Hanae walked back into the hallway. Behind her, the sounds of the massacre began.
It started with the wet slick of karambits opening flesh. Then the screaming—male voices, deep voices, turning high and desperate when they realized their guns were too far away and their cocaine-numbed reflexes were too slow.
Between the screams, Reina's giggling. That high, bright sound of someone doing exactly what they were born to do.
Hanae kept walking. Every step built the cold rage higher.
She passed the library. The rare books—first editions her father had collected over forty years, some of them older than Japan's constitution—were gone. Replaced by a massive flat-screen TV currently showing horse racing. The shelves were full of manga and American action movies in garish DVD cases.
She passed the meditation garden—an indoor space with carefully arranged stones, bonsai trees her grandfather had tended for fifty years, each one a living sculpture.
The trees were dead. Brown and withered, branches brittle. Someone had used them as ashtrays, cigarette butts stabbed into the moss.
Her hands were shaking. She made fists, felt the leather of her gloves creak.
She stopped in front of a pedestal. Spotlit, positioned in an alcove that had been designed specifically for it.
It was empty.
The velvet cushion was still there. The display case was intact. But the sword that should have rested there—the Kurosawa katana, forged four hundred years ago by a master who'd worked the steel for a year, folding it a thousand times, quenching it in winter water—was gone.
The ancestral blade. The soul of the clan. The symbol that whoever held it led the family.
Gone.
Hanae stared at the empty cushion. Her breathing stopped. Just stopped, her lungs forgetting their function.
"He sold it," she whispered.
Her earpiece crackled. Ren's voice, flat and professional. "Boss. Situation update. Convoy has secured the perimeter. Building surrounded. But Jiro called for backup. Cartel hit squad inbound, five minutes out."
"Let them come." Hanae's voice sounded far away, even to her. "Ren, park the car. Come up. I want you to see this."
"Copy."
Hanae reached the end of the hallway.
Massive double doors loomed before her. Mahogany, hand-carved, inlaid with gold. The kind of doors that cost more than a house. Her father had commissioned them when he'd built this tower. This is where power lives, he'd told young Hanae. This is where we decide the future.
Two guards stood in front of the doors. Big men—huge men, actually, the kind that made Takeshi look normal-sized. Foreign mercenaries by the tattoos creeping up their necks. Russian Orthodox crosses and Cyrillic script. They held light machine guns with casual familiarity.
They saw Hanae approach. Leveled their weapons. Professional. No hesitation.
"Nyet," the one on the left grunted, accent thick as concrete. "No entry. Boss says kill on sight."
Hanae didn't slow down. Didn't stop. Just kept walking, smoke trailing behind her like a veil.
"Takeshi," she said calmly. "I'm bored of doors."
Takeshi lumbered forward, cracking his neck. "I hate doors."
But he didn't attack the guards. He attacked the wall next to the guards.
He charged, turning his shoulder into a battering ram, all his weight and momentum focused on one point. He hit the drywall with the force of a small car crash.
CRASH.
The wall exploded. Takeshi disappeared through it in a shower of white dust and splintered studs, vanishing into the office beyond.
The Russian guards turned, confused by the sudden disappearance of the giant threat.
"Behind you," Hanae said in fluent Russian. Her accent was Petersburg, learned from a tutor when she was twelve.
They spun back.
Takeshi's arm punched through the drywall from inside—a horror movie moment, flesh and blood emerging from solid surface. His hand grabbed the left guard by the back of his tactical vest and yanked.
The guard was pulled through the wall. The drywall tore at his gear, his exposed skin, leaving red streaks. He screamed—kept screaming until Takeshi did something inside the office that made the screaming stop.
The guard on the right hesitated. Training warred with survival instinct. He tried to bring his weapon around, to acquire Hanae as a target.
Hanae stepped in.
She grabbed the barrel of the light machine gun with both hands. The metal was hot—heating from sustained fire earlier, thermal energy still radiating. Her gloves protected her palms but she could feel the burn.
She jerked the barrel up. Pointed it at the ceiling. Used the guard's own grip against him, his finger still on the trigger guard, unable to let go without dropping the weapon entirely.
With her right hand, she drove her palm into his throat.
The strike was perfect. Not his windpipe—that would kill too slowly. The cluster of nerves and blood vessels beside the trachea. Precise. Surgical.
CRUNCH.
His trachea collapsed. Not crushed—collapsed, the cartilage rings giving way like a soda can under a boot.
The guard's eyes went wide. He released the gun, both hands going to his throat. Trying to open an airway that was no longer there. His mouth opened and closed silently, a fish drowning in air.
