears from my face and said, "Yeah."
"I've got to get her out of here," Soryu said. He and Baba led me out of the barn. There were cars pulling up in front of the house and men pouring out of them. I recognized a few of the men I'd seen at Soryu's townhouse and even a couple of people from the hotel.
Ota and Kyoichiro came out of the house and hurried over to us. There was blood drying on Ota's chin and his lips were swollen, he must have been hit in the mouth.
"Are you okay?" Baba asked.
Ota nodded and said, "Yeah. We've got everything taken care of in the house. Eisuke's with Arimura. Good job getting the girl back."
"We took down everyone in the barn. They need to be taken care of," Soryu said and indicated the men that were assembling in the front yard. "Have the guys search the area and take care of any issues."
When Kyoichiro nodded and went to talk to the men on the lawn, Soryu turned to Baba and Ota. "I'm going to get Sakiko out of here. Remind Eisuke that I don't want any mercy shown to Arimura. This ends here."

Soryu led me to a car, holding onto me firmly until I was safely sitting in the front seat. I watched the farmhouse and barn shrink and disappear in the side mirror. I could have been killed. I could have been raped. I could have been hurt badly, but Soryu and the other men had saved me.
"Thank you, Soryu," I said. "Thank you so much for coming to get me."
"Of course I came to get you," he snapped. I looked at him in surprise. He'd been icy and controlled at the farm but now it seemed that he was being overtaken by anger.
I sat quietly in the car trying not to replay the events of the day over and over again in my head. The sun was going down and the forest was growing darker and darker. It was a real darkness, nothing like night in the city with its countless lights. Soryu suddenly took a right turn onto a smaller road. I looked curiously at the little screen on the dashboard that had the directions back to Tokyo. We weren't supposed to be turning off the main road. "Recalculating," the device said.
"Where are we going?" I asked, sneaking a peek at Soryu. I could tell that he was still angry by the way he sat rigidly in his seat.
"We're taking an indirect route in case someone tries to come after us," he said, his voice tight.
I nodded and stared out the window into the darkness for a while. We were really in the middle of nowhere. There were no lights, no houses, no other cars, just the forest that swallowed all light and the stars above us. After we'd driven for some time I couldn't stop myself from asking another question. "Those men in the barn, did you guys...kill them?"
"No," he said. I didn't look at him, but his voice was still filled with anger. "We used special tranquilizer darts. They won't feel so well for the next few days, but they aren't dead."
"Uh, that's good," I said, blinking tears of relief from my eyes. "I mean...It's hard, you know? I definitely wanted to be rescued, but I don't know if my life is worth the lives of a whole bunch of other people. I don't know if I could have handled it if all those guys had been killed."
"I would have gladly killed those men and dozens more to get you back," he said darkly. "Any man who puts a hand on a woman in violence doesn't deserve his next breath."
I swallowed and looked down at my hands. I remembered the story that he'd told about his father's widow, mistresses and his half-brothers and sisters being kidnapped and killed. It made sense that he would have no sympathy for anyone involved in something like that. It made sense that he was seething with anger.

"What did you think you were doing?" he asked, his words sounded as if they were being torn from him. "You gave yourself to them."
"One of those men was going to shoot that little boy, he couldn't have been more than two years old," I said, the scene flashing through my mind and sending chills down my spine. "I couldn't let that happen."
"I told you to stay where you were," he growled.
"I couldn't just sit there and watch that little boy be shot in front of me and his mother and everyone else there," I said, my voice rising. I was starting to feel angry myself because he was questioning my decision.
"Your job is to follow orders. You do what you're told. I told you to stay where you were," he was practically yelling now.
"That makes no sense!" I yelled at him, my voice filling the car. "They were going to kill that little boy! Even if I hadn't come out from under the table, they would have gotten me anyway. All they had to do was look under the tables and find me! I don't know why you keep saying I did the wrong thing when I obviously did the right thing!"
"I could have taken them out. I was about to take them all down and you started yelling and jumped into their arms. Once they had you there was no guarantee that I would be able to get you back," he shouted. "There was no guarantee that you would be alive by the time we caught up with you!"
