Page 67 of Dragon 7

All the fucking trouble you started. . .and all the times I should have let Kenji kill you. . .

Kiko tried to sit up straighter when she saw me and couldn't quite get there.

Her cousins flanked the bed. The one on the left had a hand half inside her jacket and froze it there when she clocked my guards. The one on the right just stared.

Frowning, I stepped further into the room.

Deja remained next to me with her hand still resting on Betty Boop in the holster. I hadn’t known until tonight that Deja had shot a gun three times in her life. The fact just came to me when I looked at her gun in the hallway earlier.

The information wasn’t even about Betty Boop, yet I just knew that once when Deja was ten, her mother’s boyfriend snuck into her bedroom and Deja pulled out her dead father’s gun from under her pillow and shot him in the balls.

That was the first time Deja ever shot a gun.

I also knew that once he fell to the ground screaming and her mother woke up to find the chaos. Well. . .her mother grabbed the gun and without asking any further questions, shot the man in the head, right in front Deja.

I knew her mother and grandmother buried the man’s body by the apple tree in the grandmother’s backyard and that sometimes an adult Deja stood in front of that same apple tree and shivered in fear that the secret would come out.

I knew that the second time Deja fired a gun it was Betty Boop and it was because Nika’s husband had hit Nika. I knew that Deja had already told him she would shoot his ass if he touched her again. So. . .even though she didn’t want to. . .she shot him. . .right in the head like her mother had done to the man when she was ten.

And Nika and Deja rolled up his body in the middle of the night, carried it over to their grandmother’s house, and buried his body too. . .right next to that apple tree. . .where there were other shot men.

Twenty of them. . .deep within the ground.

But it was the final time Deja shot the gun that wouldn’t hit my mind. I didn’t know why, just that it was a moment that her mind clearly guarded.

Perhaps, it was too horrific for even me to see with this new gift.

And with that. . .I knew to be very thankful for it.

Soon, my other guards moved past me without a word and took up positions at the foot of the bed.

Yoichi folded his arms.

The room held still.

Kiko's eyes moved over Yoichi, my guards, Deja, me, and then finally over the soul pin on my robe.

She rolled her eyes, turned her gaze toward the cousin on her left, and spoke in Japanese. "This dark bitch must have come in here to gloat."

I stared.

Both cousins snorted.

Kiko kept going, "The joke's on her. Once the Fox wins, I'll make sure he rapes her until she begs for death."

The cousin on the right laughed. "The Fox has taste. He would never want to rape her."

The one on the left, smirked. "She's too black and ugly."

The three of them shared a small, vicious laugh.

For three seconds I let them have it.

I let my rage rise in my body.

I let the heat of it find the cold emptiness that the sacrifice had left in me.

Then I turned to the lead guard at the foot of the bed and spoke in Japanese. "Take these two cousins outside and fucking kill them. Make it quick, but make sure it hurts. Then, put their bodies in a pile. We will burn them in the morning, once the war is done."