Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
His right eye socket was sunken, caved in from blunt force. His jaw was dislocated. His neck bruised with the shape of fingers
His lips were peeled back like he’d been screaming, yet his tongue had been severed mid-scream.
Oh. Reo did that.
My Roar hated screams. He grew up with them, right behind doors that never stayed locked long enough. Screams that tore through paper walls and haunted futons. Screams that sounded like his mother’s voice and never came with rescue.
Therefore in a battle, if Reo could slice off the man’s tongue first, he would, with no hesitation.
I took a few steps forward and stopped.
A dead man waited two feet away—half-splayed against the railing of the staircase. His skull caved in from a single, swift strike.
Kaoru’s work.
I didn’t even need to look at the body’s posture to know. It was the elegance of the wound—blunt trauma delivered at an angle meant to preserve the face while liquifying the brain.
Efficient.
Intimate.
Beautiful.
Kaoru’s Colt .45 was more for show. Death came from his hands.
My men were busy this evening.
The next corpse lay curled against the foot of a toppled bonsai display, mouth open, blood pooled from both ears. No signs of trauma.
He died from poison. Rin must have done that.
I took three steps forward.
To the left, an entire section of the wall had been splashed in arterial spray and a body was pinned to it with four knives in an X formation. One knife through the sternum. Another through the thigh. Two more through the hands.
Execution, not combat.
Satoshi killed him.
I continued forward.
Yoichi’s victim appeared next—a man folded over with a perfect hole through the temple. The entry wound was clean. The exit wound, not so much.
Hmmm.
There had to be more dead men in the building. If this was what the second floor looked like, then the first level must’ve been a banquet of blood—bodies collapsed between dining chairs, limbs draped over broken tables, lungs punctured and crushed. Blood pooling across those polished floors.
The deeper I walked into the blood-soaked corridor, the heavier my thoughts became.
Someone has betrayed me. Who could the traitor be?
These assassins knew about the dinner. The location. The timing. The fact that I would be unreachable for hours, distracted, exposed. Only a handful of people had that information. Even Reo hadn’t told the Eyes and Fangs where we would be. They’d been rerouted here only when the moment demanded it.
But this ambush?
It had required coordination. Maps. Timing. Patience. At least several hours of planning—maybe more.
They knew about the location before I fucking knew.
My jaw clenched.
I didn’t want to think Hiroko could be the traitor. But the idea clawed at me. She was the only one outside my core who'd been left with full access to this space—who’d walked freely through the halls, probably shared drinks with my men, and taught my Tiger how to leash me with silk words.
Could it be Hiroko?
I didn’t want it to be. Fuck—I needed it not to be. Because if it were, I’d have to kill her myself. I’d have to slit her throat in front of every Fang and every Eye and let her blood pool at my feet just to remind all what betrayal cost.
One thing I knew for certain, Reo would never betray me. He had walked through fire for me. Burned his past. Burned his future. He had taken bullets meant for me and stitched himself back together with rage alone.
I could leave my back open in a room full of knives if Reo was behind me.
But the others? I didn’t know. And that uncertainty—it was a slow, sick poison leaking into my chest.
Suddenly, a wet, choking sound scraped against the corridor’s walls.
I turned in that direction.
A man in his thirties—bare-chested, soaked in blood and piss—was dragging himself across the stone floor like a slug through slaughter. His body left a smeared trail of filth.
“P-please. Please. I didn’t know. They lied to me. I am just the driver. I swear. . .”
A driver made it to this level? How is that possible?
One leg shook behind him, not fully broken, but ruined beyond use. The other arm shook under his weight, wrist wobbling, the elbow locking, muscles misfiring from fear and pain.
But it was his other hand—his right—that drew my eye.
Clenched tight.
Too tight.
Blood crusted his knuckles. Callused skin. Scar tissue rode the ridge of each finger like armor. I’d seen hands like that cave in skulls in back-alley rings and drive steel into ribcages with laughter.
He was no driver.
He was a man who fought for money, for blood, or for the sheer joy of breaking bones. And now he reached for my bare ankle with that same filthy hand.
I stepped back.
“I have a daughter.” His lips trembled. Snot bubbled from his nose. “I-I didn’t shoot anyone. My daughter is only—”
“If you want to save her, give me names. Now.”