Chapter 5: Page 212

Tatsuya left for the office at ten, kissed Shiori's forehead, and said he'd be late.

She waited until the elevator had gone all the way down.

His study was a plain room off the gallery, with a desk of dark wood, a green-shaded lamp, and no windows.

The bottom drawer on the right was locked.

The brass key turned in it without a sound.

Shiori knelt on the carpet, and the drawer rolled open on well-oiled runners, and her own handwriting stared up at her from a black binder.

It was her indictment.

All four hundred pages were there, tabbed in six colors, with notes in the margins in his small upright hand.

She turned to page 212.

Beside her line about the Yokohama trading company, he had written in pencil:

Wrong.

Below that was a second, smaller line.

Chiba. Marukawa Trading. Ask S.

Shiori sat back on her heels.

Ask S.

It could only mean Shiori, and it was dated eight months ago.

He had been waiting for her to ask for a long time.

Under the binder there was a flat gray folder with the Marukawa name printed on the tab.

She opened it on the carpet.

It held thirty-one bank transfers, each marked in yellow highlighter.

It held incorporation papers, listing a nominee director in Funabashi who had died two years ago.

It held an invoice for demolition work in Kabukicho that had never been done.

It was the money from the redevelopment she had tried to hang on him last year.

All of it lay there in a drawer in his house, as neat as a laundry list.

Her heart was beating so hard it hurt.

She took out her phone and photographed every page.

There were sixty-one pages, flat, one after another, and she held her breath through all of them.

When she finished, she laid them back exactly as she had found them and put the binder on top.

She had been married for three days.

She had just beaten the Kuzunoki family at their own game.

She had done it on her knees in her husband's study with a stolen key, and all she could think was that he had written "Ask S" eight months ago.

Why would he write that?

Down in the lobby, the elevator chimed.

Shiori shoved the drawer shut and turned the key, and she was on her feet with her hand still wrapped around it when she heard the front door.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Indicted the Yakuza Heir, Then Married Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.