This staircase will be the biggest obstacle in the battle. Armed men will be everywhere making sure we don’t take any steps up. We’ll have to be fucking careful or many of us can die.
Reo pulled out a pen from his pocket and pointed to another room. "Akiro sleeps here. Two rooms below. He has guards controlling access to the upper floors."
Reo moved the pen. "More armed men here. Here. And here. They’re stationed at every landing, every room, every choke point on the staircase."
He's built a vertical kill zone.
Hiro had no jokes this time. “Goddamn it. This is going to be a blood bath.”
“Let’s make sure the blood bath is on their side and not ours.” Still, this overwhelming dread settled in.
This was worse than I'd imagined.
Thehotelwas a fortress disguised as a museum—narrow corridors, limited entry points, the staircase functioning as a single vertical path with no alternative routes.
Every room on the way up was a potential ambush.
Every landing was a kill zone. My father had chosen this location because it was beautiful and mocked me, yes, but also because it was a death trap for anyone trying to reach him.
I looked at Reo. "How many men does he have?"
"Based on camera feeds and phone signals, we're estimating around one hundred and thirty."
"We bring two hundred."
Reo nodded. "I've already started mobilizing."
I looked at my brother. “What’s the plan?”
“I have a question for Reo.” Hiro leaned into the cross-section, studying the staircase with the focus of a man counting the steps between himself and the thing he needed to destroy. "So as we go up the steps, there's going to be different levels of men we have to fight through?"
"Correct." Reo traced the path with his pen. "The lower rooms will have standard security—foot soldiers, hired muscle. As you ascend, the quality increases. Tactical fighters in the middle rooms. Akiro's personal guard near the top. And then Akiro himself, below the Fox."
The final fucking boss. This is going to be a cruel, deadly battle.
Pulling out his lollipop from one of his fur coat pockets, Hiro turned to the Claws and Fangs around us. "The Scales go in first to get as many as they can. Then, you all are expected to handle the light work. The lower floors, the foot soldiers, and the hired hands. Keep the path clear behind us so nothing comes up from below."
Kaede nodded once. Daisuke didn't move—which was his version of agreement. Toma cracked his neck. The twins tilted their heads in unison.
And all my Fangs sneered which said they were more than ready to kill on command.
I gestured to Hiro and Reo. "The three of us go up. Together. Through the rooms. Through whoever's in them."
"I like that.” Reo nodded.
“Okay. The staircase is handled. We’ll talk more strategy on that later. But can we get in the hotel before they’re ready for us?”
“That’s the problem." Reo pulled the focus back to the cross-section and pointed to the front of thehotel. "We can't go through the main entrance. We'd be on camera and outnumbered before we reached the lobby.”
“Hmmm.” I walked around to the side of the building. "We have the service entrance over here.”
“Yes. That’s for kitchen deliveries and it also makes way to the staff corridors.”
“Tomorrow afternoon, let’s get a small group of Scales to go in disguised as kitchen staff and another to enter later as a delivery crew. We need people on the inside to start chaos right when our hackers disable systems as we arrive.”
“That could work.”
Hiro unraveled the plastic on his lollipop and placed it in his mouth. Next, he took off his fur coat and handed the coat and candy wrapping to Kaoru who immediately frowned.
