Could he be home?
It would make the most sense. I would have never looked for him there, not when it used to give my father anxiety to evenhear about the estate’s maintenance. So much guilt over my mother’s death filled him. So much. . .yearning for what he’d lost corroded his soul. . .even though when he’d had her, he never treated her right.
If the Fox hid here, he did so based on emotions and logic.
This could be the most likely one. . .or the biggest trick.
The final location was Hotel Gajoen Tokyo—the Palace of the Dragon King. If the Fox hid there, then he was choosing to mock me in front of his men and it was all about ego.
Yet. . .a place like Gajoen gave him something the others couldn’t, lots of movement, noise, and control.
There would be hundreds of guests moving through its halls. Staff trained to see everything and report nothing. Private rooms layered behind paper walls and locked doors, each one capable of becoming a meeting point. . .or a kill site.
It would be too many bodies for me to track.
Too many exits to seal.
Too many witnesses for anyone to act without consequence.
Or so. . .they want me to think. . .
I exhaled slowly.
Hiding in a maze was tactical.
Hiding in a fortress was predictable.
But if it was Hotel Gajoen, then he wasn’t hiding. He was waiting for me to walk through the doors. To step into a place already mapped, already scattered with mines, and already turned into a stage where every move I made would be seen and countered.
That required confidence and madness. My father had always walked the line between both.
Which place are you hiding in, Father?
If I chose wrong, many could die.
If I delayed, the Fox and my brother would disappear.
If I split forces, our side would be too vulnerable to their attacks.
No matter what I chose, Akiro had already planned for it.
I have to choose. I just know. . .whichever door we walked through. . .someone will bleed. I just have to make sure the blood is on their side, not ours.
By lunch, our surveillance teams were in motion to monitor the three locations in Tokyo. One unit infiltrated Yoshiwara's upper markets with false import papers. Another positioned themselves a block from my childhood estate, disguised as catering staff for an imaginary wedding. The third rolled into Hotel Gajoen, pretending to be staff—two bellmen, a sommelier, and a florist, all of them mine- by noon.
Meanwhile, my French hackers tracked the Butcher. Jean-Pierre's blade had opened the door my father walked through to kill my men and Hiroko. And a Dragon's memory was a long, patient, unforgiving thing.
One day, Butcher, I'll take everything you've ever loved and serve it to you on a clean plate.
Yesterday, he'd left Paris. He took his private jet and a direct flight to New York for a meeting that had lasted thirty-one minutes at a warehouse on the edge of the Bronx with Fela, the leader of the Nigerian Black Axe. Thirty-one minutes of two killers exchanging something too valuable to trust to a phone.
What did they talk about? And how can I use that against him?
Then the Butcher had boarded again, flown to the west coast, and landed in Belladonna—a city I knew only by name.
What's in that city, Butcher? What's waiting there that pulled you across an ocean and a continent in a single day?
I didn't know yet. But a man like Jean-Pierre didn't cross oceans for comfort. He crossed them for something rare, fragile, and worth more than the fuel it took to reach it.
