Page 53 of The Dragon 1

He opened his mouth and stared at me. “Why is that good? Claws? For God’s sake, Nyomi.”

“I’m just being helpful.”

“If you want to be helpful then leave a gang leader’s penis alone. You know his father is like the head of one of the biggest gangs here? I think it’s Yamaguchi. That’s the biggest one. Dear God, please say it’s not that one. I’ll have to research this.”

“Maybe it won’t be—”

Someone knocked at the door.

We both went silent and froze.

Zo tiptoed and turned off the lights.

I set my glass on the white table in front of me and checked my watch.

It was close to midnight.

More knocking came.

This time it was louder.

Zo dove to the ground and mouthed some incomprehensible words like I could easily understand a string of silent sentences in the dark and after drinking two glasses of sake.

“What?” I whispered.

“Shh.”

The knocking continued.

We must've waited for five minutes before the person on the other side coughed and began to speak.

“Please open the door,” A light male voice drifted from the other side. “I know someone is in there. I heard screaming earlier. If I don’t give you this gift then I’m going to have a pretty bad night. Please open the door.”

I rose.

Zo grabbed my arms and pulled me back to him. “How do we know it’s not a trick?”

I snatched my arm away from him. “Because if Kenji is truly as bad as you say he is, we would’ve already been dead. Why waitfor someone to nicely knock on the door at midnight, posing as a gift giver?”

On the other side of the door, the person banged louder. “Please, Ms. Palmer. You’re to sign for this.”

He said my last name.

I tensed. My fingers shook a little.

Zo tossed me anI-told-you-solook and then he chewed on his right thumbnail. “What do we do now?”

“I’m going to grab my mace and open the door.”

“I don’t think mace will be enough. He’s the damned Dragon.”

Really?

“Look,” I said. “Dragon or not, if my knee can bring him down, I bet mace could do the job too and that doesn’t sound like him out there. It’s another person.”

“An assassin maybe. . .”

“An assassin? Knocking?” I pointed in the other direction. “Just go in the bedroom.”