I stiffened.
He did not blink.
Okay. What’s the next statement?
Kaoru lifted his chin a fraction and continued with his voice in the same steady cadence. “I have three girlfriends who know about each other.”
His mouth didn’t twitch, but his eyes did—a quick flick toward me, fast like a gambler checking a rival’s stack.
“And. . .” His mouth curved into a sweet smile. “I am addicted to karaoke.”
Hmmm.
Reo’s pen clicked again. “Two minutes. Begin. Ask your questions if you have them.”
I breathed in, letting my eyes run the perimeter of Kaoru’s body the way I would trace the edges of a crime photo.
The Dragon’s rules beat in my head like a metronome: three statements. One lie. Ask one question for each. They must tell the truth. No touching.
Kenji’s fingers flexed at my waist like he could hear my thoughts.
I kept my voice calm. “Your first statement was two hundred and thirteen kills. Do you remember your first and last kill?”
“I do.” Kaoru tipped his head. “The first was a man named Uesugi. It happened in a Shinjuku alley behind a hostess bar.”
No hesitation.
No flourish.
“Last was a broker who sold the Dragon’s docks. It happened in a private house in Osaka.”
The answer landed without fanfare.
Even more, the fact that he remembered the number, down to the last digit, made my skin prickle.
From what I understood about psychopaths—and that was mainly book knowledge—after a while. . .they tended to lose count after a hundred. Violence blurred into bloody haze.
But Kaoru?
If he were telling the truth. . .then that would mean that every death mattered to him. He wasn’t boasting. He was recording. Each name logged, each place etched. It was all a private ledger he kept within his soul and he was a man fingering beads on a rosary, but each bead was a body.
Still, the number chilled me.
Reo clicked his pen, reminding me of the time.
I cleared my throat. “Statement two: you have three girlfriends who know about each other.”
I didn’t have a question yet, but I let my gaze travel over him.
Clothes, tattoos, jewelry, people thought they were just fashion. But they were language. Choices we made about what to stitch into our skin or drape across our bodies said more than any words ever could.
A man could lie with his mouth, but his body would betray him.
What one wore was a story that person wanted the world to believe.
What one inked into their flesh was a story that person could never erase.
And Kaoru’s story was written right there—his immaculate suit hugging him like armor, his long pink hair daring the worldto underestimate him, and two small hearts inked just under his jawline and connecting to black roses and bullets.
