Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 115388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
I closed my eyes.
Tried to breathe.
Tried to reset.
But my body stayed wired. A flame had been lit between my thighs and no amount of logic or deep breaths would put it out.
God, I needed something. Anything.
A hit of him.
A taste.
Just one more thread to pull from the edge of that dream before it unraveled completely.
I opened my eyes, sat up, and pressed on my phone’s screen, bringing my contacts into view.
Should I?
My thumb hovered over the screen and his name.
I could hear his voice in my head already. That deep, commanding rumble laced in smoke and velvet.
I wanted to hear that voice.
Just for a second.
No. What the fuck are you doing?
This was dangerous.
I couldn’t be the girl who came in her sleep and called the man responsible for it five minutes later.
That wasn’t power.
That was obsession.
That was. . .
Fuck it.
I pressed on his name and placed the phone next to my ear.
Oh God. You are fucking crazy!
His line rang twice. Right as I was about to hang up. . .his voice came on the phone—velvet death, so smooth my body shivered. “Tora?”
Fuck. Now what?
Chapter one
Strategy
Kenji
My private jet hummed like a sleeping beast—quiet, expensive, engineered for men like me who needed altitude to plot blood.
I sat at the long obsidian table in the center of the jet. Unfurled before me were the blueprints of Tokyo—not the tourist gloss, not the skyline sold on postcards, but its criminal underworld’s bones.
Every district I personally owned was marked with jagged neon blue ink:
The Ashen Blocks—where burnt-out buildings hid underground arms trades and old money whispered in abandoned temples.
Ironport—once a shipping district, now a gate of illegal imports, organ traffickers, and chemical caches buried beneath rusted docks and ramen joints that never close.
The Velvet Quarter—a playground for elite depravity. Secret, red-soaked brothels, glass-box voyeur clubs, and auction floors where innocence was sold to the highest bidder.
And now, the ones my father still owned:
Kurokawa Strip—a slick, black artery of assassins, debt collectors, and contract killers with gunpowder tattoos and no last names.
Shinjuku Thirteen—not on any map. A hidden ward of thirteen blocks where even the police didn’t go. Where body bags left through the sewers.
The Pale Gate—his oldest territory. A ghost city layered in shrines and slaughterhouses. There, whispers of the Fox still ruled. There, his word was gospel and his punishment biblical.
Every pin on the map marked a different kind of power.
But I believed that every color was a future grave.
Because this wasn’t just a hostile takeover.
This was a war between a Fox and a Dragon.
My father—the Fox—had ruled Tokyo with clever cruelty for decades. Foxes were known for deception, illusion, and misdirection. They whispered lies like lullabies and slit throats while you slept.
But me?
I wasn’t built for stealth. I was born with scales. I breathed heat. My instincts weren’t to hide or outthink.
They were to scorch.
Foxes played chess.
Dragons burned the board.
Across from me, Reo leaned over the eastern edge of the map, tracing a sharp neon blue line with his gloved finger. “On the day we officially declare war with your father. . .I think we should secure the perimeter around Ironport before midnight and cut off the distribution channel. That way we guarantee two things: silence in the ports and panic on the Strip.”
Behind him, Kaoru stood with a sleek black tablet, his long pink hair tied back in a low ponytail. Real-time surveillance flickered across the screen—my father’s known locations, convoy patterns, and weapon transfers.
“The Fox is still rotating guards through The Pale Gate every two hours. He’s very nervous, but I don’t think he suspects what will happen.” Kaoru shifted to another screen. “But his usual convoy to Shinjuku Thirteen has been reduced. He’s consolidating. It may mean that he definitely knows we’re coming.”
“Or he’s simply safeguarding his prized possessions.” Yoichi, my Haiku Sniper, sat languidly with his bald head tilted back, silver wolf tooth charm glinting against his open designer jacket.
“We must be careful. Your father has gone to war four times and won all of them.” Yoichi trailed smoke from his clove cigarette, watching the map like it was a cherry blossom about to fall. “Meanwhile. . .war is new to us.”
Across from him, Rin—my Silent Poison—stood in ghostly white, tall and unreadable. His braided ponytail fell to his waist. “Still, we could take many out without bullets. I have something special I’ve been working on. A gas that could kill a large group of people with just one inhale.”
Reo shook his head. “Gas can’t guarantee innocents are safe.”
Rin shrugged. “We can make sure the building is cleared of innocents and only full of our enemies.”
“And what of the bugs, the rodents, and the cats possibly hiding within the space?”
Rin chuckled. “I think the rodents can take their chances.”
“But that’s the problem,” Reo’s tone became sharper. “You say that as if they aren’t real lives.”