Sunday, 3:00 AM - 33 hours remaining
"Mom, I hope you knew what you were doing. Because I'm about to bet everything on your strategy."
The darkness didn't answer.
But somewhere, she thought she could feel her mother smiling.
Hanae didn't sleep.
She lay there for twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling, her mind refusing to shut off. Every time she closed her eyes, numbers ran behind her lids. Thirteen million yen. Eighty men. Thirty-three hours. Six organizations circling. The Board watching from the shadows like wolves pretending to be shepherds.
At 3:20 AM she gave up pretending and sat up.
The room was cold. Tokyo's night pressed against the window, indifferent to the fact that a woman's entire future was being decided inside this building.
She swung her legs off the bed. Her bare feet hit the cold floor. The stitches in her side pulled—a dull, persistent reminder that her body was still healing from wounds she'd taken four days ago. Four days. It felt like four years.
