Page 10 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
I don’t love Mina in some romance hero way. I’m not sure what we share could ever be deemed love to a normal person. We are both too broken to ever be able to have that bright shiny clean beautiful thing sonnets are written about. But she is the air I breathe.
“So,” our piece of shit captor says conversationally, “I’m trying to decide what will be the most satisfying. Mina, maybe you can help me decide. Should I fuck you in front of your lover, and let him see my triumph, or should I just go ahead and kill him in front of you, and then take my prize? I think fucking me while covered in the blood of your old master should drive home who you now truly belong to. We don’t take kindly to theft in my family.”
“Kill me and let her go,” I say. “You don’t want your father’s sloppy seconds. She’s a terrible lay. I keep her around because she’s just such a sad little pathetic puppy, so eager to do my will.”
When I look at Mina, she’s not looking at me, she’s looking at Matsumoto with pure vengeance in her gaze. Why didn’t shebring weapons? Why? How could she do this? I expected to see hurt from my words, but she knows what I’m doing. This is all just to hurt me, to punish me. If I can get him to kill me, maybe he’ll let Mina go. After all, he doesn’t truly want her. He can have any woman he wants. Mina will lose her appeal to him the second the light goes out of my eyes.
I want to believe this. I want to believe it so much I’m willing to lie to myself, something I very rarely do. But deep down I know he won’t let her go. I know if he kills me, her last chance in this world is gone. Sacrificing myself for her is not some noble act. It’s the coward’s way because I can’t stand to watch her be hurt. I can’t live knowing I’ve failed her in such a complete way, that my entire life has led up to this one crucial moment of failure.
Nothing that has happened up to this point matters now, because I have ruined her. It would have been better if I’d never come into her life.
He draws a gun, and Mina freezes for a moment, her breath stopping for a split second before she remembers how to keep herself alive once again.
“Or… here’s an idea…” Matsumoto says… “I could shoot your lover so that he won’t die immediately and then fuck you while he bleeds out. It’s the best of both worlds. What do you think, My Love?”
I’m surprised she hasn’t turn and run. But we both know there’s a guard outside this door. Junior here may not have the full-service level of protection he’d otherwise have, but still, one strong man is enough given my state and Mina’s helplessness. Once she came in, she sealed her fate. I pull again at the shackles as though I could break solid metal. I can’t let this happen.
I want to scream at her. I want to kill her. I want to punish her. How could she betray us like this? Coming here. She has to know I can’t be saved. We can’t be saved. She should have let medie here and stayed safe at the house. She has to know it’s what I would want. And yet she defied me by coming here.
I bought this woman. Iownthis woman. She is meant to obey me, and she knows she’s done the opposite. My word is motherfucking law, and she knows this. I want to string her up in my dungeon and show her what real punishment is, but I know I’ll never get out of here for that.
All I can manage is a few low words. “Why didn’t you leave me, Mina?”
She doesn’t even look at me. Her eyes are trained on Matsumoto and the gun he has trained on me. I expect fear in her gaze. I expect her to start begging or pleading, to revert back to the terrified woman I first met. I know she’s been different since Japan, but surely notthisdifferent.
There’s no fear or begging, just a simmering white hot heat emanating off her. A murderous rage. I know that look. I’ve had that look.
And yet. She has no weapons. She has no way to act out this rage. She isn’t physically strong enough. She has no training in any martial art. As far as I know she’s never even trained with the weapons she clearly doesn’t have.
I know she didn’t just decide to dress this way. Matsumoto ordered her to dress this way, no doubt so he could clearly see she had no guns on her.
What happens next, happens in slow motion. The slowness of what I see makes me fear for her. Matsumoto is watching me, gun on me, the slide is racked, he’s ready to fire, and I can only assume he’s going with hisshoot me, then fuck her while I bleed out,plan. It enrages me, but I’m more helpless than she is right now and that’s not saying much.
Except, that she isn’t helpless. I watch her hand go behind her to the back of the corset to pull out a knife.
Time speeds up from this moment, as though someone is fast forwarding through a movie to get to the good part. I catch the glint of metal as she hurls it through the air at Matsumoto, his attention still on me, the gun fires, but goes wide. Then comes the ricochet.
The stupid motherfucker is using a .22. It’s a great gun for close range assassination. But this isn’t a classic close-range assassination.
“Cover, Mina!” It’s the only words I can think to say as I hunch in on myself, as though I could stop the bullet if it decides to bounce off the walls and into me. But she’s too furious to think about that.
The knife hits Matsumoto in the shoulder, surprising him, and causing him to drop the gun. At the same time, the bouncing bullet decides to land in his chest, stopped by his bullet-proof vest. He howls in both pain and surprise from the unexpected knife before rounding on Mina.
“You Bitch, I’ll enjoy making you pay for that. Maybe I’ll just put you in the other chains and…”
But before he can finish his threat, Mina rips the sides of the corset apart, and I realize she’s altered the garment to hide my throwing stars. She storms toward him, throwing the metal stars, no doubt knowing that without training, she’s got to be close range to hit her mark. One embeds deep into his thigh, another into his upper arm. He curses, but before he can lunge for her, she’s got his gun.
All of a sudden his rage turns to fear. It’s always like this with the biggest bullies. They’re so tough while they have the upper hand, but the second they don’t anymore, they’re ready to plead and beg. I’m not sure if he’s yet ready for that with Mina, but he’s in pain from the stars and the knife. He’s losing blood. He’s almost there. Almost to the sweet point of coming apart and begging.
She holds the gun way more steady than I would expect, and it’s in this moment I’m grateful she went dark and hard like me. I’m grateful her emotions got muted like mine. Because it’s the only thing protecting her. Otherwise, the adrenaline would be fucking her up right now. Her hand would be shaking too hard to aim the gun. She never would have gotten those stars in the target.
“You’re not going to use that,” Matsumoto says, now entering the bargaining stage.
“I’m giving you one chance to live,” she says, her voice steady and dead calm. That’s my girl. “Chain yourself to the wall, tell me where the key to the shackles is, and Brian and I will just leave. You leave the country, and we’ll let you live.”
That is absolutely not happening. She can’t make promises for me. But she shoots me a hard glare, and I don’t dare open my mouth to say it. I don’t think she’s being truthful with him anyway, but he doesn’t know that. It’s not as though she’s under any obligation to be honorable with the man who wishes to murder me and take her captive.
Matsumoto—obviously believing that despite her star and knife throwing of moments before, she doesn’t have the heart to kill someone—starts to move in the direction of the shackles.
