I didn’t even need to look at the body’s posture to know. It was the elegance of the wound—blunt trauma delivered at an angle meant to preserve the face while liquifying the brain.
Efficient.
Intimate.
Beautiful.
Kaoru’s Colt .45 was more for show. Death came from his hands.
My men were busy this evening.
The next corpse lay curled against the foot of a toppled bonsai display, mouth open, blood pooled from both ears. No signs of trauma.
He died from poison. Rin must have done that.
I took three steps forward.
To the left, an entire section of the wall had been splashed in arterial spray and a body was pinned to it with four knives in an X formation. One knife through the sternum. Another through the thigh. Two more through the hands.
Execution, not combat.
Satoshi killed him.
I continued forward.
Yoichi’s victim appeared next—a man folded over with a perfect hole through the temple. The entry wound was clean. The exit wound, not so much.
Hmmm.
There had to be more dead men in the building. If this was what the second floor looked like, then the first level must’ve been a banquet of blood—bodies collapsed between dining chairs, limbs draped over broken tables, lungs punctured and crushed. Blood pooling across those polished floors.
The deeper I walked into the blood-soaked corridor, the heavier my thoughts became.
Someone has betrayed me. Who could the traitor be?
These assassins knew about the dinner. The location. The timing. The fact that I would be unreachable for hours, distracted, exposed. Only a handful of people had that information. Even Reo hadn’t told the Eyes and Fangs wherewe would be. They’d been rerouted here only when the moment demanded it.
But this ambush?
It had required coordination. Maps. Timing. Patience. At least several hours of planning—maybe more.
They knew about the location before I fucking knew.
My jaw clenched.
I didn’t want to think Hiroko could be the traitor. But the idea clawed at me. She was the only one outside my core who'd been left with full access to this space—who’d walked freely through the halls, probably shared drinks with my men, and taught my Tiger how to leash me with silk words.
Could it be Hiroko?
I didn’t want it to be. Fuck—Ineededit not to be. Because if itwere, I’d have to kill her myself. I’d have to slit her throat in front of every Fang and every Eye and let her blood pool at my feet just to remind all what betrayal cost.
One thing I knew for certain, Reo would never betray me. He had walked through fire for me. Burned his past. Burned his future. He had taken bullets meant for me and stitched himself back together with rage alone.
I could leave my back open in a room full of knives if Reo was behind me.
But the others? I didn’t know. And that uncertainty—it was a slow, sick poison leaking into my chest.
Suddenly, a wet, choking sound scraped against the corridor’s walls.
