Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Yet. . .for one moment his eyes met mine, and everything we were not saying sat there in the space between us.
Was it worth it? Will it ever be worth it? And how many more before sunrise?
I held his gaze and buried the horror for now—the boy, the woman, the rising death toll, and the block.
"Get everyone in position." My voice came out cold. "My father will be on that jet soon."
Reo studied me for one more breath and then signaled to the Fangs, Claws, and top Scales to follow. “Let’s go.”
Chapter four
Change of Plan
Kenji
All my men came over and gathered around me.
And I saw the horror and devastation on every face. The Claws wore it plain. The Fangs were better at hiding their devastation. Still, a few had their jaws tight and gazes fixed on the dead screens. Aki and Yuki went pale beneath their battle calm.
But it was Hiro's face that cut deepest.
My brother stood with the lollipop forgotten at the corner of his mouth, and the war-readiness he'd carried back from the balcony was gone. In its place sat something raw and young, the boy I grew up with.
He shook his head slowly. "Why do you think Akiro killed so many innocent people?"
The question stabbed at my chest.
I opened my mouth, and I did not know what was going to come out of it. But before I could answer, Reo did.
"It doesn't matter." Reo shook his head. "Let's make Akiro pay for what he just did to Tokyo."
The men moved as one, nodding their heads hard.
"For Tokyo," Hiro said quietly around the lollipop.
"For Tokyo," the Claws answered.
They had a villain now. A reason. A target with a face. Reo had handed them the one thing that turns horror into fuel, and they took it gratefully, because grief with nowhere to go eats a man alive and grief aimed at an enemy keeps him standing.
It was a gift.
It was also a lie.
I looked at Reo over the heads of the men, and Reo looked back at me, and in that single uncomfortable glance we said everything the others could not hear.
They will have to know one day.
I know.
Hiro especially.
I know.
I’m not going to be the one to tell him, Kenji.
I know.
The truth sat between us like a live round. One morning, when the ash had cooled and the dead were counted, Hiro would learn that the blood on those Tokyo streets traced back not to Akiro but to a phone call I had made to the Lion.
Hiro carried enough sorrow over the dead, and I was about to hand him a few hundred more.
“For Tokyo.” I cleared my throat and headed off.
At the war room door, Rin entered with his mask in his hands. The single braid he'd always worn had become two. Also, the weave now folded inward instead of outward. It wasn't the work of whoever usually braided his hair.
Maybe Deja had braided them before he left.
All I knew was that both braids gleamed with an unnatural sheen. Enough poison coated every strand to make them shimmer and shine. Wicked hooked blades capped each braid. I wondered if those had been Deja’s idea too.
The stylist? Preparing my Fang for war? She is worthy indeed.
I lowered my focus to his mask.
It was Shuten-dōji.
The demon king of Mount Ōe. Legend claimed he'd been an abandoned boy raised alone in a temple before becoming a king of monsters because no one ever came back for him. The mask had a red flush across the cheeks and a sad set to the gold and black brow.
I stopped in front of Rin. "Did you make sure Deja got off the island?"
Rin frowned. "She wouldn’t leave, so I covered her in more poison and put her with the medical staff under the bamboo garden."
I quirked my brows. “She wouldn’t leave?”
Rin's mouth twitched at one corner. "She fought me on it."
Hiro got to my side and pulled the lollipop out of his mouth. "How bad?"
Rin shook his head. "She called Akiro's men a bunch of bitch ass punks and told me she was not running from anyone. Then, she showed me her cute little gun she’d brought with her from New York. She planned to stay right in the villa with her sleeping friend and said if anyone came through the door, she would blast them."
Reo blinked. “Sleeping friend?”
At that moment, Satoshi stepped forward fast.
His mask was already on his face. Gozu. The ox-head. One of the two guardians who stood at the gates of hell and decided which souls passed through.
“The sleeping friend is some tall white guy who tried to hug her earlier. He was supposed to wake up by now, but perhaps I applied too much on her skin.” Rin shrugged. “He was too big for people to carry. She felt bad leaving him alone. So I got my men to pick him up. Then, I had to carry her down the stairs."