Page 114 of Brutal Unionn

“A nickel,” he says.

The corners of Nadia’s mouth curl, just barely, as she finally turns—just her head—to glance at me over her shoulder. That smile is not sweet. It’s the kind that comes before someone gets ruined.

“Five is a fitting number, don’t you think, Sho?”

“The perfect number, Hime.”

Before the final syllable leaves my lips, five pins gleam in her fingers and vanish—flung like silver fangs across the room.

Three bodies slump forward, blood already blooming across their silk. The laughter dies with them.

“Now, I believe my future husband said he wants your head,” Nadia says to my father as she stands to her feet. “I believe we are here to collect.”

28

SHO

How many timeshave I said I love this woman? Because I swear no number will be enough.

Three bodies collapse in perfect unison, a sickening harmony of choking gasps and slumping silk. Tanabe's eyes are still twitching, lips quivering like they’re trying to form one last insult as the blood pools beneath his chin. Suda falls face-first into his tea, and Hanamura doesn’t even get that dignity—his skull cracks loudly against the corner of the table as he drops like a sack of meat.

Silence punches through the room.

The remaining councilmen freeze, mouths parted in half-spoken protests. The guards, maybe two dozen in all, reach for their weapons. And my father?—

He doesn’t move.

His eyes are locked on Nadia, as if he's trying to decide whether to laugh, scream, or slit her throat.

I move before anyone else can.

Chains still biting into my wrists, I shift my weight and surge forward, catching the closest guard by surprise. My shoulder smashes into his gut, driving him back. His katana clatters to the ground. I roll, scoop it up with my bound hands, and spin to meet the next one charging me.

Steel meets steel with a ringing crack. My arms burn. My grin spreads.

“Come and get it assholes!” I growl, kicking a blade out from under one of their boots and slashing upward. “This will be your one chance to kill me!”

Nadia rips her robe for better movement, a smile on her face as she steps out of the fabric, “Do you have to be so cocky?”

“I am just letting them know how special of an opportunity this is?” I wink back, swinging my chains into the skull of a guard who is charging at me at full speed.

A shriek cuts behind me—Nadia’s bare feet slam into the face of a man who got too close. She’s graceful chaos, her indigo attire is split high to give her full range as she ducks under a wild swing and slits a throat with a blade pulled from her thigh holster. Blood sprays her cheek like war paint.

God, she’s beautiful.

Steel sings past my ear as I duck and drive an elbow into the ribs of one idiot too slow to block. His sword drops—I catch it mid-air, spin, and hurl it into the thigh of another. He screams. I kick him backward into a third guy just in time to steal the short blade from his belt and bury it in someone else’s neck.

“Where the hell’d you get the knife?” I yell, whipping around to block a strike from the left and turning the attacker’s ownblade into his gut. “Hairpins I get, but who’s the dumb bastard that armed you?”

Nadia giggles as she flips a guard over her shoulder and stomps his wrist until it snaps like a breadstick. “Aoi snuck it in this morning.”

Of course she did.

I roll beneath a high swing, pop up behind two Yakuza thugs, and knock their skulls together hard enough to hear bone crunch. I land across from Nadia just as she grabs one of the council members by the lapels and headbutts him so hard his neck audibly cracks over her shoulder.

“In Aoi we trust,” I rasp, snatching a fallen wakizashia short Japanese swordand slicing through a guard’s hamstring. “I assume she has Mia.”

“And Ashley?” Nadia’s voice cuts through the chaos like the knives in her hands—sweet and deadly, with an edge of something else.