A humorless laugh escapes me.
“And the next day he stands in front of cameras andblames his opponent for trying to kill him. It worked. He won.”
Saint’s silence sharpens the air.
“If I wanted him dead,” I continue, “he would be. You know that. We both do. This was something else. Something coordinated. Something bigger.” I glance at her. “Two countries were on the brink of war. He stopped it. But imagine if they’d succeeded in killing him that night.”
Her eyes narrow. “War would’ve been immediate.”
“Yes.” My fingers tighten on the wheel. “Lots of profit in selling wars.”
She shifts slightly, posture still relaxed but attention razor-edged. “So, you think someone was orchestrating conflict. Placing politicians where they need them. Manipulating global pressure points.”
“Not someone,” I say.
My throat works once.
“Theone.”
She stiffens like she’s daring me not to say it.
I say it anyway.
“The Guildmaster.”
* Motherfucker
* “I swear to God, everything is fucked.”
* You son of a bitch
* The Cockroach
* What the hell are you saying?
* God, I love irritatingher.
We drive for hours with nothing but the engine, the road, and the ghost of everything unsaid between us.
Alejandro handles the wheel like he owns the whole damn mountain range, broad shoulders relaxed, one hand draped over the top of the steering wheel. Every time we hit a curve—and there are a hundred winding turns on the way into Kenji’s territory—the car shifts, and I’m too aware of him beside me. His heat. His presence. The way he takes up space without trying.
I focus out the window, watching the shadows deepen as we get farther from the city and closer to where I grew up. Or as close to “grew up” as an orphan ever gets.
Kenji’s homestead appears only in fragments at first—a flash of a ridge, the glint of a far-off roof, the silver thread of the mountain stream cutting through the valley. Several buildings tucked into the slope. Gardens terraced by hand. And the training yard where some of the deadliest people in the world were carved into their final shapes.
Where I was carved.
Dropped on the steps of a New York orphanage at three days old. Unclaimed and raised by no one, I aged out and fought the world tooth and nail… until someone offered me a different kind of life. A profitable one.
Until the Guild.
Until the initiation night where I stood in a room full of killers-to-be. Kenji saw me and claimed me as his student. His only one before. His only one after.
I tell myself I’m going home.
But it’s the closest thing to home I’ve ever had, and that’s its own kind of sting.
“Turnoff’s ahead,” I say quietly.
