Page 4 of Emperor of Wrath

“Fine,” I sigh. “I’m going quiet again. Second floor, east wing, third door on the right?”

“Yeah. Office door key code is six-six-six.”

I roll my eyes.

Kinda predicable, Cillian.

Getting back into character, I walk back around the corner of the garden hedge and pluck a glass of champagne from a passing tray, then smile cordially at another redhead who glances my way. When her brows knit, and something between recognition and confusion sweeps over her face, I quickly turn and scurry away into the crowd.

Shit. That was Neve Kildare, Cillian’s niece and Ares Drakos’ wife.

She’s also friendly with my twin sister.

In the shit that went down when I was eighteen and my life went up in smoke, I lost touch with Taylor. We’ve recently reconnected, which has been amazing, but that’s something I never had to worry about before when I was doing heists like this: that there’s an identical copy of me out there, and someone could easily mistake me for her, especially now that I’ve allowed my hair to go back to its natural red after dying it for years to stay under the radar.

Neve knows Taylor because my sister is the hot-shot name managing partner of Crown and Black, one of the most prestigious law firms in New York, who both the Kildare and Drakos families use for legal representation.

I quickly blend into the crowd, hoping Neve doesn’t give it another thought. Hey, it’s a big crowd, and she looked at me for like two seconds.

It’s fine.

It’s totally?—

Fuck.

My heart leaps into my throat as I duck away from the main living room and scurry into the shadows by a recessed window.

“Shit!” I hiss into the mic.

“What?” Freya whispers back.

“Kir’s here.”

Freya groans. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I wish. In the past, Kir has mainly bounced between Moscow and London. But recently, there’s been more and more Bratva business bringing him to New York—like the growing Yakuza presence in the city, which is slowly eating away at Russian territory.

And that is business I have every intention of staying far away from.

Kir’s been up my ass worse than this fucking thong about setting up some meetings with Sota Akiyama, head of the Akiyama-kai, to press him on some sort of agreement. Under normal circumstances, I’d be down, even with a dangerous, hardcore Yakuza kingpin like Sota.

Except, it’s not just Sota I’d be meeting with.

It’s him.

I’m going to remember you.

In your dreams, sunshine.

No, princess, in yours, which I’ll be fucking haunting.

I rarely make mistakes, but he was one of them.

Kenzo fucking Mori.

The heir to the Mori-kai Yakuza empire. The top waka gashira to Sota Akiyama. The vicious, brutal son of Hideo Mori and a Norwegian socialite, giving him the stunning and terrifying combined physical traits of a samurai and a Viking.

He’s huge, dangerous, and powerful. He’s also the man who’s been hunting me relentlessly for five years like a fucking bloodhound after I stole from him.

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