Kidnapped by the Werewolf Mafioso

Chapter Six

AKIKO

The heavy bag explodes on day six.

Not the chain this time—the leather itself ruptures under my fist, sand and sawdust fountaining across the gym floor like arterial spray. I stare at the destruction, flexing fingers that should be broken but aren't. My knuckles show no damage despite six days of constant impact.

The bond pulses awareness of him two floors up. Always there, like a splinter working deeper with each heartbeat. I've managed to avoid Giancarlo since our sparring session, timing my gym visits for when he's occupied with business. The building's patterns are predictable—morning meetings, afternoon violence, evening reports. I exist in the spaces between his schedule.

"Need a new bag?"

The voice makes me spin, hands already up. A man stands by the elevator—mid-thirties, scarred like a roadmap of bad decisions. He smells like gunpowder and wolf, carrying himself with the easy confidence of someone who's killed enough to stop counting.

"You're one of his." Not a question.

"Tommy. Head of security for floors twelve through eighteen." He eyes the destroyed bag with professional interest. "Heard we had a new resident who likes breaking things. Didn't believe it until now."

"Just training."

"Sure." His grin shows too many teeth. "You know, some of us spar if you need something that fights back."

The offer surprises me. Six days of isolation, speaking only to Quinn or Isabella when they bring meals, and now this scarred wolf wants to play.

"You're not afraid?"

"Lady, I've worked for the Morelli family for fifteen years. I've learned to fear discriminately." He shrugs. "Besides, boss says you're pack now. Pack helps pack train."

Pack. The word tastes foreign, implies belonging I didn't agree to. But six days of destroying equipment has left me restless. Hunting for limits I haven't found yet.

"Fine. Ring rules or real?"

"Let's start with ring and see what happens."

We move to the sparring space. He strips his jacket, revealing more scars and solid muscle. Not bulky—functional strength built through violence rather than vanity. When he moves, it's with economy that speaks of actual combat experience.

"Marco says you put the boss on his ass," he comments, wrapping his hands. "That true?"

"He let me."

"Still counts." Tommy rolls his shoulders, loosening up. "Ready when you are."

I attack without warning—habit from the convent where announcing intentions got you beaten. He blocks the first strike, surprise flickering across his features at the speed. Adjusts quickly, giving ground while measuring my range.

"Okay," he mutters. "Real deal then."

The kid gloves come off. He stops treating me like something fragile and starts fighting like his life depends on it. Good. His style is military mixed with street—brutal, efficient, designed to end threats quickly. But I've been ending threats since I could walk.

I slip his cross, drive an elbow into his ribs. Feel bone give slightly before his wolf healing kicks in. He grunts, retaliates with a knee that clips my hip. Pain flares and fades, my own healing already compensating.

"Fuck." He spits blood, grinning wider. "You're not just trained. You're good."

We trade combinations that would cripple humans. I catalog his patterns—drops his left shoulder before hooks, telegraphs leg kicks with a slight hip rotation. He's skilled but predictable. Seventeen years of fighting Sister Evangeline's "special" students taught me to read opponents like scripture.

The end comes when he overcommits to a takedown. I sprawl, trap his arm, apply a kimura that threatens to separate his shoulder. He taps frantically against the mat.

"Jesus Christ." He laughs from the ground, rotating his healing joint. "Where'd they grow you?"

"Convent."

"Remind me to stay away from nuns." He accepts my hand up, no wounded pride in the gesture. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Maybe."

But word spreads through whatever network his soldiers use. The next day brings three challengers. The day after, five. By the end of the week, I'm running an informal fight club in Giancarlo's basement. His men line up to test themselves against the boss's mate, each loss teaching me more about supernatural physiology.

Wolves heal fast but joints remain vulnerable. Vampires move like water but burn energy quickly. The thing that might be a ghoul has no pain response but limited flexibility. Each opponent reveals weaknesses I file away for later use.

Between sessions, I explore.

The building stretches twenty-five stories into Chicago sky, but the elevator panel shows thirty floors. Geometry that shouldn't work but do. I start at the top, working down through Giancarlo's kingdom.

The penthouse spans three levels—his office, private quarters, and what seems to be a war room filled with maps marking territory in blood-red ink. I avoid these floors after dawn, when his presence fills them like smoke.

Floor twenty-two houses Isabella's medical suite. She nods when I pass but doesn't force interaction, professional distance I appreciate. Twenty-one through nineteen contain guest quarters, all empty. Eighteen buzzes with security monitors and enough weapons to arm a small country.

"Snooping?"

I turn to find another wolf watching me. Female, early twenties, with the kind of pretty that hides razors.

"Learning," I correct.

"Same thing." She extends a hand. "Sophia. I'm a dealer in one of the casinos."

I don't take the hand. "Akiko."

"I know who you are." No offense at the rejection, just amusement. "Everyone knows who you are. Boss's mate who tried to kill him with his own knife. Respect."

