TheShiroganeHotel.
It was one of the most exclusive hotels in Tokyo. Forty-eight floors of black glass and steel that rose up from the heart of the city like a blade. The architecture was brutalist and beautiful at the same time. Sharp angles. Clean lines. No unnecessary ornamentation. Even though it was huge, only the wealthiest people in Japan knew it existed.
There was no website. No public phone number.
You couldn't book a room unless you were personally invited by someone who already had access.
Politicians stayed there when they wanted to disappear from the public eye. CEOs used it for meetings that would never show up on any ledger.
Many times, I met with foreign crime syndicates in the private dining rooms on the thirty-second floor.
And the rooftop?
That was reserved exclusively for important helicopter landings.
The helipad was massive. Large enough to hold seven choppers at once.
I spotted the armed guards on the rooftop. They wore black suits and earpieces, and they were waving us down withilluminated batons, guiding us in like we were exactly what we appeared to be—government officials arriving for classified business.
According to Hiroko, the Shirogane had a relationship with Yoshiwara. An understanding. Wealthy clients would land here, take the private elevator down to the underground garage, and slip into unmarked cars that would drive them directly to the hidden entrances of the pleasure district.
She’d explained that the Prime Minister himself had used this route. So had half the Cabinet.
I believed it.
Big deals were made down in those tunnels. Nasty things happened in those rooms. The kind of things that would end careers if they ever saw daylight.
But we weren't using the cars or the main entrances like my father planned for.
Hiroko knew about a special service entrance. A secret that the hotel kept even from most of its elite clientele.
There was an elevator—older, industrial, meant for staff and deliveries—that went all the way down.
Past the underground garage.
Past the foundation.
Deep into the earth where it connected directly to the Yoshiwara tunnel system.
Hiroko had a key for it. A small bronze thing she'd shown me back on the island, worn smooth from decades of use.
That elevator would take us straight into the Yoshiwara depths.
But there was a problem.
I stared at the armed security on the rooftop guiding us in. “Stay alert, everyone.”
For now the guards would see the government helicopters and assume we were legitimate.
But the moment we started getting off—the moment they got a clear look at our faces—they'd recognize me, Reo, or Hiro.
They probably wouldn't shoot. Not right away. They knew what it meant to kill the Dragon.
But someone would reach for a radio or phone to warn my father.
Reo wouldn’t want us to kill anyone, so we would have to knock them out and get rid of all communication equipment.
Seconds later, the other helicopters were breaking off, heading to their own landing zones and spreading out across the city.