"Don't you think I know that?! I'm the one who's been with all of those terrible men this whole time. I was very aware that they could kill me. At any moment they could have figured out that I wasn't really Mei. The first thing they did when we got into the van was go through my purse. What if they'd looked at my driver's license?!" I cried, already knowing the answer. "But that doesn't matter. That little boy was completely innocent! His parents, too. I'm at least involved in this whole mess. If anyone was going to die it should have been me, not a child! I was in that restaurant and I brought danger to everyone in there!"
"I'm the one who decided to go into that restaurant!" he roared. "It was my decision! I never should have left you. I should have found another way. But you… you're too impulsive. You threw yourself right into their hands. You're too protective of other people. You need to learn to take care of yourself. I understand that you can't let a child be harmed, but there had to be a better way!"
"There wasn't time to think of a better way!" I argued. "Maybe if I'd had a gun I could have shot the man who was going to shoot the boy. But I'm missing all my self defense classes because of the matchmaking meetings. I need more shooting lessons before I'll be allowed to carry a gun."
"A gun? I don't even want to think of you in a shootout. This isn't going to work anymore. You are no longer needed. You can go back to the casino!" Soryu yelled. "We'll figure something else out. I'd rather have Mei going to her own meetings than you throwing yourself in the line of fire!"
"Like hell you will!" I shouted back at him. "You aren't going to do anything to endanger Mei or the Ice Dragons' connections with the Bell Crickets. I won't let you. You're fucking crazy for even considering it!"

Without warning he jerked the wheel and pulled the car over to the side of the road. My anger quickly turned to confusion and then fear as he jumped out and rushed around to my side of the car, flinging the door open and yanking me out. My first thought was that he was going to throw me out of the car and leave me on the side of the road in some dark and wooded area in the middle of nowhere. As he slammed the car door shut and pushed me up against it, I was sure that he was going to hit me, but then he reached towards my neck and I froze in terror. He was going to strangle me. His face was furious and his eyes were glowing with anger. I'd been arguing with him and pushing him and driving him crazy all this time and now I was going to pay the price. He was going to kill me and throw my body in the woods.
His hands cupped the sides of my head and his mouth descended onto mine. My world flipped upside down. He wasn't killing me, he was kissing me. His lips slanted roughly over mine, hot and demanding, while his hands held me firmly in place. My own lips parted to gasp in some air as my brain tried to figure out what the hell was going on. His tongue took the opportunity to invade my mouth and stroke over my tongue, hot and wet and forceful.
'It's Soryu,' my mind whispered and I felt the tension and fear drain from my body. Soryu. This is how he tastes. This is how he feels. I reached up to fist my hands in his shirt, holding myself up, holding him to me. He was pouring his anger into me, I could feel it coming off him in waves. And I wanted it. I wanted to receive all of his anger, to take it away and make him feel better. I wanted whatever he would give me. I wanted all of him.
I opened my mouth wider to take in more of him, sucking on his tongue, sparring with it. I received his fury and gave him back all of the fear and terror that had ruled me since the first shot sounded in the restaurant. Our kiss was rough and desperate, bruising, full of so many big, painful emotions. I was whimpering, pulling him towards me with my hands, pushing my mouth into his. I couldn't get enough of him.
I reached a hand up to run my fingers through his hair and the soft feel of his locks made my palm tingle. My body was whispering his name, chanting it, shouting it. Everything was Soryu. He wasn't just another man, another body. He was special, everything about him was distinct and important. The curve of his ear and the line of his jaw beneath my fingertips. The pliable strength of his lips as they pushed and tugged at mine. His scent. His heat. The feel of his erection, hard against my stomach.
I moaned and arched into him. I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anyone or anything. My body was on fire, my every cell straining towards him, begging to feel more of him.

He wrenched his lips from mine and dropped his forehead to my shoulder for a moment, his ragged breaths filling my ears. I moved to thread my fingers through his hair, but as soon as my fingertips touched his neck he straightened and his hands yanked me away from the car. He walked to the front of the car, half-dragging me as I struggled to keep up, and tossed me down on the hood. I landed with a loud thud, bouncing back up immediately to meet him as he bent over me, grabbing him and pulling him close. His hands came down with a bang on either side of me and his lips claimed mine again with a violent hunger that I was more than ready to match.
