Chapter 9
We drive for hours with nothing but the engine, the road, and the ghost of everything unsaid between us.
Alejandro handles the wheel like he owns the whole damn mountain range, broad shoulders relaxed, one hand draped over the top of the steering wheel.
Every time we hit a curve—and there are a hundred winding turns on the way into Kenji’s territory—the car shifts, and I’m too aware of him beside me.
His heat. His presence. The way he takes up space without trying.
I focus out the window, watching the shadows deepen as we get farther from the city and closer to where I grew up. Or as close to “grew up” as an orphan ever gets.
Kenji’s homestead appears only in fragments at first—a flash of a ridge, the glint of a far-off roof, the silver thread of the mountain stream cutting through the valley.
Several buildings tucked into the slope.
Gardens terraced by hand. And the training yard where some of the deadliest people in the world were carved into their final shapes.
Where I was carved.
Dropped on the steps of a New York orphanage at three days old. Unclaimed and raised by no one, I aged out and fought the world tooth and nail… until someone offered me a different kind of life. A profitable one.
Until the Guild.
Until the initiation night where I stood in a room full of killers-to-be. Kenji saw me and claimed me as his student. His only one before. His only one after.
I tell myself I’m going home.
But it’s the closest thing to home I’ve ever had, and that’s its own kind of sting.
“Turnoff’s ahead,” I say quietly.
Alejandro shifts gears. Takes it slow. He knows better than to blast into a Guild master’s land at full speed unless he wants a hidden arrow through his throat.
“Pull off here,” I add. “Kill the lights. Engine too. We walk from here.”
He turns both off without arguing.
I open the door, slipping into my leather jacket and breathing in the cold mountain air. The moon paints the path in silver.
“Grab Skippy,” I tell him.
He stares at me. “Who?”
I jerk my chin toward the corpse slumped in the backseat. “Your new best friend.”
“Por el amor de Dios…*” he mutters, rubbing a hand down his face. “We are not dragging a dead man through a forest.”
“We are,” I say, already stepping away from the car. “I’m not leaving him. Not until I know who he is.”
“That is a terrible plan,” he grumbles. “A ridiculous, impossible, stupid—”
I glance back at him, deadpan.
“Is it because you’ve lost so much muscle mass?”
He looks down at himself so fast I nearly laugh. Hands patting his arms, chest, like he’s checking for missing parts.
“Lost—? I have not lost muscle.” He flexes his arm as if the mountain fog needs convincing. “I’ve actually put on muscle.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” I say, dripping sarcasm. “If you can’t lift him, just say—”
He grabs the corpse by the collar so violently the body jerks upright like a marionette.
“I can lift him,” Alejandro snaps. “Por supuesto que puedo. *Watch.”
He hauls Skippy out of the car, muttering Spanish curses under his breath the entire time—something about saints, demons, and poor life choices—while dragging the dead weight through the gravel.
“See?” he grumbles. “Perfectly capable.”
“Congratulations,” I say. “Your ego lives to fight another day.”
“Barely,” he mutters, adjusting his grip as the corpse’s arm flops across his knee. “This is still ridiculous.”
“And yet,” I call over my shoulder as I head toward the path into Kenji’s land, “you’re doing it.”
His answering sigh is loud, dramatic, and deeply offended.
“Fantástico,” he says dryly. “I always dreamed of being promoted to pack mule.”
“You know, have big dreams,” I say, already heading up the faint dirt path toward the dark outline of Kenji’s compound.
Alejandro grunts behind me as Skippy’s body thumps over another root.
We make it down the ridge, to the point where the trees thin enough that Kenji’s territory begins. I kneel, raising a hand.
“Stay here,” I whisper. “I’ll only be a moment.”
Alejandro shifts Skippy to one arm. “And if he kills you?”
“Then I’ll be longer than a moment.”
I don’t wait for the next complaint. I trot up the slope, toward the narrow cart path that leads to the main gates—old wooden beams with iron nails driven by hand. Opening them is easy. Kenji never bothered with locks. Locks aren’t challenges. Locks don’t separate the worthy from the dead.
No, the real challenge is knowing where he’ll strike from.
I slip through, eyes scanning everything. Shadows stretch long over the courtyard. The gardens he tends are quiet, still. The stream murmurs behind the main building. The air smells like pine, stone, and memory.
For a moment—just one—I feel that old whisper of nostalgia. This place made me. Broke me. Built me again. Maybe he doesn’t know I’m here. Maybe he’s away. Maybe—
The thought dies as something snaps past my cheek, so close the wind of it stings my skin.
It hits the wooden post behind me with a loud ping, burying itself into the beam.
One of Kenji’s infamous glass beads.
I pivot, already dropping into a crouch—
A blur of white flashes to my left and there he is.
He moves like lightning and living steel—faster than anyone his age has any right to. His white gi flickers in the moonlight as he closes the distance, silent as snowfall.
I only avoid the first strike because I trained under him.
He aims a palm strike at my sternum. I twist sideways, grab his wrist, go for a sweep—
He’s gone before my leg even commits to the arc.
He counters with a hooking kick that whistles past my jaw. I duck, roll, come up in a fighting stance. He doesn’t wait. He never waits.
