He turned to the right and walked to the raised promenade that ran parallel to the sand. He popped his earbuds in and scrolled through his music until he found the playlist that he wanted. It was a compilation of seventies and eighties rock, and, when he tapped play, AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’ began. He broke into an easy stride, matching each step with Phil Rudd’s metronomic percussion, and settled into his run.

He relaxed into a loping pace and angled down to the line of the tide, enjoying the slap of his naked feet on the wet sand and the warm water that splashed up his ankles. He let his thoughts return to the previous night. He had called room service while Sakura was in the shower. He had dropped Victoria’s name, just as she had suggested, and had ordered a sashimi and seafood platter. The large foil tub, when it was delivered, was loaded with bamboo lobster, flower crab, king prawn, salmon, and yellowfin tuna. The seafood was covered with a generous helping of snapper Thai sauce and cocktail sauce and finished with a sprinkling of soy and fresh wasabi.

Sakura’s eyes had widened when Milton peeled back the foil lid. They had sat side by side on the villa’s small veranda, watching the twinkling lights of the fishing boats in the darkness of the bay, and eaten as much as they could.

They had talked for an hour. Sakura was determined to return to Tokyo and to Yamato. Milton had asked her what would happen when she got there, particularly without the drugs that she had agreed to deliver for the Nishimoto-kai. Sakura had not been able to answer the question.

As he ran, Milton thought through his options. He could do nothing. Leave Sakura to her own devices and move on. But that would make things worse. She would have no hope of removing herself from the situation in which she had found herself if Milton chose not to help.

The second option—and one to which he had given careful thought—was to find the premans whom Edwin had approached about selling the stolen contraband. He could recover the drugs, return them to Sakura, and then she could deliver them to the original buyers. She could return to Tokyo and, perhaps, negotiate the return of her son. But that option was full of problems, the most egregious being that it would make Milton complicit in the distribution of drugs, and he could not endorse that. He would be facilitating pain and misery and, as an addict, that was a line that he would not cross.