Their soldiers are overextended, snapping at every shadow like a wounded animal that’s been cornered.
Without Kenji, they’re hemorrhaging from a lack of leadership. Tatsuo might have built his empire, but then he sat back on histhrone and watched, convinced that his bloodline alone made him untouchable.
He let his son become the blade.
And now the blade is gone, and the old man is exposed.
Miko taps the map with two fingers. “We take their home,” he says. “It’s traditional, symbolic—too symbolic.”
“Meaning?” Cillian asks.
“Meaning Tatsuo won’t abandon it,” Sandro says calmly. “Men like him would rather die in the ruins of their legacy than run.”
I nod. “And we make sure those ruins are ashes.”
There’s a moment of silence, heavy with memory. They burned our home.
The Chiaroscuro house wasn’t just brick and marble.
It was history.
It was my brothers’ laughter echoing down hallways, our father’s study smelling like leather and ink.
It was the place Genevieve used to walk barefoot, humming to herself.
They tried to erase us, so we erase them.
“We hit the supply lines first,” I say. “Cut communications. Make him think it’s isolated. Then we take the house.”
“And burn it to the ground,” Sandro adds, eyes dark.
“Yes,” I agree.
The Murray men exchange glances, grim satisfaction tightening their mouths. They understand vengeance. It’s written into them as deeply as it is into us.
Miko straightens, businesslike. “Once the house falls, Tatsuo won’t have anywhere to hide. He’ll come out.”
“And when he does,” I say, voice flat, “he doesn’t walk away.”
No one argues.
“We should do it under the cover of night. Two days from now. That will give us enough time to coordinate the men and not enough time for the plan to be leaked.”
We finalize times, contingencies, escape routes. It’s clean, brutal, and effective—war refined. And in a few days’ time, this will all be over. We’ll have won.
As the meeting breaks apart, chairs scrape softly against the floor.
Sandro claps a hand on my shoulder. “We’re nearly there,” he says.
I nod, but my mind is already drifting somewhere else.
To the quieter war I’ve been waging in my home, with myself.
Aisling.
The distance between us these past few days has been deliberate, controlled.
Necessary, I tell myself. It’s also been agonizing, and I’m slowly but surely losing my mind.
