AUTHOR
The air in the room was thick and still, heavy with the scent of aged hinoki wood and the faint, acrid smell of ambition curdling into desperation. This was not a corporate boardroom.
This was a chamber deep within the Okubo Group's headquarters in Chuo, Tokyo, a place where decisions were not debated but decreed, where power was not measured in stock valuations but in fear and blood.
Fukuzawa Okubo sat at the head of a long, polished black table, a man carved from granite and old money. His hands, liver-spotted and steady, were steepled in front of him.
The news had arrived minutes ago, a simple, clean report that had sent a silent, electric current through the entire organization.
Reomen Daki was in Japan.
A slow, cold smile stretched across Fukuzawa's lips, a crack in the impassive mask. It did not reach his eyes, which remained as dark and lifeless as river stones. He had been waiting for this.
