Beneath it, sealed under a layer of hardened resin was a rose with a single, large thorn.
I dragged my thumb slowly across the back. The surface was smooth, polished — but the image beneath it felt violent.
The Glass Thorn.
"Yes." I turned it over. "This is my brother's."
The screen was frozen on a text conversation. Cracked down the center but still readable.
Akiro:Kenji and Hiro are here.
The Fox:Kill them!
Two words.
That was all my father had for his sons who had stood by his side and protected him for decades.
I shut off the phone.
The twins watched me in silence.
"But you couldn't kill us, Akiro." I stared at the dark screen. "All you could do was run."
But even as I said it, something nagged at me.
Akiro didn't fight today. He never intended to. He showed up with a weapon he barely swung and a smile he never lost. He let ten die in a theater box so he could walk down a hallway.
And then it hit me.
The mines in Yoshiwara. The cleanup crews on every level. The snipers guarding the service exit. The men waiting in theperformance box. Every single layer of today had been designed to funnel us, box us in, and kill us without Akiro ever having to raise his blade.
This wasn't my father's plan.
My father would have faced us, would have made it personal, would have wanted to watch.
This had Akiro's fingerprints all over it.
The Glass Thorn.
I'd been thinking of him as a coward. A runner. A puppet on my father's string.
But puppets didn't build mazes with multiple contingencies and sacrifice men as a delaying tactic.
Akiro wasn't running from me today. He was testing his defense system. Seeing which traps worked and which didn't. Watching how we moved, how we fought, how we adapted. And the whole time taking notes.
And the only reason we were still alive was Hiroko—a variable he hadn't accounted for.
My jaw tightened.
You're not a fighter, brother, but you're something worse. You're fucking patient.
My mind was already working. If I gave this phone to my hackers, they could crack it open and go through every call and message.
They would discover every location Akiro had visited in the last six months. Cell towers. GPS data. Meeting points. Safe houses. Every place my brother had been in Japan was stored in this glass case—and wherever Akiro had been, my father wasn't far behind.
Even better—they could trace incoming calls.
The Fox was careful, but Akiro wasn't. Not careful enough to hold onto his own phone while running from me.