My mind was no longer fuzzy, I was no longer confused and caught up in the wonder of how he felt. I just wanted him. Every inch of me was in torment, desperate for him. I'd wanted him for so very long, now that I was so close to getting what I wanted, I felt as if I were going to explode.
His mouth crashed down onto mine again and again, mercilessly invading me and I responded in kind, devouring him, hot, wet and delicious. My hands moved wildly, clutching and tugging at his hair, his ears, his neck, his shoulders and arms. I couldn't pull him close enough, I couldn't rest or be still until he was inside of me. I was wracked with desire, nearly sobbing with the urgent need to have him.
His lips left mine, shattering our connection, leaving me lost and writhing. His hands found the slit of my cheongsam and with two quick movements he wrenched the dress apart, buttons popping from thigh to neck. I moaned as the cool night air hit my sweaty skin. Soryu's fingers grasped my panties and wrenched them down my legs, knocking my shoes off into the grass, and tossing the scrap of fabric into the darkness.
He reached for his belt and began to unfasten his pants as I unclasped the front opening of my bra and pushed it to the side. I moved, scooting closer to the edge of the car, bending my knees and spreading my thighs, preparing to receive him. He stepped forward and his hand went between my legs, his fingers tracking roughly through my wet folds searching out my entrance before his brought the tip of his cock to me and pushed his way inside.
My breath caught as I felt him entering me. It was the culmination of so many thoughts and desires, the first drop of water to quench a desperate thirst, and he felt huge. I could feel my body stretching to accommodate him, nerve endings firing and sending waves of blistering pleasure through my body, electricity cascading down to my toes and fingertips.
I cried out, the feel of him inside of me was too much. He felt too good, so good that my entire body was under his spell, throbbing and flushed with pleasure. My mind was clouded, overtaken by him. I clutched and pulled at him, rocking my hips up into him and moaning. When he was finally fully seated inside of me he filled me completely, pushing me to my limits, the tip of his cock pressing against my cervix. My body pulsed around his hard length and I arched up towards him, moaning. "Soryu...please…"
He grasped my thigh in his hand and pushed it up, gripping it with strong fingers as he began to thrust in and out of me. He movements were hard and deep, relentlessly pounding into me. He showed no gentleness or consideration, I could feel his anger, his need to force his will onto me, with each stroke. I fought back with my body, unwilling to concede victory, crashing into him with as much force as I could muster, demanding as much from him as he was taking from me.
I looked up to see him staring down into my eyes, his gaze hot and searching. Sweat covered his face and dripped down onto me. "Soryu," I breathed, my body clenching around him. My head tilted back and my eyes closed. I could feel him everywhere. I was tightening all over as his every stroke compounded the passion that filled me. I saw the orgasm coming and knew that it would be mind-shattering. Everything else fell away as I worked toward that exquisite peak of tension and broke through it, my entire body spasming and loud cries bursting from my lips.
He grabbed my hips and pounded into me with a deep jab, releasing his hot seed and a growl that trembled down my spine. He lowered himself over me, both of us breathing raggedly as we tried to recover from the hard fuck. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but I was too weakened by the orgasm. I felt like jelly.
He moved, his head twisting so that his mouth was near my ear. "I'm sorry, Sakiko," he breathed. "I put you in danger. It's my fault you were kidnapped. I'm sorry."
My tongue flicked out to lick my lips but I couldn't say anything. My head was spinning. I couldn't collect my thoughts to answer him.
A moment later he pushed himself away from me, exposing me to the night air, his cock sliding out of me and leaving me feeling bereft. I looked up at him, his face was shrouded in darkness.
"Do not put yourself in danger again," he said, his voice commanding and harsh.
A sound escaped my lips, a moan, half a laugh. He would whisper his apologies but shout his demands. He was such a man.
His hands came down and pulled me up. I was still gasping and spasming with the after effects of the orgasm, a ragdoll that he pulled around and put back into the car. He left my door open and I watched his silhouette walk to the front of the car where he used the flashlight on his phone to find my shoes. He carried them back to me, setting them on the floor before removing his suit jacket and dropping it in my lap.