He dropped to his knees. Then to his face. Still trying to breathe.
Hanae stepped over him. Pushed open the double doors the guards had died protecting.
The throne room was vast. Occupied the entire front of the building, forty meters of floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of Tokyo's nighttime sprawl. The rain lashed against the glass, distorting the city lights into abstract art.
In the center of the space sat a massive desk. Black oak. Hand-carved. The desk her father had commissioned when he'd first made his fortune, back when the Kurosawa clan was something to be proud of.
And behind the desk, sitting in the high-backed leather chair that belonged to her father, was Jiro.
Uncle Jiro.
Six years had not been kind to him. He'd gained weight—not muscle, just fat, the kind that came from expensive food and no exercise. His face was flushed, broken capillaries mapping his cheeks in red spider webs. Alcohol and stress and too many rich meals.
He was wearing a silk robe. Gold silk, dragons embroidered badly. It looked ridiculous on him, like a child playing dress-up in his father's clothes.
He was sweating. Actually dripping, the air conditioning apparently no match for his fear. A phone in one hand—old style, landline, probably calling for help that would arrive too late. A pistol in the other—gold-plated, because of course it was, shaking so badly he'd be lucky to hit the wall.
When Hanae entered, Jiro dropped the phone. It clattered against the desk.
"Hanae," he wheezed, eyes darting around the room like trapped animals. He saw the hole in the wall where Takeshi was dusting himself off. Saw Reina skipping in, twirling what looked like a finger. "Hanae-chan. My niece. You... you've grown. You look strong! Very strong!"
"Stand up," Hanae said.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty." Jiro stood but kept the desk between them, the way prey kept obstacles between themselves and predators. "I know you're upset. The wedding... Kenji is a fool! A complete fool! I told him, 'Hanae is special.' But you know how men are."
"I said stand up. You're sitting in my father's chair."
"It's just a chair!" Jiro's voice climbed higher. "Hanae, listen. We're family! Blood! I did this for the clan! The old ways were dying! We were losing money! I brought us into the 21st century! We have partners in Mexico! Russia! We're making billions!"
He yanked open a drawer. Pulled out a stack of bearer bonds—the thick kind, high denomination, worth more than most people would see in a lifetime. He threw them on the desk where they fanned out like a dealer's spread.
"Look! Money! Real money! Not just honor and debts! Take it! Take half! We can rule together! The Asura and the Architect! Think of the empire we could build!"
Hanae looked at the money. Felt nothing. The numbers meant nothing. The promises meant less.
"Where is he?" she asked.
Jiro froze. "Who?"
"My father. The Oyabun. Where is he?"
Jiro swallowed. His eyes flickered to the corner of the room, to a shadowed alcove blocked by a folding screen. The gesture was involuntary. Fear overriding self-control.
"He... he's resting. He's old, Hanae. His mind... it went away. Even if you see him, he won't know you. He won't know anything."
Hanae walked toward the alcove.
"Don't!" Jiro shouted, raising the gun with both hands now, still shaking. "Stay back!"
Reina hissed. Her wrist flicked. A throwing knife—small, balanced, designed for exactly this—embedded itself in Jiro's shoulder.
"GAAH!" Jiro dropped the gun, clutching his bleeding shoulder with his good hand. The gold-plated pistol clattered across the desk.
Hanae ignored him. Walked to the screen. Pushed it aside.
The breath left her body.
All of it. One moment her lungs were full and the next they were empty and she couldn't remember how to make them work again.
In the corner, positioned in front of a television playing a children's cartoon—bright colors, cheerful music, dancing animals—sat a man in a wheelchair.
He was thin. Not thin—skeletal. Skin hanging off bones like badly tailored clothes. His face was gray, the kind of gray that came from never seeing sunlight, from muscles that had forgotten how to move.
He was wearing a hospital gown. Stained. Soup stains down the front. Other stains she didn't want to identify.
His head lolled to the side. A line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth to his chin, dripping onto the gown.
This was Genzo Kurosawa. The Dragon of Kanto. The man who'd commanded ten thousand men with a raised eyebrow. Who'd built an empire from nothing. Who'd taught Hanae to hold a sword before she could walk, who'd made her into the Asura.
"Otou-san?" The word came out broken. Small. The voice of a child, not a warrior.
She knelt beside the wheelchair. Took his hand. It was cold. Limp. No muscle tone, no response.
The old man didn't turn. His eyes were milky with cataracts, fixed on the dancing cartoon rabbits on the screen. Empty eyes. No recognition. No presence.
