Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 66993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66993 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
“And underneath?” Hiro asked.
“We’ll find out what he’s looking for underneath.” I smiled faintly and left the window. “Now let’s go deal with the fucking Lion so I can get back to my beautiful Tiger.”
Hiro shook his head. “I’ve never been a fan of cats.”
Chapter six
The Whole Beast
Kenji
I left my office with Reo on my left and Hiro on my right.
The rest of the Dragon’s Claws followed behind us. Each Claw had been personally sharpened by Hiro.
He’d been born and raised in the alleys of Nishinari, one of the most violent wards in Osaka, before my father dragged his mother and him to Tokyo. She’d been my father’s favorite prostitute turned live-in mistress.
Because of that, Hiro had grown up in the shadows of both power and neglect. My father always saw him as a mistake. His mother was too broken to love him properly.
But where most children cracked, Hiro sharpened. He learned to stab before he learned to write. To kill before he could kiss.
So the ones who walked behind us—the Dragon’s Claws—they were his. Hiro’s brothers by bloodless bond. They’d scraped life together in dark corners.
Kaede walked with eerie calm, platinum-blond hair tied into a low knot at the nape of his neck. His face was too perfect like something sculpted for a museum display. But the illusion stopped at his eyes—one real, one glass—both cold. His hands could snap a wrist mid-conversation and never spill a drop of blood.
Kaede didn’t like mess.
He preferred his violence clean.
Daisuke drifted behind us, never too far from Hiro, but never fully seen either. His mohawk—a sharp black ridge cutting over his otherwise still silhouette—was the only loud thing about him. He moved like smoke—elusive—and when he struck, it was a brisk wind through dry leaves.
Sudden, quiet, and final.
Toma flanked the other side with swagger and threat. Both sides of his head were shaved, leaving a single unruly strip of bright purple hair running down the center like a wild flame.
Tattoos crawled up his throat and vanished beneath his collar—inked stories of pain and rage. He wore a grin too wide to be sane, like someone who’d bitten into something feral and liked the taste.
Toma didn’t care about subtlety.
He wanted to be seen.
He wanted to be feared.
Then there were the twins—Aki and Yuki. As always, their pace was in perfect sync and their black hair was slicked-back. They both had identical scars beneath their chins. Apparently, they’d been burned from a night long ago, when Hiro pulled them out of a house fire.
The twins rarely spoke, but when they did, it was usually in fragments, as if finishing each other’s thoughts. They fought the same way—mirrors reflecting the exact same violence.
The Claws didn’t just follow Hiro—they worshipped him. And because they gave their loyalty to Hiro. . .they belonged to me.
Next came the Dragon’s Fangs.
My elite monsters in tailored suits.
They joined us as we moved through the club, slipping from shadowed alcoves and velvet-draped corridors.
One by one, they fell into formation without a word.
I didn’t call for them because I never needed to.
They always remained waiting for me.
Kaoru appeared first, striding from one of the champagne lounges with two women still clinging to his lapels, both of them flushed and laughing as they kissed his cheeks and whispered goodbye.
He murmured something to make them giggle harder, then peeled himself away with a wink that could melt gold.
The moment he fell into step behind me, the charm drained from his face like a switch flipped off. Tall, slender, and heartbreak-handsome, Kaoru looked like he should be serenading someone under the moonlight.
Perhaps, it was the long pink hair.
But his custom Colt .45 rested snug beneath his jacket and his hands could dismantle a man the way a pianist broke silence.
Yoichi followed next, emerging from the high-roller suite upstairs and dragging a trail of cologne and cigarette smoke behind him.
He met our pace and ran his fingers over his smooth, bald head.
A rifle case dangled over one shoulder. His designer jacket was unbuttoned at the chest, revealing the silver wolf tooth charm that hung low around his neck.
Yoichi made violence look beautiful. He killed with flourish. Gambled with lives. And had a habit of quoting haikus while reloading a sniper rifle.
“A kill without beautiful words,” he once said. “Is just a death without meaning.”
Rin and Satoshi appeared next, stepping in sync from the private bathhouse wing.
Rin, as always, looked like royalty gone rogue—tall, clean-shaven, and dressed in all white. His hair fell to his waist but tonight it was braided in one long plait.
He had descended from a once-powerful Kyoto family and carried himself with the restraint of someone still bound by ritual.
Poison was his preferred weapon.
Silence his preferred mood. His signature moves were subtle deaths—a glass of wine, a brush of fingertips, a goodbye that came two days too late. He collected antique combs and never traveled without a tin of herbal breath mints, a detail none of us understood but all respected.