Slamming my door shut, he got in the car himself, turning on the car, turning on the headlights and getting back on the road. He didn't say another word until we were parked in the garage underneath the townhouse.

I slipped my shoes on and stepped out of the car, wrapping Soryu's suit jacket around me to cover up my torn dress. Standing in the cold concrete cave of the underground garage, everything felt unreal. Soryu was walking around the car, his eyes on me and a frown on his face. "Let's get inside," he said, his voice rough. He took my elbow and led me to the stairs.
Upstairs we ran into Yuuto. His eyes flared with anger when he saw me standing in Soryu's suit jacket, my dress beneath it at weird angles because it has been torn open. "Those fucking bastards," he said, unaware that the damage had been done by Soryu. "It was the Arimura Faction, right? That cheap fucking mob. Tell me that you crippled them."
Soryu's frown deepened as he listened to Yuuto. "Yeah, it was Arimura. Ichinomiya's dealing with him because I've got the princess. He's probably already dead. The faction will be destroyed."
I felt my stomach flip over at the casual mention of murder, but Soryu just kept talking as if it were no big deal.
"Get in touch with Kyoichiro and see if he has an estimate of when some of the men will be returning tonight. I want food sent here and over to the dorms. Everyone is going to be hungry when they get back."
Yuuto turned on his heel and hurried out of the room. I looked up at Soryu. "You've got to be hungry, too. Let me change really quick and I'll make you something."
"No," he replied, anger in his voice. "You're going to go take a bath. I'll order you food. You can eat and then go to bed."
I tried again. "It really isn't a problem for me to make you something."
"You will not," he said, taking my elbow in his hand and pulling me out of the room and up the stairs. He led me to my bedroom door and glowered down at me. "I'll have Yuuto bring your food up to you. Don't come out of this room until tomorrow. Rest. And I'll be rescheduling the meetings for tomorrow and arranging for someone else to cook. You take a break."
He opened my door, pushed me inside and closed the door after me before I had a chance to argue. I reached up to flip on the lightswitch and stared blankly at the door. I could hear his footsteps as he walked down the hallway away from me.
'What the hell?' He'd fucked me and then barely said a word to me. My mind rolled over and stalled. I'd been through too much to try to start analyzing Soryu now.
I did as he said, taking a long hot bath and eating the bento box that Yuuto left outside my door, climbing into bed and staring at the ceiling.
I'd been kidnapped. A tiny boy had almost been shot right in front of me. I could have been killed. There was really no telling how close I'd been to death. Soryu and his friends and his men had saved me. Soryu had fucked me. They - or Eisuke - were going to kill that man, Ariumura, because he'd kidnapped me. Or, maybe not because he'd kidnapped me, but because he'd kidnapped "Mei". It didn't really matter, because Soryu had said he was probably already gone. I didn't know how I felt about that. The death of anyone didn't sit well with me, but that man had obviously been a very bad person. It had been easy to see in his eyes that he had no respect for human life, no conscience to stop him from hurting others.
I sighed and rolled over. Emotions were bubbling inside of me. Fear, confusion, relief, anger. Normally I'd be looking for someone to fuck to make my feelings go away. If Soryu wasn't interested, there was always Yuuto, he'd expressed enough interest in the past. But I had no intention of looking for Yuuto, no motivation to get out of bed. I'd already been fucked. I could let the emotions simmer until I fell asleep.
What I really wanted was to talk to Olivia. To get her opinion of everything that had happened. She'd invited me into this underground world. Soryu had said that it was because she needed a friend to talk to and now I understood why. This was so different from the normal world. I had no idea how to process the events of the day. The terror of being kidnapped seemed like a strange dream, lying here safe and sound in my bed. And how was I supposed to feel about people being killed and hurt. Guilty? Happy? Something else?
I sighed and bit my lip to break my train of thought. There were no answers here. The one thing that I knew was that I was not going to listen to Soryu. I'd be downstairs preparing breakfast first thing in the morning just like always. No way was I going to lie around doing nothing and ruminating on my memories. I was going to push forward and keep myself occupied no matter what.