Page 18

Dominic

K eiko sank into one of my office chairs and threw her legs over the side. Her ski mask dropped from her limp hand to the floor. "Shit. That was close."

We’d made it back to my penthouse’s building without trouble, but kept discussions to other matters in case Ichiro had bugged the car.

Aaron’s tech expertise kept any GPS tracking to preapproved fake locations, but I allowed audio surveillance to throw the old man off.

As far as my grandfather would know, my car hadn’t gone beyond a two-mile radius.

I’d secured the two scientists in a closet, and they would remain there until after the Council meeting. The penthouse’s walls and floors were thick enough that no one would hear them yell or scream, but I’d also gagged them both.

Just because no one else could hear them didn’t mean I wanted to.

Aaron stretched his arms overhead. His muscles popped loudly. "Too close. He knew this was planned."

I agreed and appreciated him not rubbing his warning in my face. I sat at my desk and flipped the computer on. "Where’s Rin?"

Keiko whipped out her phone and typed. A moment later, it dinged. She snorted out a laugh. "He had to hide until Ichiro left."

"He’s out now?"

"Not yet."

"What’s stopping him?" I knew he could handle himself, but the whole situation tonight had me on edge.

She turned her phone to show me a picture of a vending machine. "Snacks."

My shoulders dipped with relief. If Rin was focused on food, then he wasn’t in imminent danger.

I synced my phone photos to my computer and opened the images I’d taken of the lab, prisoners, and files. I printed two copies for Keiko and Aaron, and we reviewed the data in silence.

Thankfully, only one page from the records room was too blurry to decipher. From what little we could make out, it didn’t seem to hold any information that could help us. The other papers provided more than enough damning evidence.

After dozens of failed attempts, Ichiro had procured a mysterious new chemical that achieved the desired effects. When combined with his other ingredients and injected intravenously, the successful mixture acted as a spirit bond controller.

Keiko’s nose crinkled in disgust as she lowered her stack of papers. "Ugh, I just can’t get over this power play. He already owns half the city. What does he want, all of it?"

Aaron flipped to another page calmly. "He wants the Council."

"Right, but that still makes no sense to me. He’s already more powerful than the Council. Why would he even care what those stuffy old dragons think?"

Although she wasn’t born a dragon, Keiko had been invited to a handful of the High Draconic Council meetings while growing up. Ichiro wanted his best assassin to have firsthand knowledge of our kind, just in case any needed dispatching.

Of course, no one ever knew she was present.

I had to hand it to the old man, though. He rarely had a dragon killed, even if they deserved it. Like Kenzo did.

"Ichiro won’t stop until he’s at the top," I said. "And in his eyes, that means a seat on the Council."

Keiko shook her head. "Makes absolutely no sense. Zero."

While I felt the same way, I also understood my grandfather far more than she did. He came from a generation and culture that prized loyalty and titles above almost all else. He believed in the old saying that if you’re not first, you’re last. Believed it and lived it.

To someone like Ichiro, he would rather die than be last. When I had my way, he would experience both—last place and death.

But his desire to be on the Council, to be first, wasn’t just a generational defect. Ichiro had emigrated with his family from Japan over fifty years ago. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs and remained poor throughout his childhood.

A bitterly cold winter robbed him of his youngest sister, who never recovered from a bout of pneumonia. She’d only been six when she died.

While losing a sibling must have been devastating to my grandfather, it was the Council’s lack of support for his family that corrupted him. He’d convinced himself that his sister would have survived if the Council had approved his family’s request for emergency help.

I wasn’t as convinced. To this day, pneumonia killed thousands of people each year. Fifty years ago, the odds of death were even greater, and she hadn’t been Gifted with a dragon yet.

Ichiro’s lifelong devastation over the loss also explained his reaction to my mother’s, his daughter’s, death. He likely saw the similarities and blamed anyone he could—including a defenseless baby—for what he considered an unnecessary death.

I wasn’t completely heartless; I felt a shred of sympathy for the old man, even after years of enduring his abuse. But most people didn’t turn into monsters when they lost their loved ones.

"Did you see the date in picture five?" Aaron asked.

I flipped to that image and clenched my jaw.

How the hell had this experiment been going on for almost two years?

Without me ever having a clue or hearing about missing dragonkind?

Ichiro had only found success in the past few months, but too many test subjects had lost their sanity or even their lives.

Rage simmered inside me, and Jou roared in defiance. He wanted to kill my grandfather as much as I did. Maybe more. The severing was hurting his brethren or possibly even destroying their spirits if the cycle of torture went on for too long.

What none of these notes answered was how Ichiro had come up with this ridiculous concept of manufacturing crystals in the first place. How had he produced these final successful results? What was in the mysterious blue liquid he received from an unnamed source that made it all possible?

We didn’t have enough. Sure, there might be enough here to knock Ichiro down from his pedestal. Perhaps enough to convict?—

My blood chilled.

No…

I flipped through the photos again, then brought up the computer file containing the lab’s holding within the business ledger, confirming my suspicion.

Not a single document named Ichiro as the perpetrator. Not even as the owner of the lab. Everything was listed under Sato Enterprises, which sounded like a done deal, but Ichiro was cunning. He could easily spin this to fall on someone else, and I knew just who he would blame.

Me.

"Fuck!" I slammed my first down on my desk. The wood groaned and split beneath the force. Everything on the desk slid into the gap between the two halves and crashed to the floor.

Double fuck.

Keiko blinked at me over the debris. "Temper tantrum or muscle spasm?"

"We can’t use any of this."

"What? Why not?"

Aaron grimaced as he connected the dots. "Ichiro’s name isn’t listed anywhere. It’s all Sato Enterprises."

I rubbed a hand over my face, suddenly exhausted. We had made actual progress tonight, gotten further than most of the past month’s attempts combined. Now, all the extra hours and sleepless nights might have been for nothing.

"So what if his name isn’t listed?" Keiko frowned. "He owns Sato Enterprises."

"He’ll simply pass the blame on someone like me," I said.

"The Council isn’t that dumb. They’ll see through that. It’s a flimsy excuse." Keiko waved a hand dismissively. "Even if it was true, he should know what his employees are up to, right?"

"For anyone else, maybe, but Ichiro’s too well connected. The Council won’t risk it unless our evidence is ironclad. We need more." I ground my teeth together. "I have to go back in there before the meeting."

"Then I’m going with you," Keiko said.

"No."

"There’s no way you can get in and out without being seen," she argued.

"You may be good, the best—" I added when she shot me a withering glare "—but there are only so many shadows you can use or create during the day."

My phone buzzed, and I glanced at the message. So much for that idea. My shoulders slumped in defeat. Any hope I had of getting back there tomorrow dissipated. "No use arguing. Ichiro put the lab on lockdown and called a search for the wolf shifters. Rin’s part of the search team."

Keiko made a face. "Great. He’s going to smell abso-fucking awful when he gets home. Like a wet dog."

My gaze dropped to the photos scattered across the remains of my desk. It would have to be enough.

We were so close. So close to finally putting an end to Ichiro Sato. All I had to do was attend tomorrow’s High Draconic Council meeting and convince enough members that Ichiro was the mastermind behind the pyrocrystals.

Piece of cake.