I Indicted the Yakuza Heir, Then Married Him novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Camera

Shiori crossed the corridor in her bare feet and put her hand on the study door.

The lamp lit a polished desk, a brush stand, a scroll of calligraphy, and the black lacquer box with its lid thrown back.

There were books inside, bound in cloth.

They were ledgers.

Her mouth went dry, and she took one step across the threshold.

A hand closed around her wrist from behind.

It didn't hurt.

It was just very large, and it did not let go.

Tatsuya pulled her back into the corridor without a sound, slid the door nearly shut, and put his lips against her ear.

"Look up," he breathed. "Corner by the scroll."

She looked.

Behind the scroll, high on the wall, a tiny red light blinked on the black plastic of a camera.

She froze.

"The lamp is lit and the lid is open," he whispered. "Sakaki's cushion is empty because my father sent him to bed. He wants to know what his new daughter does at three in the morning when nobody's watching."

"Is that why you were waiting at my back?"

"I woke when you left the bed."

He steered her down the corridor into their room, slid the screen closed, and stood with his forehead against the paper wall for a moment, breathing.

"If you had touched that box," he said, "your mother's shop would have burned by sunrise. Tonight, a stray cigarette. Tomorrow, an accident."

Shiori sat down very slowly on the futon.

"You know that for a fact."

"I grew up in this house."

"So you stopped me to protect your family's records."

He turned around.

In the lamplight his face was calm and polite, and absolutely closed.

"I stopped you," Tatsuya said, "because I'd like you to stay alive for the year."

That was all he said, and he lay down beside her and pulled the quilt over them both and did not sleep.

Neither did she.

Sakaki drove them back to Shinjuku at dawn without a word.

The elevator was silent.

The penthouse was warm and smelled of cedar and the coffee machine.

Shiori walked straight through it to the bathroom and turned on the shower as hot as it would go.

She needed to be clean of that house.

She stood under the water with her forehead against the black tile and her hands shaking, and she heard the door open.

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