Page 152 of Dragon 7

Aki grinned. “You have to roll us a joint with the same stuff you smoked.”

Yuki winked. “Please.”

“Okay. I got word that somehow Yoichi and Rin survived the fall, although they’re badly beat up.” Kenji put his phone back in his pocket and hurried over. “What’s going on with Hiro? Is he still out of it?”

The baby girl disappeared.

Dark exhaustion was already climbing into me and up the long bones of my legs. I knew I had maybe one sentence left before I passed out completely, so I decided to spend it on the truth.

I struggled to look up at my brother, but when I did. . .I spoke, "That was your baby that died on the island tonight. That was the little ghost."

The twins looked at me like I was crazy, but Kenji and Reo did not. They studied me and processed those words.

“What?” Horror covered Kenji's face. His eyes told me that he was going over all the details of tonight and coming to the realization that I could be right. Then, grief filled his gaze. Next, guilt and sorrow.

I had seen my brother take a hundred blows and never once show this much expression. I had watched him bury his mother and Jobon with a face carved out of stone. I had stood beside him through every horror our world could invent, and I had never, not once, seen the Dragon's face do what it did now.

The war drained out of him as well as every layer he had built over these years of being the most dangerous man in Japan peeled away, until what was left was just a man hearing words he could not survive and could not run from.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came.

And then a boy's voice came out of a king's body, small, broken, and in so much pain. "No. . .our baby? That can’t be. . ."

And then darkness swallowed me whole.

Chapter twenty-four

The Last Story

Nyomi

Deja still hadn't returned. I needed news. Every passing minute pulled my nerves tighter.

About Rin.

About Kenji.

About the war that was deciding who would still have a heartbeat by dawn.

The visions stopped. I wasn’t sure how that had happened. I almost feared that it had been a temporary thing. Or perhaps, I’d used it so much that. . .it needed to charge up. Either way, there was peace in being able to look at people again and not see their private memories.

Yet, waiting was its own kind of torture. It sat in my jaw. It sat in the meat of my hands. It sat behind my eyes. It was a slow burning hot iron pressed against the skin, searing, unbearable, and impossible to escape.

Time stretched and twisted, bringing more uncertainty, worry, and fear.

Every second felt like an eternity—a never-ending cycle of agony and anticipation.

To not go stir-crazy, I gave two of my men strict orders to guard the twins. Then I drifted from room to room through the Bamboo Garden building, searching for any way I could help the medical teams.

The children's room needed me the most.

Fear had settled over the children. They didn't understand the battle, mafia politics, or the scent of blood in the air. They only knew that their fathers had gone to war, and no one could promise they were coming back.

So. . .I entertained them.

God, I hope this is helping.