The elevator hummed around us.
I handed Yoichi back his phone without looking up.
What the fuck?!
Her actions caused Reo to reroute every life on this island into a different ending.
I'd had so many chances to end her. I’d held Kenji back twice. I could have even had the Claws kill her last night when she tried to crash the party.
But I’d thought of her twins and treated her belly like a force field. I had let her live because I thought a woman like me did not order pregnant women killed. I had mistakenly thought that line was something worth keeping, and I had told myself keeping it was strength.
But it wasn’t strength. Not in this world. It was a fucking huge mistake and now possibly the island’s death sentence.
I was still learning.
I had been moving through Kenji’s world like rules of decency still applied. I believed that there were lines a person didn't cross and motherhood was sacred even when the mother was a snake.
But, the rules didn't apply here.
I fisted my hands at my side.
This world wasn't the world I had grown up in. It wasn't the newsroom or the streets of Brooklyn or any place where the law eventually showed up and the bad people eventually faced something.
This world ran on blood, consequence, and who moved first.
Kiko had understood that from the day she walked onto this island. She had been measuring me the whole time and she had read me correctly—that American bitch won't pull the trigger on a pregnant woman.
She had been right.
Kill or be killed.
I rolled my shoulders back and let the rage settle into something colder—vengeance.
Never again.
That was the vow to myself.
Never again would I hesitate over a snake because it had a belly full of eggs. Never again would I tell the men around me to wait before killing someone just because they were a woman. Never again would I trade other people's lives for my own comfort with the wordkill.
If I ever saw Kiko's ass again, I would do what I kept telling Kenji not to.
And the next enemy after her.
And the next one.
And the next.
I wasn’t a killer, but I could become one to protect all the people I loved.
I turned to Yoichi.
He’d been watching me.
“Where is Kiko now?”
The line of his jaw twitched. “I’m not sure.”
“Please, find her for me.”
