Chương 4 - THE WATCH INSIDE VAULT K-17
I wanted to throw my wineglass at Ken.
Instead, I asked the more frightening question.
“What were you looking for?”
Ken glanced at Daichi.
That was answer enough.
Kazuki moved before anyone else.
He stepped between them.
“You worked for my uncle?”
Ken’s face went pale.
“Not directly.”
“Ken.”
My voice sounded different to my own ears.
Cold.
“Tell me.”
He looked at me.
“Tanaka Logistics hired me for research before Keiko and I were together.”
Keiko turned sharply.
“You never told me that.”
“I wasn’t allowed to.”
Her expression hardened.
“Apparently honesty has been having a difficult year.”
I almost liked her.
Almost.
Ken rubbed one hand over his face.
“They wanted information about old Suzuki wine holdings. Bottles, auction records, storage receipts.”
“You dated me to search my apartment?”
“No.”
Too fast.
I laughed once.
“Try again.”
His shoulders lowered.
“I knew who you were when we met.”
The room tilted.
Kazuki went dangerously still.
Ken continued.
“But I didn’t start dating you because of the job.”
“You just happened to be researching my family.”
“Yes.”
“And then happened to fall in love with me?”
His eyes dropped.
“I did love you.”
“Yet you searched my home.”
“Yes.”
The humiliation was almost worse than heartbreak.
Every insecurity he had left me with suddenly looked manufactured.
Too quiet.
Too anxious.
Too obsessed with wine.
Maybe he had needed me to feel small enough not to ask why he was always interested in my father’s old boxes.
“Why did you leave?”
Ken looked toward Keiko.
“Because I found what they wanted.”
My throat tightened.
“What?”
“A storage receipt.”
“K-17?”
He nodded.
“I photographed it.”
Kazuki’s voice became soft.
“What happened to the photograph?”
“My supervisor sent it upward.”
“To Tanaka?”
“I assumed.”
Daichi said, “This is absurd.”
Emiko looked at him.
“Then sit down and enjoy the absurdity.”
Daichi sat.
Nobody touched the wine.
By midnight, K-17 had been traced to a bonded storage facility near Yokohama.
The key still worked.
Kazuki wanted security first.
I refused to wait in the car.
“That vault belonged to my father.”
“And someone already tried to access it.”
“Then they can watch me open it.”
He looked ready to argue.
Then stopped.
“Fine.”
Small victories.
K-17 was not dramatic.
No hidden dungeon.
No steel room beneath a mansion.
Just a climate-controlled storage cage between hundreds of other expensive wine holdings.
Inside were six wooden cases.
Empty.
Except for one.
A single bottle rested inside.
No label.
Beside it sat my father’s wristwatch.
I knew it instantly.
Brown leather strap.
Scratched face.
He used to let me wind it on Sunday mornings.
I picked it up.
The hands were stopped at 11:42.
Kazuki stood beside me.
“That was before the fire.”
“The fire started at midnight.”
“Yes.”
I turned the watch over.
My mother had engraved the back when they married.
FOR MASATO — COME HOME BEFORE THE WINE GETS WARM.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
“She hated wine.”
Kazuki’s voice softened.
“Your father mentioned that.”
“You really knew him.”
“Yes.”
That hurt strangely.
Kazuki had memories of my father I didn’t.
I had been ten.
He had been sixteen.
Yet we were both children when Masato Suzuki disappeared from our lives.
I lifted the bottle.
There was no capsule.
No cork branding.
Nothing.
But beneath the base, someone had taped an old auction ticket.
LOT 47.
GINZA WINTER AUCTION.
Fourteen years ago.
The date was six weeks after my father’s supposed death.
“Why would he leave an auction ticket?”
Kazuki studied it.
“Maybe because the bottle wasn’t the important object.”
A security man brought a UV light.
Nothing.
I tilted the bottle.
Sediment moved inside.
Too much.
“Open it.”
Kazuki looked at me.
“Are you sure?”
“It isn’t wine.”
I knew from the way it moved.
The cork came out.
Inside was dark liquid and a narrow waterproof tube.
My hands shook as I poured it into a decanter.
The tube slid free.
Inside was a strip of microfilm and another note in my father’s handwriting.
If this is found, Lot 47 remembers what men choose to forget.
Beneath it:
Trust the boy only if he tells Naomi why he was really at the warehouse.
I went still.
Kazuki read over my shoulder.
His face changed.
“You said men tried to kill you.”
“They did.”
“That isn’t the whole answer.”
“No.”
Of course it wasn’t.
“What were you doing there?”
He looked toward the empty storage cage.
“My father sent me.”
“Why?”
“To collect a ledger from your father.”
“What ledger?”
“The one Masato discovered.”
“You knew?”
“I knew he had something my father wanted back.”
“And you still let me believe you were simply a victim that night.”
“I was sixteen.”
“That explains then.”
I stepped closer.
“What explains yesterday?”
He had no answer.
The microfilm could not be developed there.
But the auction ticket could be traced.
Lot 47 had been purchased fourteen years ago by a private buyer.
Shigeru Tanaka.
Keiko’s father.
Keiko stared at the record when we returned to the Takahashi house.
“That’s impossible.”
Daichi looked almost relieved.
“Apparently not.”
Kazuki ignored him.
“Why would your father buy Masato’s bottle?”
“I don’t know.”
Ken spoke quietly.
“Because Tanaka Logistics handled the auction consignments that year.”
Keiko turned.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Is there anything about my family you didn’t research?”
“Yes.”
Her face hardened.
“Wonderful.”
The next morning, Shigeru Tanaka agreed to release Lot 47.
Not happily.
The bottle had sat in his private cellar for fourteen years.
A 1961 Bordeaux.
Extraordinary.
Untouched.
Naomi the sommelier wanted to admire it.
Naomi the daughter wanted to smash it.
I examined the foil.
Original.
Cork intact.
No hidden key.
Then I noticed the label had two layers.
Old merchants sometimes pasted import labels over producer labels.
Carefully, I lifted the edge.
A photograph slid out.
Kazuki caught it before it hit the floor.
My father stood outside the burned warehouse.
Alive.
His face was bruised.
His coat was torn.
But he was alive.
Beside him stood Kazuki’s father, Akihiro Takahashi.
The date stamped on the photograph was two days after the fire.
I turned it over.
Three handwritten words:
DAICHI STARTED IT.
Below that:
AKIHIRO KNOWS WHY.
The room went silent.
Kazuki stared at the photograph of his dead father.
Then at his uncle.
Daichi’s face had gone gray.
He whispered, “Masato misunderstood.”
I felt something inside me snap.
“My father supposedly died that night.”
Daichi looked at me.
“He survived.”
“Clearly.”
“He should have stayed dead.”
Kazuki stepped toward him.
Daichi raised one hand.
“Not because I wanted him killed.”
“Then why?”
His eyes moved between us.
“Because once Masato survived, your father made him an offer.”
“What offer?”
Daichi’s expression changed.
“He could keep his name.”
“Or?”
“He could keep his daughter.”
My heart stopped.
May you like
And suddenly I understood that my father’s disappearance had not begun with the fire.
It had begun with a choice somebody forced him to make afterward.
