Why had she smiled at me like that?
As if she were giving me a secret gift in the middle of brutal violence.
What had that smile promised?
A future I’d never earned?
A forgiveness I hadn’t asked for and didn't deserve?
The guilt hit hardest because her smile had been for me alone, intimate and trusting, and I had nothing to return it with but silence and a body that couldn’t move under my father's men.
That smile.
It stung because surviving felt like theft—like I’d kept her life while she was taken, and every breath I drew after felt borrowed from her lungs.
That smile.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it and the bullet leaving the barrel. Every time, that same fucking bullet made that same fucking journey. Every time, her skull fractured in that same starburst pattern. Every time, that smile stayed frozen on her face as everything behind it ceased to be.
Every single time.
Over and over.
Since that night, my body hadn’t been mine. My stomach coiled on itself, hungry but unwilling to take food. My chest cinched tight; every breath dragged like it was hooked to barbed wire. My hands shook, even when I kept them clenched until the knuckles split.
I walked.
I fought.
I planned, but the hours dissolved into one endless blur.
My head throbbed from sleepless nights, blood buzzing at the base of my skull like hornets.
I kept moving because the second I stopped, that smile waited in the stillness.
That. . .smile.
The Claws didn’t ask why my eyes were red, why I kept a bottle at my side but never seemed drunk.
They knew not to.
If Kenji or Reo tried to look too close, I gave them the sharp edge of silence. Because I knew if I spoke her name aloud my voice would break. And once it broke, I didn’t think I could put myself back together.
So I clenched my jaw until it ached.
I pressed my teeth against sleep.
I fucked men and women, but not for pleasure, just for something to leave my body.
I let my heart hollow itself out day by day, an organ crashing and burning from the inside.
My Father, the Fox, thought he was untouchable.
He was wrong.
I would unmake him. Not quickly—no, that would be mercy, and mercy died with Nura's smile.
Together, with my brother, Kenji, I would carve his death the way a master carved stone, chipping away piece by piece, day by day, until there was nothing left but dust. I would strip him of his empire first—his money, his soldiers, his name.
