Introducing my Boss, Kyouki I. James aka Li Joined the Saints at 14, still riding that wave (20 years later).
Kyouki was that girl everyone liked — the one who always smiled when she passed, held the door open, helped a classmate study before exams. She had a warmth that didn’t match the city’s edges, her laughter cutting through all the noise like something good in a place that forgot what good looked like.
Most people thought she was too sweet to be running with anyone serious. She didn’t flash colors, didn’t brag, didn’t talk about who she knew. Just a girl in a cropped hoodie, ripped jeans, and sneakers, sipping coffee on the corner, waving when she recognized someone.
But the Saints knew.
They knew the quiet ones were the ones you didn’t cross.
They knew she could walk through their base, pull a gun apart on the table, or translate a deal in three languages before anyone else blinked.
Even Aisha liked her — said she had that “pretty danger” kind of energy, soft on the surface but with something steel underneath.
And everyone knew one other thing for certain: Johnny Gat didn’t play about Kyouki.
You could joke, flirt, maybe test the water if you were stupid or new — but once you saw the way Gat’s eyes followed her across a room, that half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, you stopped. Fast.
Because she might’ve looked like the girl next door…
But everyone in Stilwater knew better.
Shortly Li came up the hall from where Dex office was, he could hear her heels clicking on the stone floor, she stopped in front of his office talking with one soldier, the guy she was speaking with nodded to what she asked, she felt someone watching her back; she saw Johnny waved with a smile, continuing to her previous destination. The soldier who she was just speaking with hadn’t budged. He was ogling as she walked away; burning a hole through her jeans.
Hell, Johnny couldn’t help but stare. She had on a pair of tight black low rider skinny jeans that hugged her ass like a second skin and a purple camisole top with thin straps that slid off her cinnamon shoulders.
“Daaaaamn, she got a phat ass.” The Saint runner said when a fellow Saint came up, watching her leave biting his fist mock crying, not noticing Johnny shooting him rocks from his chair. “I’d let her shoot me to get wit her.”
