Page 154 of Caution to the Wind

He scowled but didn’t argue.

“Save a proposal for someone you love, Jiang.”

He scoffed as if finding that someone was an impossibility.

“Aren’t you sick of this? This inaction, this dishonesty? I know I am. I want to change things for both of us. I want the chance for us both to find peace. If I had a way to do that, would you help me, big brother?”

His gaze shifted over a passing crowd of high school students before he answered. “If I could. But I live in the real world, Mei, and sometimes, you do not.”

“I’m going to kill Kasper,” I told him baldly and watched him flinch like the words were throwing stars aimed at his face. “I’m going to kill him because, whether you knew it or not, and I believe you didn’t, he ordered the hit on Kate. He did it because he loved her, and I think after she betrayed him by loving White Snake instead, he started his vendetta against White Snake. It was the reason he moved to Vancouver to fight with the Red Dragons, the reason, maybe, behind his general prejudice against white people. Does the timing sound right for that?”

I watched Jiang’s eyes shutter.

“I think he killed Eero because if he couldn’t have happiness, he didn’t want you to have it. Misery bonds people, and even though you lost your love to Kasper, it still brought you closer to him. You’ve had nothing to live for ever since, but him. What if I could give you something of your own and the only price you had to pay was giving him up?”

“Don’t speak to me of this,” he muttered, making to move away.

I snagged the sleeve of his cashmere jacket. “Speaking of it won’t change it. I’m going to take my pound of flesh because I deserve it, Axe-Man and Cleo deserve it, Kate deserves it, and I believe, so do you and Eero.”

“Don’t speak of him, either,” he whispered, his voice raw, hand trembling as he fished a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket.

“I’m sorry, J, I’m so sorry for what happened. Let me help make it right. If you help us, you could step into the vaccum and take over Seven Song.”

He tried to light his cancer stick three times before it caught. “No. You think he doesn’t care about me, but he spared you, didn’t he? If you meant less to me, he would have killed you that night at Purgatory.”

“It wasn’t because you loved me. It was because if he killed me, he’d probably have to kill you so you wouldn’t flip on him. Taking two lovers from someone doesn’t exactly inspire loyalty. Don’t be loyal to a fault now, Jiang. Let us help each other like we always said we would.”

“No,” he said slowly, like he didn’t want to. “I can’t. He’s my brother. He loves me, I know it, and I love him. He’s all the family I have here.”

“Sometimes, you get to choose your family,” I said, sliding my fingers down his sleeve into his hand to twine them together. “I thought I’d be alone the rest of my life after my ma died and Florent kept me from the Axelsens. Then you showed up, and now, I might have a chance to be part of a family that defines what it means to have each other’s backs.”

“I sought you out for selfish reasons,” he reminded me.

I shrugged. “It led to the same result, though, didn’t it?”

He squeezed my hand before letting me go. “If you go after him, just know I will not take sides.”

“You won’t leave here and go straight to him?”

He sighed, turning to me fully for the first time. I let him take my arms in a firm grip and shake me slightly. “You are mymeimei. My little sister as he is my big brother. I won’t hurt either of you. Do what you will, what I always have known you will do and what Iwantyou to do even if I cannot help. I won’t stop you. Besides, you know revenge isn’t frowned upon in China the way it is here. Confucius himself said ‘One should not live under the same Heaven with the enemy.’ Kasper has made himself your enemy, and you must do what you think is right. The woman you are, I always knew this day would come.”

“So, you did know he’d killed Kate?” I asked, trying to hide the ache of betrayal in my voice as I recoiled.

“No, of course not. But I wondered it was only a matter of time before he went after The Fallen again and you’d not let any harm come to the Axelsens.”

“That’s fair,” I said, reaching up to pat his cheek. “I can respect where you’re coming from, even if I wish you’d help me. For both our sakes. Unfortunately, I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry, J, but you’ll have to come with me.”

I glimpsed his startled expression for only a moment before he turned his head to look at one end of the bridge and then the other. Axe-Man stood sentry at the left and Wrath at the right.

When he looked back at me, I already had the syringe raised and pressed it into the thin skin of his neck.

“I love you,” I told him in Cantonese as he swayed and fell into the railing. I tossed his arm over my shoulder like he was my boyfriend and we were shuffling along in a romantic stroll toward Axe-Man. “I promise, when I’m done, both our worlds will be a better place.”

We used Jiang’s phone,encrypted to a facial scan, to set up the meet at a laundromat with a businessman who ran an import export business between China and Canada. We knew this was the concept both because The Fallen had been running surveillance on the triad and because Curtains was a real genius with tech, and he hacked into Jiang’s phone when we brought him back to the compound.

Axe-Man didn’t like it, but I had to go alone. The meet always took place in a deserted parking lot either early in the morning or late at night and the two contacts were alone. The fact that I was a woman could be a problem, because the triad was traditionally an all-male syndicate, but I knew Jiang had changed that in recent years, inducting more females into the fold. Also, one of the most famous American triad members in recent years was Sister Ping, a Snakehead who’d smuggled hundreds of people through Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Hopefully, my contact would raise an eyebrow, but let it be.