Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101427 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
The twins moved with me—flanking like mirrored ghosts. I didn’t need to signal. Yuki dipped low, Aki veered high. They split angles like we’d choreographed this in another life.
We zipped past corpses—open jaws, empty eyes, slit throats still steaming.
Up ahead, bamboo cracked. He must have hit his arm or knee on a trunk.
A breath came next, and then a grunt.
My own pulse pounded thick in my ears. War drums pumping out a rhythm of rising violence.
I pivoted without hesitation, lifting my guns and shot in his direction.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The three shots echoed through the trees. The flashes lit up the forest in staccato bursts—brief snapshots of chaos.
Up ahead, the shadow ducked, but rushed on.
The bastard was fast.
But I was faster.
The bamboo hissed in protest as he tore through it.
I jumped over a dead man.
Shoots snapped.
Branches whipped against my arms. My shoes pounded on the earth when I landed and fired again.
Boom.
Boom.
The second shot clipped his shoulder. I saw it jerk. Heard the hiss of his pain.
Got you.
And now I was past instinct.
Now I was hunting.
Eyes locked.
Gun hot.
Blood drying in a line down my cheek.
This wasn’t just a chase anymore. This was execution. And I was closing in.
Poor bastard.
He didn’t know whose graveyard he’d just run into. This forest wasn’t natural.
I designed it with Reo—every stalk, every twist, every deceptive clearing. It took us seven months and three architects to perfect the layout.
Each section had purpose just in case someone tried to escape: confusion in the West, entrapment in the East, open kill-zone at the center. The wind patterns weren’t an accident. Neither were the trees that grew slightly curved, like nature had a bias for death.
We laid it out like a blade—tip to hilt.
I knew every blind corner. Every soft patch of moss that muffled footfall. Every stalk that we sharpened at the root so it could skewer a man from below if he stepped too hard.
He bolted right.
I angled left, grinning.
There was a bend ahead. A curved tree with false shelter behind it. We let it grow on purpose. Its trunk was wide, low, and slanted—a natural place for cowards to hide.
But behind it?
Dead end.
Another twenty feet and he would run into a wall of stalks, so thick and woven they might as well be stone.
Now I know where the other two traitors are hiding.
He thought he was gaining distance. He didn’t know this was my forest, and now it was closing in around him.
The bamboo ahead dipped into a shallow arch. I didn’t slow. I slid beneath it, one palm grinding into the damp earth, fingers splaying for balance, knees bent, absorbing the glide like a panther on wet stone.
Dirt sprayed up my side.
My body compressed, every muscle tight, braced, until I cleared the bend and sprang up again, fast and clean, shoes gripping moss like claws.
The bastard was still running.
But now I was faster.
Now I was hunting.
Out the corner of my eye, Yuki dropped low, his silhouette slicing through shadow. “I see another coming in from the right to help him.”
“Get the new guy.”
Yuki slid feet-first under a fallen trunk, his movement so smooth it looked rehearsed. At the last second, he twisted his hips mid-glide, one hand bracing the dirt, the other ready to draw. Then—fluid as smoke—he sprang upright again, blades flashing in both fists, never losing stride.
To my left, Aki launched off a rock like it was spring-loaded.
“Other one must be east and coming up on your right,” I called out.
He didn’t answer—just leapt trunk to trunk, arms out for balance like a tightrope assassin, disappearing into the thick.
My target kept limping forward, fast but unsteady now, shoulder dripping blood from my last shot.
He looked over his shoulder once—eyes wide, panicked.
Big mistake.
Because I was right there and I saw his face.
Watari. Yes. You were the main one I wanted to personally kill.
I dropped my weight, boots slamming the earth, sliding under a bamboo arch with one palm pressed to the dirt for control. My knees bent, coiled like springs.
I exploded up just as he turned forward again—too slow, too late.
My fist caught his ribs hard.
He gasped.
And then we collided—limbs grappling, knees twisting, guns still held but forgotten for the raw brutality of bone and knuckle.
No more running.
Now it was just violence.
I was on him.
With his gun up, he twisted out of the way.
Fired.
Missed.
I didn’t when I fired and got a bullet in his fucking knee. I could have shot him some more, but he’d helped put my men in a fucking circle of death. He wouldn’t get off that easy.
I dropped my guns, grabbed his wrist, slammed it into a bamboo trunk.
His pistol scattered from his grip.
He threw an elbow and caught my jaw.
Blood filled my mouth.
I grinned.
Then headbutted him hard.
He gasped and bucked, knees jabbing up.
I took one to the ribs.
Fuck!
I caught his next punch mid-air, twisted his arm until it cracked, and then slammed my palm into his throat.