Kia Ora...

We've almost halfway through 2022... and I should be complaining about how bitterly cold it is and that I'm not looking forward to winter finally hitting us in June. Except the weather would need to be wintery for that to happen. There's definitely been a few days when the grass has been tinged white, and currently there's a storm racing up from the south that's brought with it icy cold winds, hail, plus a bit of snow for the higher regions... but it's still nowhere near what late autumn should be like, not with temperatures that usually hovering around 20 deg Celsius instead of 12 or 10 deg. I'm not going to complain about it too loudly, it's nice not to have a really high power bill.

Today will be the last chapter of Caught (Smoke and Shadows 1)!! It's reached place where I'm happy to write 'The End' on the draft. The final version once ready to publish may get an epilogue added, but right now I'm not sure what that epilogue would look like.... and of course this won't be the last time we see Takeshi and Yoshitake as they're bound to make guest appearances in future yakuza romances.

Updates

• Deviation (Nagoya Crimes Two) has come back from my beta/proofreader. I will spend the next couple of days working through the edits, formatting it ready for publishing, and writing the blurb....
• Knight (Crime Lords Four) will be my next focus. I want to get this one finished by the end of June/early July.
• Caught (Smoke and Shadows 1): Now that the first draft is finished I will work on getting the revisions for it done...checking to make sure there aren't any plot holes or contradictory events and get it off to my beta/proofreader. Publish date is yet to be determined as my intention to is to publish it only on Smashwords once they finish there merger with Draft2Digital... but this could change.
• Also currently working on the super secret short story which has a deadline of September.
• In addition to all this... I will also start working on Runway Riot (House of Bolton 4) an FF Model x Mafia bodyguard story.

Caught (Smoke and Shadows 1)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Killing Shimadaira hadn’t been Takeshi’s plan. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. Takeshi had fully intended to kill Shimadaira, the old ward boss too much of a threat to his position as the head of the Shirokawa-gumi. He’d just not planned for it to happen in such a dramatic fashion nor so close to the start of the meeting. There’d been information Takeshi had wanted to glean from Shimadaira that couldn’t be spoken by a dead man’s lips. He’d wanted to root out the man’s allies, those who followed him out of fear while not realising that Takeshi was the one they should have feared most.

A quick glance over the stunned meeting, the shocked, angry expressions flickering over the gathered Ward Bosses’ faces gave him a hint as to who might fall into Shimadaira’s camp, but many focused their anger directly at Takeshi.

Instead of uncovering his enemies, he might have created a few more.

Fear was a fantastic motivator, but it never guaranteed that those who feared you would offer up their loyalty, or if they’d seek to kill you the moment your back was turned.

Unfortunately killing everyone at the meeting wasn’t an option either, no matter how damn tempting it was to redecorate the room with blood.

“Well? Does anyone have a problem with this?” he asked, gesturing at Shimadaira’s still warm corpse. “Share the same views as this worthless traitor?”

The chorus of denial that spilled into the room, heads shaking vigorously while trembling hands twitched on the knees of the men who’d all shared sake with Takeshi only weeks’ ago. But it was the men whose denials weren’t backed up with fear, but thinly veiled hatred that peaked Takeshi’s attention. Curious too when many of the men currently sending dangerous glares his way weren’t ones they’d suspected of working with Shimadaira.

“Tsuda, Noshida… do you have an issue with me killing Shimadaira?”

“No, Boss. No issue at all,” Noshida, the boss in charge of the Tennoji Ward replied. “Glad the old bastard’s dead… he was no friend of mine.”

“Mine neither,” Tsuda, the boss of the Hirano Ward added. “If anything, I’m just pissed I didn’t get to kill him myself.”

“Oh? And why’s that?” Takeshi had a fair idea of what Shimadaira had been up to in both their wards along with the Fukushima and Namiwa Wards, but he’d been unaware that the bosses’ in charge had known what Shimadaira was doing.