He leaps, spinning—heel aimed at my temple.
I block with both forearms, the impact jolting down to my spine.
“Still slow,” he says calmly, landing light as a feather.
“Still short,” I shoot back.
He narrows his eyes—amused, insulted, both.
He lunges again, this time grabbing for my collar. I let him get close, palm the back of his hand, twist with my whole shoulder—
He redirects my leverage like water slipping around a rock and sends me skidding back three steps with a flick.
I grit my teeth and launch forward, snapping a kick toward his ribs. He blocks with his elbow, catches my ankle, and flips me—except I catch myself mid-fall, palms hitting the ground, legs sweeping around in a low spinning kick meant to knock him off balance.
He jumps over it.
Jumps.
At sixty-something.
He lands, grabs my wrist, tries to leverage my weight forward—
But I’m taller and stronger than the girl he trained years ago.
I anchor my stance. He doesn’t move me.
“Better,” he murmurs.
“Older,” I counter.
He smiles.
And that’s worse.
A smiling Kenji usually means he’s about to try to break something.
Before I can fully reset my stance, he moves.
A blur—faster than my eyes want to track.
First move:
He snaps forward with a knife-hand feint toward my throat. I parry—he wanted me to. Because the second I commit—
Second move:
He pivots inside my guard, hooks his foot behind my ankle, and slams his elbow lightly—precisely—into the pressure point beneath my collarbone. Pain sparks down my arm. My balance breaks.
Third move:
He grabs my wrist, uses my own forward momentum, and sweeps my other leg clean out from under me.
I hit the ground flat on my back, breath punched from my lungs, the stars above me blurring for half a second.
The fight’s over.
I don’t need him to say it.
Every nerve in my body already knows.
Kenji steps into my vision, hands clasped neatly behind his back, breathing steady, not a single hair out of place. He tilts his head, assessing me the way he always has—like a craftsman checking his handiwork.
“It is good to see you, Saint,” he says softly before he turns and walks toward his house.
The endearment lands exactly where his elbow did—deep, precise, and impossible to ignore.
I suck in a breath, roll to my side, and try not to look as wrecked as I feel.
Kenji turns without a word and walks toward the main house.
Traditional wooden beams. Sliding shōji doors. Lantern light glowing soft and warm against the night.
I follow, boots quiet on the porch out of habit—because running or not, this place has rules.
Inside, the air smells like cedar and green tea.
He moves with his usual unhurried precision, pouring hot tea into two small cups. One is set in front of me. The other, he takes for himself. He sits.
“Your face is bruised,” he observes.
“My pride is bruised,” I mutter, raising the cup to my lips for a small sip.
His mouth twitches the barest fraction. “You are hunted.”
I exhale through my nose. “The world knows.”
“Yes.” He lifts his tea. “A dramatic way to announce one’s retirement.”
“Not my choice.” My voice goes tight. “I need help.”
“As a master,” he says calmly, “I can offer none.”
The words hit harder than his throw.
My jaw clenches. “Are you going to turn me in? Take the hit yourself?”
He doesn’t even blink. “You would not have come here if that were a concern.”
I look away. He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“Besides,” he adds, blowing the steam gently, “masters are not obligated to report the sighting of an exile.”
That word.
Exile.
I flinch before I can school it. A tiny betrayal of control.
Kenji, of course, sees everything.
His voice softens—not gentle, exactly, but close enough for him.
“You were set up, Saint. Anyone who knows you understands this. You would never betray your Guild.”
I take a bigger sip and swallow hard. For a moment, I’m eight years old again, staring at the man who promised to forge me into something the world could never break.
“I need a way off Japan. And weapons.” My tone is steady, but I’m shaking inside.
He sets his cup down. I wrap both hands around mine letting the heat ground me.
“I thank you,” he says, “for visiting an old man. I only wish you would come when you are not running for your life.”
“Well,” I say dryly, “I’ll put it on my calendar.”
He stands.
Just… stands.
Like the conversation is over. I stare at the floorboards at his feet. Still wearing his split-toe boots from working in his gardens.
He walks toward the back door, speaking as he goes—his voice shifting into that drifting, absentminded tone he uses when he’s saying something he technically isn’t saying.
A plane roars overhead—low, loud enough to rattle the shōji screens. Kenji glances up at the ceiling as if the noise personally offends him.
“These local airstrips,” he mutters. “Always sending out cargo shipments at ridiculous hours. Every hour, it seems. Impossible for an old man to sleep.”
My eyes narrow.
There it is.
Hidden in the mundane. A hint.
He slides open the back door, letting in a slice of cool night air.
“And,” he says lightly, almost to himself, “I must remember to fix the lock on the barn. It keeps slipping. Wouldn’t want it swinging open all night.”
He steps outside, still not looking back.
“Best if I sleep early,” he adds. “Will need to be up at dawn so I can fix it.”
Then he vanishes into the darkness.
No goodbye.
No good luck.
Just riddles wrapped in small talk—pointing me toward escape… and weapons.
Just Kenji.
Helping the only way he’s allowed.
And leaving me to decide what kind of exile I’m going to be.
* For God’s sake…
* Of course I can. Watch.