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)
A third shot came close to me. I dodged it, yet someone gasped. For a second, I swore it was a twin and hoped I was wrong.
“How about I check on you?!” His thin arms shook so badly the barrel painted circles in the air.
And I saw the truth of all of this.
The Fox was no longer the bully of my childhood who I hoped to impress. The monster to my mother. The dictator of Japan.
Now the Fox was old. He was sick. His skin had gone the gray of a man the body had already started leaving, and his jaw trembled, and he kept pulling the trigger and kept missing.
“This is depressing.” I finally got up and walked toward him through every miss.
The Fox’s guns clicked empty. He had the nerve to fucking gasp in distress. He raised the other gun and aimed it at me.
Akiro yelled, “Father, be careful!”
I checked that way.
Kenji had Akiro's own weapon in his hands now, and he swung the heavy ball down into the Fox's gun arm—into our father—and the bone cracked wet and loud, and one gun dropped to the floor.
Blood sprayed black across the metal floor.
The Fox screamed.
And in the same motion Kenji whipped the ball back around and slung it into Akiro's face.
Oh shit.
Akiro's head crashed into the wall.
I blinked.
The skull and the steel together opened a small split in the panel, and the wind tore in through the new seam, and Akiro slid down the dented metal leaving a long dark smear, and stayed down at the bottom of it.
His chest did not rise.
His eyes remained open and blank.
The cabin went quiet of any new enemies.
Kenji let the kusarigama fall and rounded on the cockpit door. "Reo! Have the fucking pilot turn this around. We're landing it on the island."
I glanced to the side and saw we were already over the ocean.
Holding his side, Reo rushed off, shouldering past the crates toward the front of the plane. "On it."
The floor leveled by a degree. The engines held. We were still climbing, still flying, still bleeding wind from two new holes, but the plane was finally ours.
And then there were only the three of us at the back of the massive cabin.
Me. My brother. Our father.
Chapter nineteen
Flesh of My Flesh
Hiro
The Fox had dragged himself against the rear bulkhead. One arm hung ruined and wrong from the shoulder. The other still held the second empty gun, and his ruined face turned up at the two of us standing over him, and I watched the moment he understood.
He had hidden from us for many nights. He had owned the people who ran Yoshiwara Depths. He had bought the men who would have died for him. He had threaded his blackmail through every space.
He’d even gotten the Butcher’s help.
And now his network would be ash, and his men were dead in the grass on the island, and his last defense was a broken arm and a shaking hand.
I looked into his eyes.
Defeat filled his gaze. Still, he tried to raise the empty gun anyway.
“Enough.” Kenji kicked it out of his hand.
The gun skidded across the tilting floor and vanished under a crate.
The Fox's empty fingers spasmed in the air where it had been. “Wait.”
Kenji got to my side.
The Fox’s bottom lip quivered. “You both passed the test.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“This war. . .w-was to see if you both could truly sit on the throne alone and now—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Kenji sneered. “We started the war. You hid and pitted our own brother against us. Whatever you have to say now. . .let it be a prayer to whatever god will listen to you before you die.”
“Y-your mother.” The Fox shivered. “She would be disappointed right now. She would never want you to kill me—”
“My mother is part of the reason why we won tonight. Her people helped. Her bloodline gave me a beast. And her guidance helped me pick the strongest woman to ever walk this planet.”
The Fox’s mouth parted.
“You wanted to meet my Tiger?” Kenji spat on the floor. “You could never be in the same space as her.”
I smiled. “Never.”
Then, my brother looked at me. "Have your fun, Hiro."
"We kill him together."
"No." Kenji put his view back on our father. "Do it alone. . .for Nura."
Pain hit my heart.
And then she was there.
Nura’s ghost stood in the cabin between me and our father. Her dark brown skin glowed from a light that lived nowhere in this red cabin.
For the first time, she wore a white gown that rippled in no wind. The bullet was gone from the side of her head. The blood was gone too. There was only her face, and her parted lips, and the smile she had given me in my father's hospital room in the half-second before the world took her away.