Page 121 of Dragon 7

Now the Fox was old. He was sick. His skin had gone the gray of a man the body had already started leaving, and his jaw trembled, and he kept pulling the trigger and kept missing.

“This is depressing.” I finally got up and walked toward him through every miss.

The Fox’s guns clicked empty. He had the nerve to fucking gasp in distress. He raised the other gun and aimed it at me.

Akiro yelled, “Father, be careful!”

I checked that way.

Kenji had Akiro's own weapon in his hands now, and he swung the heavy ball down into the Fox's gun arm—into our father—and the bone cracked wet and loud, and one gun dropped to the floor.

Blood sprayed black across the metal floor.

The Fox screamed.

And in the same motion Kenji whipped the ball back around and slung it into Akiro's face.

Oh shit.

Akiro's head crashed into the wall.

I blinked.

The skull and the steel together opened a small split in the panel, and the wind tore in through the new seam, and Akiro slid down the dented metal leaving a long dark smear, and stayed down at the bottom of it.

His chest did not rise.

His eyes remained open and blank.

The cabin went quiet of any new enemies.

Kenji let the kusarigama fall and rounded on the cockpit door. "Reo! Have the fucking pilot turn this around. We're landing it on the island."

I glanced to the side and saw we were already over the ocean.

Holding his side, Reo rushed off, shouldering past the crates toward the front of the plane. "On it."

The floor leveled by a degree. The engines held. We were still climbing, still flying, still bleeding wind from two new holes, but the plane was finally ours.

And then there were only the three of us at the back of the massive cabin.

Me. My brother. Our father.

Chapter nineteen

Flesh of My Flesh

Hiro

The Fox had dragged himself against the rear bulkhead. One arm hung ruined and wrong from the shoulder. The other still held the second empty gun, and his ruined face turned up at the two of us standing over him, and I watched the moment he understood.

He had hidden from us for many nights. He had owned the people who ran Yoshiwara Depths. He had bought the men who would have died for him. He had threaded his blackmail through every space.

He’d even gotten the Butcher’s help.

And now his network would be ash, and his men were dead in the grass on the island, and his last defense was a broken arm and a shaking hand.

I looked into his eyes.