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)
The basement spun once and steadied. I touched the soul pin at my robe to ground myself.
Yoichi rushed to my side, but didn’t grab me. Perhaps, he didn’t want me to learn any more of his secrets. And honestly. . .I didn’t want to learn any more either.
I straightened. “I want to go visit Kiko.”
“Me too.” Deja stood. “And you have to catch me up on who Kiko is.”
“Oh, girl. She’s the whole reason why the war is on this island.”
“Oh, word?” Deja frowned. “Then, fuck that bitch.”
“Exactly.”
The doctor got in front of me. “Tora, we think you should rest—”
"There’s a war on the island. There will be no rest for anyone."
Especially that bitch.
Chapter ten
A Fucking Queen
Nyomi
The whole walk to Kiko's room, I caught Deja up on the drama—Kiko possibly being pregnant by Kenji and Hiro, Kiko being a mean girl when I first saw her in the mansion, her trying to crash the Cocktail Party, and of course Kiko calling the Fox to give him the location of the island.
Deja listened and didn't interrupt me once.
By the time we reached the door, Deja had her hand on her gun. The only calming thing was that it was still holstered.
Babies cried somewhere down the hall. Two of them. Their cries came thin through the walls, one a little higher than the other.
I swallowed.
Those are the twins. They’re scared.
I knew it the same way I knew the basement was on the east side of the Bamboo Garden building. The same way I knew what Yoichi was and that he was bound by an ancient secret. The way knowledge had been arriving in me since I opened my eyes—whole, unexplained, and certain.
Hiro's boys. What will he say when he finds out? Is he ready to be a father?
Tension gathered at my shoulders.
Two of my men walked in front of me with their hands resting on their guns.
Four more walked behind.
Yoichi stayed on my side, but kept space between us.
Deja looked at me. “So this bitch has been trying you over and over and you haven’t checked her?”
“Apparently not enough.”
“So then you know what you have to do now?”
“Yes.”
“You need me to—”
“No. I’m doing all of this myself. I have to.”
We stopped at the door.
My men in front stopped too. The lead one looked over his shoulder and waited.
The cold concrete bit up through the soles of my bare feet. The red ritual robe hung soft around me. Reo's soul pin sat at my collarbone.
Hmmm.
I touched the pin.
The babies cried and stopped, and I just. . .knew the nurses were soothing them right now and the twins somehow were soothing each other by squeezing each other’s tiny hands, and that they’d need an incubator.
Fuck. I have to see them, but first this. . .
I nodded to the lead guard. “Go ahead.”
He opened the door and held it for us.
We all walked in.
Inside Kiko's room, two more guards stood at attention by the bed. They turned the moment the door opened, and their hands moved to their weapons.
Once they saw me, their eyes went wide and their hands came off their guns at the same time.
Yoichi walked to the edge of the bed.
Both guards stepped back and stood against the wall.
Kiko and her entourage had been talking. They stopped when we entered.
Kiko was propped up against three pillows in a hospital bed that didn't belong in this part of the island. Her face was pale and damp. Her hair was matted along her forehead. A silk white robe hung off her soaked at the collar with sweat.
All the fucking trouble you started. . .and all the times I should have let Kenji kill you. . .
Kiko tried to sit up straighter when she saw me and couldn't quite get there.
Her cousins flanked the bed. The one on the left had a hand half inside her jacket and froze it there when she clocked my guards. The one on the right just stared.
Frowning, I stepped further into the room.
Deja remained next to me with her hand still resting on Betty Boop in the holster. I hadn’t known until tonight that Deja had shot a gun three times in her life. The fact just came to me when I looked at her gun in the hallway earlier.
The information wasn’t even about Betty Boop, yet I just knew that once when Deja was ten, her mother’s boyfriend snuck into her bedroom and Deja pulled out her dead father’s gun from under her pillow and shot him in the balls.
That was the first time Deja ever shot a gun.
I also knew that once he fell to the ground screaming and her mother woke up to find the chaos. Well. . .her mother grabbed the gun and without asking any further questions, shot the man in the head, right in front Deja.