"I failed."

"Still tried. That's more than most would dare." She gestures at the monitors. "Want the tour?"

I follow her through floors of impossible architecture. Fifteen through twelve house soldiers and their families. Apartments that shouldn't fit hold entire households, children playing in halls that stretch longer than the building's footprint allows.

"Spatial expansion," Sophia explains. "Fae contractor owed the boss a favor. Kids need room to run, especially the ones who turn furry."

Floor eleven makes me stop. A library that smells of old paper and older magic, books in languages humanity never spoke. Floor ten holds an armory that makes the convent's weapons seem like toys. Nine contains a kitchen that feeds the building, run by something with too many arms who hums while cooking.

"What is everyone?" I ask as we descend past a group of children who shimmer between solid and translucent.

"Whatever they need to be. Boss doesn't discriminate based on species." Sophia leads me past apartments that smell of sulfur, ozone, deep earth. "Long as you're loyal to the family, you've got a home here."

Floor seven houses a garden that shouldn't exist indoors. Plants that glow with their own light, trees bearing fruit that smells like memories. A woman tends them with hands that bark instead of skin, nodding as we pass.

"Dryad," Sophia supplies. "Lost her tree to urban development. Boss gave her sanctuary and a new grove."

Each floor reveals more impossibilities. Families of creatures the convent taught me to fear, all living stacked like sardines in defiance of natural law. All sworn to Giancarlo Morelli, the winter wolf who rules through violence and apparently extensive supernatural housing programs.

Floor three holds a school. Actual children learning from a teacher whose shadow moves independently. They study mathematics alongside ward construction, history mixed with defensive magic.

"Can't send them to public school," Sophia explains. "Not when little Amy might accidentally turn her desk into a portal."

Floor two houses what looks like a community center. Game room, communal kitchen, space where residents gather. The noise hits like a physical force—dozens of conversations in languages human throats can't shape.

The ground floor lobby looks normal until you know what to look for. Then you see the ward lines worked into marble, the weapons cached behind decorative panels, the way certain shadows refuse to match their sources.

"Eddie!" Sophia calls to the doorman. "Come meet the boss's mate."

The young man who approaches makes me step back instinctively. Six-foot-six and built like a fortress, but that's not what triggers my alarm. It's the way reality bends slightly around him, like heat shimmer off summer asphalt.

"Ma'am." His voice rumbles from somewhere deeper than his chest should allow. Southeast Asian features on a face that seems too young for his presence. "Heard you've been giving the boys upstairs hell."

"They asked for it."

His grin reveals teeth that belong in a shark documentary. "Good. They get lazy without proper motivation." He glances at Sophia. "Lola wants to meet her."

"Lola wants to meet everyone," Sophia says. "But yeah, probably should make that introduction."

They lead me to a basement apartment I missed in my explorations. The door opens before we knock, revealing a woman who makes my instincts scream conflicting messages. Danger. Safety. Predator. Grandmother.

"Ay, finally!" She's maybe five feet tall, silver hair in a neat bun, wearing a floral housedress that belongs in a different century. "Come in, come in. I made adobo."

The apartment smells like garlic and vinegar and something else—copper and moss and deep water. She bustles us inside, movements too fluid for her apparent age.

"Lola Maria, this is Akiko," Eddie says. "Boss's mate."

"I have eyes, Edmund." She studies me with dark eyes that hold depths. "Hmm. Japanese? But mixed with something else. Sit, child. You're too skinny."

I find myself sitting at a kitchen table covered in lace doilies and protection charms. She loads a plate with rice and meat that smells impossibly good, sets it front of me with grandmother authority that transcends species.

"Eat. Then we talk."

The food tastes like comfort I didn't know existed. Each bite warms from inside out, nothing like the nutrition bars and protein mash of my childhood. I clean the plate while she watches, approval radiating from every line.

"Good. Skin and bones, these young ones." She refills the plate without asking. "Eddie, go watch the door. Sophia, don't you have a job?"

They leave without argument. Apparently, Lola Maria's word carries weight even among monsters.

"Now." She settles across from me, hands folded. "Tell me about your mother."

The question hits like a slap. "Why?"

"Because you have her look. Not the features—the weight. Women who carry old power always do." She reaches across, touches my hand with fingers that feel like cool water. "What was she?"

"Kitsune. Nine-tailed, though she hid eight." The words spill without permission. "Harrison—my father—killed her when I was six."

"Ah." Sympathy without pity. "And you've been caged since. I can smell the wolfsbane, child. Years of it scarring your system."

"The convent said it was for my protection."

"The convent lied." Matter-of-fact, like stating the sky is blue. "Wolfsbane doesn't protect. It suppresses. Keeps the wild things sleeping until they forget how to wake." She studies me. "But you're waking now."

"I don't want to."

