Page 29 of The Dragon 1
“That’s one conclusion.”
“And the other?”
“I want to know everything about her immediately, starting with where she is staying and how soon she can be in my bed.”
Reo checked his Rolex. “You have the meeting with the Lion in thirty minutes.”
“Forget the Lion,” I waved him off. “Focus on the Tiger. I also want all of her books.”
That got a knowing smirk out of him. “Your tiger won’t be hard to find. I already have men following her and I sent Ali off to the foreign bookstore to see if we can find any copies of her books in Tokyo.”
Pleasure rolled through my chest. “Good.”
“The men you have following her. . .tell them not to get too close,” I murmured. “She’s skittish. Fierce. But she’s watching everything. That kind of woman notices ghosts before they appear.”
Already ten steps ahead, he shrugged. “I told them to remain in the shadows.”
“I should’ve known you would have eyes on her,” I looked at him then, really looked.
Reo was my brother only by bond and he was one of the most dangerous men I’d ever met—because his mind was a brutal maze with no exit and a thousand hidden doors.
Other men killed with fists or blades.
Reo?
He killed with strategy.
Long ago, I’d named him the Dragon’s Roar.
The warning before the fire came.
The sound before the skies split open to rain down blood.
Almost every man in Japan feared me. But they flinched when Reo entered a room. Because I might destroy your body but Reo? Reo would dismantle your legacy, your lineage, your reason for existing.
I watched him. “Her scent—black amber and ripe plum. Did you catch that?”
“I did not,” Reo adjusted the cuff of his jacket.
“Are you sure you didn’t smell that on her?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he studied me and then shrugged. “She said she didn’t wear perfume. I inhaled. There was nothing. Perhaps her scent wasn’t in the air at all.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means yoursoulmight have smelled her, not your nose.”
I stared at him caught somewhere between amusement and a chill I couldn’t shake. “That’s not real science.”
“Neither are most of the things we claim to believe,” his expression remained unreadable. “But if a woman walks in and everything in you howls to remember—maybe it isn’t about the scent. Maybe it’s about the part of you that’s been asleep for years finally waking up.”
His words settled on me like smoke over water.
Still, I tilted my head back and drew in a slow breath.
He’s wrong. The scent is still there. Amber. Plum.
In fact, it clung to my clothes, my hair, the air I breathed. It threaded through my office like it belonged here now, like it had always been waiting.
