The Love Of Money - S02 E162

Story 2 months ago

The Love Of Money - S02 E162

Read Story: SEASON 2 EPISODE 162

Marcus confronts Ryo then enjoys meal..

Monday, September 16th, 3:59pm

I stared into the eyes of murder itself. Hate. Rage incarnate.

It would have been intimidating as hell if it had been anyone other than Ryo Tanaka.

The fucking nerd had the gall to look at me like I’d done him some great offense.

I guess there was a small justification. His face was bloodied. One palm had a burn that sat firmly in the second degree and ranged dangerously close to third in some spots. The faint scent of seared flesh still lingered in the air. Two of the fingers on his right hand had been broken, and his nose sat at a crooked angle.

Two of his teeth rested on the floor along with his ruined computer.

Not much had changed in the last hour or so. We were still in his apartment, sitting around the same table—Ryo’s hands strapped with zip ties behind him and a hulking mercenary standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder. I sat in another chair opposite him, staring like a safe cracker studying his next target.

Sighing, I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “This stopped being fun a long time ago, Ryo.”

“I can’t tell you anything else!” he cried out between swollen lips.

“You haven’t told me anything to begin with,” I said.

Ryo started to ask a question, but it trailed off into a whimper. He looked around as if searching for some means of salvation.

“I’ve told you so much,” he whined.

“Your sister already told me most of this crap,” I said, trying hard not to lose my cool.

Ryo tried again. “What about us buying fifteen percent of Halgen? That hasn’t even happened—”

“I can literally Google that shit and find a billion clips talking about it!”

“He didn’t tell you about Valegard,” Chloe said.

I looked over my shoulder at my bodyguard, who handed me her phone. There was an article about how Valegard was soon to be purchased by some shady corporation that already owned significant stock in three other large weapons manufacturers. It all sounded like tinfoil-hat nonsense, but I got the gist of what Chloe was suggesting. She probably had extra intel that linked this somehow to Tanaka.

Handing the device back to Chloe, I fixed Ryo with a glare. “Why didn’t you tell me about Valegard, Ryo?”

“Fuck! I didn’t know about—”

I jumped out of my seat. The thug holding Ryo knew me well enough to move back as I took two steps toward Ryo. I planted my foot into his chest and shoved, sending him sprawling to the floor. I couldn’t imagine how Ryo’s broken fingers felt, taking the brunt of the impact.

I shoved my foot on his chest and pressed down. “You’re next in line to take over from your dad, Ryo! Why don’t you know about Valegard!?”

Truth be told, I didn’t give a fuck about Valegard. It was probably technically legal and above board, just like everything else we had found out through Ryo. Hiro Tanaka was a skilled businessman and appeared to do a great job of maintaining the appearance of being a legitimate businessman.

Ryo screamed in pain. “I don’t know why!”

“Fuck!” I got off him and kicked his chair.

Chloe leveled her gaze at me. “This is pointless. He’s clearly useless.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “This has to be an act! There’s no way he’s this useless.”

Needing a distraction, I started to check my messages only to find zero notifications.

“You can’t do that in here,” Chloe said. “Your messages.”

I gave her a blank stare.

“This place is shielded from signals,” she clarified.

“You looked up that thing on Valegard.”

“One of the guys from Hannon sent me an email just before I got here. I already had it open.”

Glancing back down at my phone, a thought struck me. “Hey! Where’s this guy’s phone, uh…”

“Name’s Grant. It’s in his room,” said the man who had been standing behind him.

“And you’re sure that there’s no signal in here?”

“Yes, sir.” He smirked, proud of his own cleverness as he said, “I removed the SIM card just in case.”

It seemed that Psalter had chosen his men well.

“Bring it here,” I said, turning to look back at Ryo.

He simply stared back up at me, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes as his breathing came heavy and labored.

“Can’t find it!” Grant called from the bedroom.

“Where is it?” I asked Ryo.

Ryo’s sigh was punctuated by a hitch, and he closed his eyes. “The couch.”

“Check the couch!”

As we waited for Psalter’s man to return, I glanced at Chloe. “Did the guy tailing Sachiko ever get back to you?”

