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)
That’s right, Jean-Pierre. I’m watching you too.
“How were the States?” I took a sly sip of the champagne.
His posture stiffened a breath—barely noticeable. But I caught it. The lift in his shoulder. The way his fingers adjusted on the stem of his glass. Not enough to reveal guilt. But enough to reveal tension.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Which meant the question had teeth.
There was something in the States. Something he didn’t want me knowing about. Something still bleeding beneath his silence.
Good.
The tempo of this game had changed.
“The States.” Jean-Pierre looked down at the guests taking their seats far below.
At the front of this box, our view was unchallenged. It was a sweeping gaze over the grand stage. Lights low. Murmurs rising. Tons of elegant guests with none of them knowing who watched from above.
The orchestra pit shimmered beneath our perch, instruments tuning in delicate chaos.
Jean-Pierre raised his view to me. “My visit to the States was very interesting.”
“How so?”
“I went looking for one thing and found. . .something else.”
“Isn’t it lovely when that happens?”
“It is.” Jean-Pierre took another sip from his champagne. “Paris suits you.”
I smiled thinly. “She always tries to seduce me.”
“Let her. She’s good at it.”
“No. You don’t need a dragon in this beautiful city. Not when there’s already a Butcher to properly protect her.”
That brought a warm smile, telling me some of his posturing would be dimmed down. Sometimes it was better to compliment a gangster, than pull out a gun.
Jean-Pierre turned his head just slightly. “A friend told me that the Lion came to visit you recently.”
He said it too casually. The kind of statement a man threw like a coin into a river, pretending he didn't care how deep it sank.
But he damn sure did.
I nodded. “The Lion recently came to Tokyo.”
“And did he roar?”
“Not this time but his purr was no better.”
Jean-Pierre’s lips parted in a dry laugh—quiet, elegant, without teeth. “I assume he did not like our secret deal.”
“He did not but I’m not here about that. I know better than anyone that in our world, drug shipments don’t come with return policies or refunds.”
“They do not.” He lifted his glass in a silent cue, and within seconds, another nude woman approached—this one with obsidian-painted lips and long white gloves that reached her shoulders. She took his glass with a bow so slight it looked like a breath.
I passed her mine as well.
She vanished without a sound.
Jean-Pierre laced his fingers together in front of him, elbows resting lightly on the rail. “Still, I hate that we cannot continue our business due to. . .the Lion.”
“We will one day.”
Jean-Pierre’s voice dropped lower. “Once the Lion is gone.”
That was a statement, not a question.
I didn’t react.
Not outwardly.
Inside, I calculated. This was no longer just conversation—it was an invitation to a conspiracy. And yet, it was too early for honesty. Jean-Pierre and I had not earned each other’s trust.
We were circling, speaking in the dialects of empires.
Metaphors.
Careful omissions.
Perfectly chosen compliments.
I knew who and what I was talking to. The Corsicans modeled themselves after their Napoleonic ancestors—men who conquered not with speed, but with orchestration.
But I had been raised by a different empire.
The Yakuza were not born from opium dens and champagne. We came from salt and sword. Feudal oaths and blood-marked loyalty. From black-market rice rations and blades sheathed in silence. From ninkyō dantai—chivalrous men who stood for the weak, even if they bled for it. We came even from gamblers and gravediggers with tattooed obedience and razor-edged shame.
Our codes were older than Versailles.
Plus, history has taught my people to be wary of every handshake offered across continents and even the oceans.
After the war, they’d bombed our cities and called it peace. Filled our ports with soldiers, our markets with Western suits, and our streets with foreign dope.
The syndicates—my ancestors—that rose from Japan’s ashes had done so with calloused fists, not handouts. And even now, decades later, their children still bore the quiet shame of having to ask outsiders for favors.
Alliances with western gangsters were as fickle as greedy mistresses.
Whereas Asian alliances were carved into our skin.
“Hmmm. Once the Lion is gone. . .” I murmured, letting the thought hang like fog on a battlefield. “Is the Lion sick?”
“No, but I believe his days may be numbered.” The Butcher turned slightly, eyes searching mine. “Of course. . .there would need to be assistance.”
“Interesting.”
“I just wonder if you would be able to assist me and others with this.”
Others? The Butcher and others have been plotting the Lion’s assassination. Very, very fucking interesting.
Even though Reo and Hiro were several feet away, I knew they both had caught every word.
The Butcher had just placed his piece on the board.
Now it was my move.
“My assistance.” I turned my head and studied him the way a man might study a blade before deciding if it deserved blood. “I always help my friends, yet it also takes time for me to make true friends.”