Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Sure. . .that woman was a smug bitch, but she was also housing two innocent lives.
So I smiled. The kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes but still freezes the fucking room.
Silent and cold, I turned from her and stepped toward the door.
The shorter guard gave me that glance again—subtle, unsettling. Then his face returned to stone.
Behind me, I heard the pregnant woman sigh. "I suppose I’ll call the kitchen myself."
Her royal court laughed.
I didn’t turn around. “I would like to see the Dragon.”
Before the guards could speak, maybe-baby mama replied, “The Dragon is busy and he is not allowing anyone in.”
I refused to look at her.
Let them sip tea and snap fingers.
I kept my eyes on the guards, chin up, silent, poised, unbothered. I was playing the long game now.
The tall guard, the one with the scar across his eyebrow, shifted slightly. “I would need to get the Roar.”
I nodded.
Then he turned, opened the war room door, and stepped inside, leaving me alone in the hallway with my heartbeat, the suspicious guard, and them.
Behind me, the maybe-baby mama and her royal court dissolved into a tangle of laughter and whispers in Japanese. I didn’t need to speak the language to understand.
They were talking about me.
Picking me apart.
I’d seen those looks and had heard that kind of laughter before. It was the sound that followed me through high school hallways after the news broke about my father.
I felt the past snap its teeth.
This is like fucking high school all over again.
Back then, it had started with whispers in class.
Then eye rolls.
Then jokes. "Your Daddy's in jail. Right? Aren’t you worried he’ll be somebody’s bitch?"
When they found out about the mistresses—especially the seventeen-year-old, the one who was my age—they had a ball with that. They’d printed out the headlines and taped them to my locker.
Left me notes that said, "Maybe your dad wanted to fuck you. Or did he? Are you a true Daddy’s girl?"
This went on for months.
I begged my mother to let me leave. She didn’t hear me at first—too busy drowning in legal fees and press releases, pacing the kitchen while screaming about how “the Feds were setting up a prominent Black man,” how “they made that seventeen-year-old girl up,” how "they were trying to destroy our beautiful family.”
By the third month, I didn’t argue.
I just packed my bags.
Eventually, she signed the forms and I moved down to South Carolina to live with my grandmother.
There, I finished high school in silence. No friends. No prom. No distractions. Just shadows, church, soul food and the slow, steady ache of finding comfort in being invisible.
Graduation day came and went. I didn’t walk across the stage to get my diploma.
I didn’t want to be seen.
Instead, my grandmother made deviled eggs, mac’n cheese, greens, ribs, and cornbread, invited a few of her church ladies, and we sat by the river with red solo cups and bellies full of her bourbon-glazed pound cake, laughed about everything and nothing at all.
I wore a sundress and sandals.
She wore her best church dress and pearls.
It was the best celebration I ever had.
But here I was again.
Back in my high school’s hallway.
Back in the war of vile whispers.
Except now I wasn’t the ashamed daughter of a scandal.
I was the woman standing outside the Dragon’s war room.
I was stronger now and while I wouldn’t slap maybe-baby mama, I would knock out her crew if they kept it up.
Lord, please help me not start a brawl out here in this hallway.
I hated how my body betrayed me. My nerves flickered under my skin, itchy and tight. My hands curled into fists at my sides. My lips ached from the pressure of keeping them still.
If Reo came out and told me I couldn’t go in—especially in front of her—I didn’t know what I would do.
Unfortunately, it would feel like losing.
I knew it was childish. This wasn’t some high school hallway. This was a Japanese mafia compound on a private island with murderers, assassins, and men who turned cities into ash.
But still. . .something in me whispered that if I had to turn around and walk away. . .I would be surrendering my crown.
Behind me, the maybe-baby mama giggled again and began speaking in English.
“Really. . .” Her voice was honey-laced venom. “You might as well turn around.”
I didn’t.
“No woman has ever entered the Dragon’s war room,” she continued. “Not on this island. Not even the one in his Tokyo stronghold.”
I gritted my teeth.
She sighed, “The Dragon’s rule is no women and children in the war room. None. Even if a woman holds a high position—as his Ear.”
The pause after Ear was deliberate.
I didn’t move.
Then came the chuckle. The low, calculated mutter to her court: “She probably doesn’t even know what an Ear is.”
That got them going.
The tall man in the cream kimono howled with laughter like she’d just told the greatest joke in history. “She knows nothing of our ways.”