"Want and need rarely align." She stands, moves to a cabinet filled with bottles that glow faintly. "Your mother bound things to your bloodline, yes? Servants? Guardians?"

My heart stutters. "I—when I was young, I had imaginary friends. But they vanished when I turned twelve."

"When the suppressants reached critical mass." She pulls down a bottle filled with what looks like liquid moonlight. "Not imaginary, child. Yokai. Japanese spirits tied to your maternal line. The wolfsbane pushed them out of reach, but the bond broke those chains."

She pours the liquid into a tea cup, slides it across. "Drink. It will help."

"What is it?"

"Nothing harmful. I'm aswang, not stupid. Poisoning the boss's mate would end badly for everyone." She grins, showing teeth that multiply rows back into her throat. "This just... thins the veil a bit. Makes it easier for them to find you."

I drink because refusing seems more dangerous than compliance. It tastes like starlight and old copper, sliding down my throat with weight that defies gravity. The world shivers.

"There we go." Lola Maria's voice comes from very far away. "Let them through, child. They've been waiting so patiently."

The air in front of me tears like paper.

A figure steps through—tall, wearing robes that shift between fabric and shadow. An oni mask covers his face, but I know him. Know the way he moves, the careful precision of ancient things trying not to break the modern world.

"Akiko-sama." His voice sounds like temple bells. "Finally, you can see us again."

More tears in reality. A woman materializes, kimono made of winter breath and frost patterns. Twins who might be teenagers if teenagers were made of shadow and sharp edges. An old man with a briefcase that hums with impossible weight. A young warrior whose body crackles with electricity.

"Kazuki. Noriko. Yui and Rei. Tetsu. Hanzo." The names come without thought, memory crashing through twelve years of pharmaceutical fog. "You're real."

"We never left," Noriko says, ice-voice carrying old grief. "Even when the poison made you blind to us. We waited. Guarded. Kept the worse things away while you slept."

"Worse things?"

The twins exchange looks that suggest entire conversations. "The ones who wanted Matsuki-sama dead. They know what you carry. What you'll become when the ninth tail wakes."

"I don't have—"

"Not yet," Tetsu interrupts, setting his briefcase on Lola's table with care. "But soon. The wolf's bite started something that can't be stopped. You're becoming what your mother intended."

"A weapon," I say bitterly.

"A guardian," Kazuki corrects. "Though the distinction often blurs."

They cluster around me, these nightmares from my childhood who were never nightmares at all. Just inheritance. Just family of a different sort, tied to my blood through promises older than Chicago.

"The winter wolf who claimed you," Hanzo says, electricity sparking between his fingers. "He's strong. Dangerous. But there are worse things coming."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"Because it's true." Noriko touches my face with fingers cold as January. "You must not leave the building. Not yet. The city crawls with hunters who remember your mother's power. Who know what waits in your blood."

"I'm a prisoner then."

"Protected," Kazuki corrects again. "There's a difference."

"Is there?"

Lola Maria laughs, sound like water over stones. "Child, in this city, sometimes prison is the safest place to be. Especially when your prison holds the winter wolf of Chicago." She starts clearing dishes with movements that suggest more limbs than visible. "Stay close to Giancarlo. Whatever else he is, he's possessive about what's his. That possessiveness will keep you alive until you're strong enough to keep yourself alive."

The yokai nod agreement, their forms already starting to fade as whatever Lola gave me wears off.

"We'll be close," Kazuki promises as he dissolves. "Watching. Waiting. When you need us, call."

"I don't know how."

"You will." Noriko's smile is frost on windows. "When the time comes, blood remembers."

They vanish like morning mist, leaving me alone with Lola Maria and too many questions. The aswang hums while washing dishes, pretending the last half hour was normal.

"What am I?" I ask the silence.

"Becoming," she says simply. "Same as all of us. The trick is surviving long enough to become something worth being."

I leave her apartment with more questions than answers, elevator carrying me back to floors that suddenly seem less prison and more... sanctuary? The building thrums with life—monsters and their children, predators playing house, all held together by a winter wolf's territorial claim.

My wolf stirs under my skin, responding to pack-scent even though I don't want her to. This place pulses with belonging I didn't ask for, safety I don't trust, home I refuse to acknowledge.

But the yokai warned against leaving. Hunters in the city who remember my mother. Who know about the ninth tail I don't even possess yet.

I return to the gym because it's the only thing that makes sense. Tommy waits with three others, eager for their daily beating. I oblige, working through forms that feel more natural now. Not just Sister Evangeline's teaching or my mother's secret lessons. Something older, written in blood and bone.

When I finally exhaust them all, I'm alone with the heavy bags and my own heartbeat. The bond pulses awareness—Giancarlo's in his office, dealing with territory disputes. Always there, magnetic north I orbit without choosing.

The yokai's warning echoes with each strike: stay inside. Stay close. Stay safe.

For now.