CHRISTIAN
The warehouse smelled like blood and cheap cigars. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing faintly above the sounds of fists meeting flesh. Somewhere behind me, a man was crying. Or gagging. Or both. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t bother looking.
Liam stood to my right, watching like this was cable entertainment. Ryuji leaned against a steel pole, his arms folded, looking like a man enjoying his own twisted opera.
His son — the second one, not the dead one — was crouched near the guy they were working on. Young. Brash. What was his name again? Renji.
Still had too much to prove. The man on the floor writhed as someone poured salt into his wounds — literally, not metaphorically. Japanese discipline.
I kept my distance. I never got my hands dirty. That’s what Liam was for.
