Page 124 of The Dragon 2
Tochigi was the most delicate. The cargo traveled in weathered agricultural trucks, the kind used to haul rice or compost. Stamped with a farming permit tied to a fake company. The crates were wrapped in burlap and mulch.
They crossed into Tokyo’s outskirts just before dawn. My allies in the city council had made sure inspections were suspended for “soil health testing” that morning.
Everything had moved.
Perfectly.
Flawlessly.
And yet here I was… distracted.
Agitated.
Chasing a woman who knew how to make my entire crew pivot around a single unanswered question:Where the fuck is she taking me?
I went back to her guards and demanded a full list of every person she’d physically come into contact with over the last twenty-four hours—delivery drivers, neighbors, passing strangers.
Anything.
All checked out, there was only one anomaly.
One of the guards mentioned an older woman. She’d visited the apartment the afternoon before. Stayed twenty, maybe thirty minutes.
Had tea.
That was it.
When she left the building, she wore a veil made of lace. The guard swore he couldn’t make out her face—just a pair of narrow eyes and the soft click of a cane as she moved down the hallway.
No car picked her up.
No camera caught her coming or going.
She just. . .arrived and then vanished.
They hadn’t searched her. Had no reason to. She was slow-moving. Polite. Elderly. She even bowed three times at one of them, looking like someone’s grieving aunt, not a variable in an active operation.
But I knew better.
I told Reo to assemble a full team to track the woman down.
He refused, citing that it was now close to an hour before the date.
Pissed, I accepted my defeat, and he left to meet her.
Still, while dressing, I’d called Reo seven times to get the address.
He didn’t answer.
Which told me everything.
Nyomi had ordered him not to.
And Reo—my most trusted, my most disciplined, my coldest in command—had obeyedher.
I laughed out loud when I realized that.
Fucking Roar.
