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.”
The biology classroom sleeps, but Violet does not. She walks the edge of the Vampire Woods, her glasses catching the silver light of the moon. Her hair flows like raven wings, her smile warm but hiding sharpness.
A howl cuts the night. She closes her eyes, her own voice answering low and soft, the sound shaking the trees.
She whispers to herself, almost tender:
“Sweetness has teeth. Kindness has claws. And when they touch my children, they’ll learn just how sharp a mother can be.”
Her form flickers in the moonlight — human, wolf, human again. The City will never tame her.
The lecture hall glows under pale lights. Students sit wide-eyed as Violet writes on the board, her green eyes glinting behind her glasses. Her voice, soft and warm with an Australian lilt, carries over the rows.
Violet smiles gently, her words flowing like honey:
“Biology is the study of life… and life is fragile. Protect it. Nurture it. Or I’ll tear apart anyone who dares touch my pups.”
Her sweetness lingers in the air — but the warning beneath it is sharp as fangs.
A crimson touch, a scarlet kiss,
Love wrapped in shadows, edged in bliss.
Your heart is fire, your lips a curse,
A love so deep, for better or worse.
We dance in fate, entwined in time,
A bittersweet, bloody valentine.
