The Dragon 4 (Tokyo Empire #4)

Prologue

That Smile

Hiro

I couldn't close my eyes to sleep.

The moment darkness fell around my lids, she was there. Nura—dark brown skin, breathtaking face, her lips curved, the faintest smile meant only for me.

And then the horror came.

Her, chained and forced to sit on the floor beneath my father as if he were higher and she was lower.

Her, turning her face in my direction and giving me that smile again.

And then—time slowed.

The muzzle flashed. I saw the bullet leave the barrel, cut through the air between them—between my father's hand and her head—in a trajectory I would trace in my mind for the rest of my life.

That smile was still on her face.

Her eyes still held that warmth.

The bullet traveled through inches of air, then less, moving toward the side of her head where her skin looked so soft, where I'd hoped to press my lips after our date.

Contact.

The metal kissed bone.

For a fraction of a breath, nothing—and then everything.

The skull resisted, then gave way.

I saw. . .I saw. . .the fracture lines spider outward from the point of entry, a grotesque starburst blooming across the curve of her head. The bullet punched through, carrying pieces of her with it.

Fragments of bone.

Dark matter.

The very essence of who she was, atomized.

The exit wound erupted.

Everything that made her sprayed outward in a mist of red. A horrific flower blooming in reverse, petals flying away instead of unfurling.

And through it all, impossibly, that smile remained on her face.

Her eyes hadn't changed yet. They were still looking at me with that warmth, even as she ceased to exist. It took a heartbeat for gravity to claim her, then she was gone.

Sound came last.

My screams.

The gunshot's sharp, final crack.

I saw it again and again.

That smile. . .

Why had she smiled at me like that?

As if she were giving me a secret gift in the middle of brutal violence.

What had that smile promised?

A future I’d never earned?

A forgiveness I hadn’t asked for and didn't deserve?

The guilt hit hardest because her smile had been for me alone, intimate and trusting, and I had nothing to return it with but silence and a body that couldn’t move under my father's men.

That smile.

It stung because surviving felt like theft—like I’d kept her life while she was taken, and every breath I drew after felt borrowed from her lungs.

That smile.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it and the bullet leaving the barrel. Every time, that same fucking bullet made that same fucking journey. Every time, her skull fractured in that same starburst pattern. Every time, that smile stayed frozen on her face as everything behind it ceased to be.

Every single time.

Over and over.

Since that night, my body hadn’t been mine. My stomach coiled on itself, hungry but unwilling to take food. My chest cinched tight; every breath dragged like it was hooked to barbed wire. My hands shook, even when I kept them clenched until the knuckles split.

I walked.

I fought.

I planned, but the hours dissolved into one endless blur.

My head throbbed from sleepless nights, blood buzzing at the base of my skull like hornets.

I kept moving because the second I stopped, that smile waited in the stillness.

That. . .smile.

The Claws didn’t ask why my eyes were red, why I kept a bottle at my side but never seemed drunk.

They knew not to.

If Kenji or Reo tried to look too close, I gave them the sharp edge of silence. Because I knew if I spoke her name aloud my voice would break. And once it broke, I didn’t think I could put myself back together.

So I clenched my jaw until it ached.

I pressed my teeth against sleep.

I fucked men and women, but not for pleasure, just for something to leave my body.

I let my heart hollow itself out day by day, an organ crashing and burning from the inside.

My Father, the Fox, thought he was untouchable.

He was wrong.

I would unmake him. Not quickly—no, that would be mercy, and mercy died with Nura's smile.

Together, with my brother, Kenji, I would carve his death the way a master carved stone, chipping away piece by piece, day by day, until there was nothing left but dust. I would strip him of his empire first—his money, his soldiers, his name.

I would take his allies and turn them into ghosts.

I would poison every well he drank from, burn every bridge he thought would hold him.

And when he had nothing left, when he was small, powerless, and alone the way Nura had been in those final moments, when he finally understood what it meant to be beneath someone—then I would take his breath.

Slowly.

The way he'd taken hers in an instant, I would take his, over hours.

Over days if I could manage it.

I would make him feel every second draining away, make him beg for the mercy of that single bullet he'd given her.

I would watch his eyes go wide with the same terror she must have felt, hear him plead the way she never got the chance to.

I would break every bone that had held him upright.

Shatter the finger that had pulled that trigger.

Tear apart every piece of him that had dared to exist in a world where she could not.

And when it was finally done, when even the memory of his voice was ash scattered to wind, when his name became a curse that mothers whispered to frighten children, when the very ground where he'd stood had been salted and poisoned so nothing would ever grow there again, only then, maybe, would that smile let me rest.

And maybe. . .

just maybe. . .

I would smile too.