“Shimadaira has been whispering into the ears of my younger members, making them promises he had no means of following through on. Sent his own men into disrupt my businesses and tried to make it look as though it was one of our enemies,” Tsuda answered.

“And you didn’t think to bring this to my attention.” He drummed his fingers on the desk behind him.

“I planned to Boss. I didn’t want to make accusations toward one of my fellow Ward Bosses without solid proof of their indiscretions.”

“You gained that proof, I’m guessing?”

“This morning, Boss.” An answer that was quickly echoed by the bosses for the Fukushima, Tennoji, and Namiwa Wards. “We all did after comparing notes and catching one of Shimadaira’s men mid-assassination attempt.”

Takeshi flicked his gaze across the rest of the Ward Bosses. He knew Tsuda’s words were the truth, having been told of Shimadaira’s plans to take out those who saw as being a threat to his attempt to gain the leadership of the Shirokawa-gumi, but that didn’t mean others believed it. Doubts over the validity of the Tsuda’s assertions were to be expected, and some might even believe Tsuda had been ordered to make the accusations by Takeshi or threatened to do so by Yoshitake in order to justify their killing of Shimadaira. Of course, Shimadaira had provided his own justification, even if Yoshitake had practically goaded him into reacting by killing Shimadaira’s grandson. And it was because those doubts were expected, Takeshi ignored the suspicious disbelieving looks scattered around the room and focused on those men whose expressions of surprise were more… fake.

“Is the man still alive?”

“For now,” Noshida growled. “But I want to kill him myself, once your done with him, Boss.”

He nodded his head in agreement. Takeshi could concede that Noshida had the right to dispense with the man who’d sought to kill him at Shimadaira’s behest. “Talk to Yoshitake after the meeting, he’ll tell you where to bring the man.”

It didn’t matter now whether those who still opposed Takeshi taking up the leadership of the Shirokawa-gumi came forward or not, the man Noshida had taken into custody would soon spill everything. Takeshi hazarded a guess that the would-be assassin knew an awful lot too if the nervous glances being exchanged by the few men Takeshi had already earmarked as being Shimadaira’s cronies. He looked forward to tracking them all down later at his own leisure… stealing their lives and ensuring those that filled their spots were loyal to him.

“Right does anyone else have an opinion?” he asked, clapping his hands together while staring at the gathered Ward Bosses with a gaze that dared anyone of them to step out of line. “No? Well, then, good… now there’s just a few more unrelated matters left to be discussed and then you can all go back to earning money for the Shirokawa-gumi.” Takeshi might have shifted the conversation toward more mundane matters, but the dangerous tension strung tight across the room remained and didn’t snap until he’d dismissed the last Shirokawa-gumi Ward Boss.

Every breath his enemies took, every beat of their heart now counted down to their deaths, and they knew it. It wasn’t a fate they could run from anymore, and the war they’d tried to instigate had been lost.

Takeshi’s place at the head of the Shirokawa-gumi no longer disputed.

THE END

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Thank you for everyone for reading Caught (Smoke and Shadows 1) and I hope you not only enjoyed the story, but seeing the chaos that reigns in my mind while write...

My next newsletter serial won't be one continuous story, but a collection of bonus and deleted scenes from the books set in Mandy Greenwood's Greertown Universe which includes the Crime Lords Series and the Golden Decks Casino Series. It's a project I've been meaning to work on for a while, but always gets pushed aside, so I'm hoping by doing it this way, it'll finally get finished.

Not read either series?

Crime Lords Series

• Arranged Marriage
• MMM
• Mafia
• Bi Awakening
• Betrayal
• Gang War

Grab Book One - Kings - Here

Flex (Golden Decks Casino 1)

• Sports Romance
• Best Friends to Lovers
• Cash strapped gymnast joins an underground fight circuit to pay the bills
• Bisexual Character
• Mafia run Casino
• Sports Injury

Grab it Here!