He smiles, looking at the men behind me.
“If you think you can lead those—”
I cross the room in three steps.
My blade sinks clean into his temple.
His body jerks, twitches once. His eyes flutter wide in shock.
“Just shut the fuck up and die,” I say, close to his face.
I yank the blade free.
He slumps forward, cheek first into the table. His body tilts, but the cup doesn’t even tremble. Sits there full of tea.
I stare at him, at that face that is sunken, sagging in his mid-fifties, but that looks seventy now. A man rotted from the inside out. And I followed him. I wasloyal. I killed for him. I bled for him. I let him pull my strings.
I want to piss on his corpse.
But instead, I kick it.
His body tumbles sideways, folds on the floor.
I take his seat, crossing my legs. I lay my tanto on the lacquered wood, and then look at the men. Shirts stained, faces bruised, hands trembling from the fight.
“Ryo.”
He steps forward like he’s not surprised at all, cocky, tired, grinning like he fucking belongs beside me. He will.
He sits.
Reaches for the tea like a brainless asshole.
I slap it from his hand so hard it smashes against the wall. Porcelain explodes, brown tea slides down to the tatami like blood.
“Be smarter than that,” I tell him. “Kobayashi wouldn’t go down without taking some dumb fuck with him.”
Ryo lifts both brows, then shrugs, licking a cut on his lip.
“Noted.”
I look at the men again, let my hand rest on the hilt of the tanto.
“I’m going to kill Midori and Hasebe next.”
Ryo snorts like I’m the one being dumb now.
“I’ll kill every fucker who thinks they can stand in my way. And when their blood hits the dirt, Kageboshi-gumi and Tetsukaminari-ikka’ll be mine too.”
I straight my back.
“From today on, we’re Onikin-kai.”
* * *
I don’t go to Naoya-san’s house for three days.
First, because the fucking cops won’t stop circling. I posted two of my guys across the street to watch the place, and every morning, same shit—cars crawling the road, eyes scanning the windows like they can sniff guilt from behind curtains. No way I’m getting anywhere near him while that stink’s still around. Not when he could get dragged in deeper just for opening the goddamn door.
