A few feet beside her, Nyomi didn’t move, flinch, or look her way. She just stood with her weight angled slightly on one leg—hip cocked, like a woman in complete command of her posture.
Nyomi hadn’t heard her official title yet, and still she looked like a queen.
That made me think of something my mother would always say.
“Power doesn’t need to scream. It radiates.”
That being said. . .there was a threatening steel in my Tiger’s gaze. A warning behind the polish. A quiet snarl beneath the lipstick. And it all said, “Don’t fuck with me.”
Kiko hissed and then turned to me. A second later, her voice sliced through the silence, shrill and impatient.“I have beentrying to talk to you all day, and your Roar would not let me enter.”
I didn’t answer right away because something dark had just coiled low in my stomach. That stare she gave Nyomi. That tight twitch in her wrist. That venom leaking out of her face before she even opened her mouth.
I didn’t know what happened between them in the hallway. Didn’t know what words were exchanged. What looks passed.
I doubted Kiko behaved herself. And that alone made my teeth grind.
Somehow, I kept my voice even. “Speak in English.”
“Why? Because she can’t even speak Japanese?” Her chin jerked toward Nyomi. “She is an outsider!”
Fast, I stood.
Cock no longer erect.
Mind no longer entertained.
Just done.
The shift in me was immediate. Physical. A pulse of danger that tightened every muscle in the space.
Kiko went silent. Her crew—those same cousins and assistants who had barked like feral dogs in the hallway—suddenly remembered how to shut the fuck up.
They didn’t run.
But they backed away almost five feet.
Maybe six.
Tet, the boldest of the bunch, took three extra steps and pressed himself to the wall like it could protect him from what I might do.
Even Nyomi inched away, her posture tightening like she’d felt the temperature drop ten degrees.
Slowly, I prowled over, stopped right in front of Kiko and looked down at her. I let her feel my height. My power. Let herbreathe in the threat I wrapped around my violence. “How are the babies?”
Her bottom lip quivered.
Sighing, she touched her stomach. Her fingers were delicate and slow. One of my Ear’s most practiced moves. The kind she used when she wanted to look soft.
Fragile.
Untouchable.
But I’d seen this act before because being my Ear was never just about sex. It was about performance. Every word, every breath, every lowered lash was a weapon. Gaslighting wrapped in silk. Guilt packaged like loyalty. Sweetness sharpened into control. That was the craft. That was the power.
Kiko had turned the highest-ranking politicians in Japan with those tactics. Had made them fold, cry, apologize, send money, spill secrets.
She could make a man feel like a monster and a messiah in the same hour—and not remember how she’d done it.
