Page 42 of The Dragon 1

“It’s smart to remain with the French.”

“It is, but it’s also dangerous, Kenji.”

I tilted my head his way.

He didn’t blink. “The Butcher may not charge a security feenowbut if we become dependent on his route—”

“He’ll raise the price the moment he tastes our hunger.”

Reo nodded slowly. “He’s not running a favor. He’s watching the numbers. And once the French route becomes theonlyartery we’re using. . .he’ll clamp down the vein.”

“We’ll keep our options open.”

Reo raised a brow. “You think the Vietnamese will flip to us?”

“They’re smart. They fear the Lion but they fear stagnation more. And men like us—we don’t just offer money. We offer evolution.”

He grinned faintly, his eyes still scanning the operation. “You sound like your father when you talk like that.”

I didn’t respond.

Because I knew he was right.

And that scared the shit out of me.

We passed another table. This one with pills—long white lines of them in neat trays, waiting to be bottled. A woman with burn scars across her chest reached forward to twist a cap onto a container. Her fingers moved with steady grace.

I wondered who she’d killed to get here.

Because no one worked in the Candy Room unless they were vetted.

And no one stayed unless they had nothing left to lose.

Hiro’s voice sliced through the silence. “Who’s the girl over there?”

I followed his gaze.

Near the back wall, anewface sat quietly at a workstation lined with rows of compressed MDMA tablets. She moved like she didn’t want to be seen but her hands didn’t hesitate—sorting, weighing, sealing—fast and clean.

She had dark brown skin and her head was shaved close to the scalp, her movements remained smooth, controlled, and intentional.

“She’s sharp,” Reo said. “Fast. Never touches the product. Keeps her head down.”

“Background?” Hiro asked again, eyes still on her.

“Somali. Grew up in refugee camps, got trafficked through Libya, ended up in a black-market compound in Athens. Escaped six months ago. We found her hiding in a cargo container bound for Tokyo. She asked to work for us.”

As if she sensed we were watching her, she looked up and spotted Hiro. To my surprise, she didn’t flinch under Hiro’s gaze, when almost all women did.

Hiro studied her. “Interesting.”

Survivors recognize survivors.

We reached the steel door on the far end. Another guard—female, armed, and older—opened it without a word.

The space beyond was quieter, cleaner, and full of mathematicians and accountants clicking away on their devices.

This was a different kind of danger. It was the room where our product became numbers. Where power translated to decimals and percentages. This was where money got laundered, where crypto wallets were loaded, where our accounts across Switzerland and Singapore danced with blood.