“He did,” Chloe said. “He lost them when her entourage split up. He didn’t tail the right one. It had that little companion of hers in it.”

“So, we don’t know where they’re staying?”

“Afraid not.” Chloe looked displeased.

“Got it,” Grant said, entering the room and offering me the phone. “It was in the couch cushions.”

The phone lit up as soon as I took it, showing the facial recognition system, which immediately started buzzing.

“It probably won’t recognize his face,” Grant said. He was right. Ryo looked like he’d been hit by traffic.

“Code?” I asked.

“What are you going to do?” Ryo asked.

“None of your goddamn business,” I snapped.

“It’s my phone!” Ryo insisted, sounding more like a petulant child than a man in his early adulthood.

I glanced at Chloe. “Cut off one of his balls and send it to his dad.”

Without hesitation, Chloe moved toward the little man, who instantly began screaming and trying to wiggle away from her. She drew a knife from her pocket and flicked open the blade.

Ryo screamed again. “No! Okay! It’s six-nine-four-five! Just don’t!”

I typed it in, and the phone unlocked. “Cool. It worked.”

“Hey!” Ryo screamed, and I looked up. Chloe was bent over him, reaching for Ryo’s pants.

“Whoa! What are you doing?”

Chloe paused and looked up at me. “You didn’t tell me to stop.”

“Jesus!” I said. “Stop! I don’t want to see that!”

My bodyguard straightened, folded her knife up, and slid it back in her pocket. As she returned to me, I eyed her.

“Would you have really cut it off?”

She met my gaze. “Order me again. Find out.”

“If this doesn’t give me anything, maybe I will.” I shot Ryo a dirty look before turning my attention back to his phone. “Did you guys go through this?”

“Yeah,” Grant said. “Everything was in Japanese at first. We got a tech guy who worked some special magic to flip everything to English. He downloaded all the emails, texts, and DMs. He’s going through them right now, I think. Pics aren’t very helpful. Just a bunch of women and anime titties. Nothing illegal we can use against him.”

“That checks out,” I snorted, navigating to his photos. Chloe was looking over my shoulder, and when I glanced at her, I caught her giving me a judgmental look.

“What?” I asked, innocently. “I’m just curious how much of a perv he is!”

It turned out that Ryo was one hell of a pervert. His files consisted of gigabytes of data—mostly a collection of folders and subfolders… each holding a category of dirty images and videos. His taste in erotic art was extensive, and I got lost scrolling through thumbnails of animated women in various states of undress and positions.

“This guy is meticulous with his porn,” I muttered, glancing up at Ryo. Grant had lifted his chair off the ground and set it upright. The younger Tanaka simply blinked up at me sullenly through swollen eyes. “Your organizational skills are actually impressive, man.”

When Ryo didn’t respond, Grant donkey punched him in the back of the head. “The man paid you a compliment.”

“Agh! Fuck!” Ryo cried out, trying to look over his shoulder at Grant, then at me. “Thank… thank you!”

The blow felt unnecessary, but not feeling very magnanimous, I didn’t make a thing of it. Instead, I went back to looking through the photos, scrolling through the real images this time—celebrities… porn stars… names I didn’t recognize…

“Holy shit!” I said, opening a folder labeled ‘Sister.’ Sure enough, there were images of Sachiko in various states of dress. There was a picture of her lying by a pool with sunglasses on in a black bikini, showing an interesting amount of cleavage just above crossed arms. Another one of her in a different bikini, lying back on her elbows, head tilted back, and looking at the camera. The third showed her in a pretty little dark green dress with shoulder straps and a swooping back, giving the viewer a smoky look from over her shoulder. Her lips were painted a dark shade, and her nails looked as if they had cost hundreds of dollars. All in all, there were two score or more of them… likely from social media.

“Well, this is interesting,” I said, showing Ryo an image of Sachiko lying on her bed and looking up at the camera, appearing as if she just woke up, but had likely spent twenty minutes prepping for that photo. “Got something you want to share with the class?”

Despite half his face splattered with his own blood, I could see a blush creep across his pockmarked cheeks.

“Does your sister know you feel a certain way about her?” I asked, backing out of the Sachiko folder.

He didn’t respond.