"Pretty..." he mumbled, voice slurred like a stroke victim. "Pretty colors... nice colors..."
Hanae looked at the IV stand beside him. Read the labels on the bags hanging from it.
Haloperidol. High dose. Antipsychotic that turned people into zombies.
Lorazepam. Benzodiazepine. For anxiety and sedation.
Risperidone. Another antipsychotic.
The doses were obscene. Enough to tranquilize an elephant. Enough to chemically lobotomize a human being.
He wasn't senile. Wasn't suffering from dementia. He was being drugged. Systematically. Kept docile. Kept compliant. A puppet who couldn't protest while his brother used his seal, his authority, his name.
Jiro had kept him alive like this. Turned a king into a pet.
Hanae's vision blurred. For the first time that night, tears came. Not sad tears. Rage tears. The kind that burned, that turned everything red.
She gently placed her father's hand back on his lap. Wiped the drool from his chin with her leather glove, the material coming away wet.
"Sleep, Otou-san," she whispered. "The nightmare is over. I promise. The nightmare is over."
She stood up.
The temperature in the room plummeted. If she'd been cold before, she was absolute zero now. The kind of cold that burned, that made frost form on glass, that made living things stop moving.
The sakki she radiated was so intense the windows vibrated. The glass hummed like crystal struck with a tuning fork.
She turned to Jiro.
Jiro was cowering behind the desk, clutching his bleeding shoulder, looking at Hanae's face and seeing his death approach.
"Hanae..." he whimpered. "Please. I... I can explain. It was necessary! He was dangerous! He wouldn't let me make the deals! Wouldn't let us modernize! He was stuck in the past!"
Hanae walked toward the desk.
"You drugged your own brother." Her voice was flat. Dead. The voice of someone reading charges at an execution. "You sold his sword. You sold his city. And you let him rot in his own filth while you drank his wine and fucked whores on his furniture."
"I... I..." Jiro looked around frantically. Saw the tea set on his desk—expensive jade, stolen from his brother's collection. "Tea! Do you want tea? I have Jade Dew! The best! We can talk! We're civilized people! We can negotiate!"
Hanae stopped.
A memory surfaced. The elevator ride up. Her own words. If he offers tea... throw him out the window.
A smile spread across her face. It was not a human expression. It was what the Asura looked like when she decided something was going to die.
"Tea," she repeated.
"Yes! Yes!" Jiro scrambled to pour, his shaking hands spilling hot water everywhere, the liquid hissing on the desk's surface. "Here! Please! Sit! Let's drink! Let's be reasonable!"
Hanae looked at Takeshi.
The giant was standing by the window, blocking the rain-lashed view of forty stories of empty air beneath them. He was cracking his knuckles, each pop distinct and final.
"Takeshi," Hanae said softly.
"Yes, Boss?"
"My uncle offered us tea."
Takeshi grinned. It was not a nice grin. "I'm not thirsty."
"Neither am I." Hanae pointed a gloved finger at the window. "And since the host is so insistent... show him the exit."
Jiro's eyes bulged. "No! No! Wait! We're on the 40th floor! You can't! This is murder! This is—"
Takeshi moved.
He didn't run. He exploded into motion. Vaulted over the massive oak desk in a move that scattered money and papers and tea everywhere, his mass clearing the furniture like it wasn't there.
Jiro tried to scramble away but he was fat and slow and terrified.
Takeshi grabbed him.
One hand on his belt. One hand on the back of his neck. He lifted the screaming man overhead like a barbell, like Jiro weighed nothing.
"UNHAND ME!" Jiro shrieked, kicking his legs in empty air. "I AM THE OYABUN! I AM THE KING! I AM—"
"You're a tea bag," Takeshi growled.
He walked to the window.
The glass was reinforced. Hurricane-proof. Bullet-resistant. Rated for typhoon winds.
It didn't matter. Takeshi was the typhoon.
"Reina," Hanae said. "Open the window."
"No," Hanae said quietly.
Takeshi stopped mid-motion, Jiro still dangling from his grip like a caught fish.
"Boss?"
Hanae walked to her father's wheelchair. Gripped the handles. The chrome was cold under her gloves, worn smooth from years of use her father had never asked for.
"Put him in the chair."
Takeshi dropped Jiro into the leather executive chair. The fat man sprawled, clutching his bleeding shoulder, looking up at Hanae with eyes that were starting to understand.
Hanae wheeled her father across the office. Each push of the chair made the IV stand rattle. Her father mumbled something about cartoons. She positioned him in front of the desk, where he could see everything.
"Watch, Otou-san," she whispered. "Watch what your daughter does to traitors."