Raf rides the flank like a general, his sniper rifle at the ready to take the long shot only he can make. The rest of our crew fan out behind us, lean, practiced.
The Tanaka estate sits behind its high walls, indifferent to the world—tile roofs, lanterns darkened, the garden a sleeping thingunder stone. We’ve made this trek once before—the night Gio scaled the wall months ago to save Stephanie and Jackson. We were just a distraction, then. Tonight, we’ve come out in full force, ready to annihilate our enemies once and for all.
It’s a risk. I know that.
We don’t have the numbers to call it an easy victory.
But with the element of surprise, and no Murrays to tip the scales, I’m confident we can take them.
Raf gives the signal, and I move, quick and quiet, slipping inside the guard tower and slitting his throat before he even sees me coming. Perhaps the Tanakas are running lower on men than we’d realized, because there are fewer guarding the gate than last time.
We only had to take down two in order to clear the gate of resistance.
And we did so without a sound.
Two trucks push tight to the gates. Men pour out and set the charges in rehearsed motion. I’m the first to move in while the rest hold fast, trading my blade for a gun so I’m ready for the moment the world fractures. We stack the charges at the hinges, the welds, the points where the gate meets the earth. I feel the vibration of them in my palms when I press the timer and step back.
“Three… two…” Raf counts under his breath.
The exposition is ruthlessly simple. At zero, the world explodes.
The blast throws a blossom of sparks and rock and metal into the air. The gate comes off its hinges in a thunderous groan, likesome giant thing tearing free of its coffin, and a thousand pieces of broken stone fall like teeth. Lanterns shatter. A stone statue loses its head. A spray of gravel and dust kicks into the clear night.
For one perfect, terrible second, the world is only sound—the boom, the howl of air, the oxygen itself gone thin. Then we move.
We flood the courtyard the way a river floods a plain—me on point with two men across from me, rifles up. The moonlight flashes off gunmetal.
But the courtyard isn’t empty. No chaos erupts inside the house. Instead, shadowed figures pop from doorways, and movement on the roofline tells me we’re facing patrols we hadn’t expected. I swallow down the icy wave of intuition and set my jaw. The Tanaka men are everywhere, and they’re not the complacent, sleepy guardians we expected. They look ready for a fight.
This isn’t what we planned for. To find guns in our faces the moment we stepped foot inside the walls. One wrong move, and we’re all dead.
“Sandro.” Raf’s voice carries an unspoken command. Get my ass by his side. This fight isn’t happening tonight.
But before I can so much as blink, a single shot rings out. A second later, the man to my left drops to the ground, hit low in the leg. He curses, face contorted as he grasps the weeping injury in pain.
Fury races through my veins like cocaine.
“That was a warning shot,” someone says from deep within the shadows of the Tanakas’ porch, and I whip my head around, searching the darkness with my eyes.
Then Kenji steps forward, stalking into the light, his mouth a slash of arrogance. He wears a suit like a man on his way to a business meeting—despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night. When his eye finds me, he smiles coldly, as if amused to see me there, gun half-raised, my fingers itching to put a bullet in his brain. But with so many muzzles aimed in my direction, I would never succeed before they killed me.
“Well, if it isn’t the Chiaroscuro twins,” he says, voice silk and venom as his gaze lifts to Raf, several yards behind me. “How predictable you are. You took the bait so easily. Walked right into my hands.” He claps once, an absurdly theatrical sound in the echoing silence. “I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed.”
My world tilts, the plan falling like dominoes. It was a trap. And like an idiot, I fell for it. Worse, I talked my brothers into coming. I’ve put Raf in danger—again.
My blood goes flat. I should have smelled it the way a dog smells death, the too-neat placements, the dark lanterns, the minimal guards at the front gate. But I am not a dog with a nose today. I am a man with a grudge, and I misread the silence.
Raf’s voice is tight with fury and command. “Fall back!” The words come out like a grenade. He’s not giving, but he knows as well as I do that the courtyard will become a graveyard if anyone opens fire, and we need to live to fight another day.
Still, every bone in my body screams for me to take the shot. To riddle Kenji with bullets until he looks like Swiss cheese.
“Sandro!” Raf barks, and I realize that no one’s moved—they’re waiting for me.
It’s pure torture to take that first step back, and Kenji’s eye follows, his expression morphing into mild surprisemomentarily. He thought I would disobey Raf. He was waiting for me to attack—so he would have an excuse to mow us down like sheep.
“Leaving so soon?” he asks lightly, then he sneers. “I don’t think so.”
With one unspoken command, his men open fire.
