Chương 7 - THE PAGE KEN STOLE
“This entry can’t be six years old.”
I held the notebook beneath the dining-room light.
Same ink.
Same handwriting.
Different pressure.
My father’s.
Ken pointed toward the date.
“I thought it was a code.”
“It probably is.”
Kazuki read the wine name.
“Domaine Renaud, Clos Saint-Pierre.”
I knew it.
Not famous.
Small production.
The 2001 vintage had one unusual characteristic.
A printing error.
The original label misspelled one word in the vineyard designation.
Collectors knew.
Counterfeiters often didn’t.
My pulse jumped.
“This isn’t a prediction.”
“What is it?” Kazuki asked.
“It’s an instruction.”
I turned the notebook.
“My father is telling us how to identify a substituted bottle.”
The engagement banquet was not written in his notebook six years ago.
The wine was.
Because someone had used that wine before.
I searched earlier pages.
There.
Same producer.
Same vintage.
Fourteen years ago.
Night of the warehouse fire.
I read my father’s coded note.
Renaud bottle exchanged. Akihiro meeting moved. Daichi present. Tanaka transport.
The room went silent.
“They used wine shipments to communicate,” I said.
Daichi shook his head.
“Not me.”
I looked at him.
“Your name is right here.”
“I attended the meeting. I didn’t arrange it.”
“Then who did?”
Nobody answered.
Keiko picked up the notebook.
“My father’s transport company moved both shipments.”
Shigeru’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow’s bottle?”
He looked genuinely confused.
“Tanaka Logistics delivered the wine yesterday.”
My skin prickled.
Kazuki immediately called security.
The engagement banquet cellar was sealed.
Every bottle inventoried.
The Renaud Burgundy was there.
We examined it beneath bright cellar lights.
The spelling was correct.
Original bottle.
Then I touched the cork capsule.
Too smooth.
“Someone steamed the label off an authentic bottle.”
Kazuki watched me.
“You can tell?”
“The paper tension is wrong.”
I turned it.
“They put a real label on a different bottle.”
Inside was not poison.
That would have been too obvious.
The wine itself had been mixed with a sedative powerful enough to leave someone unconscious.
Shigeru looked horrified.
“Who was supposed to drink it?”
Kazuki answered.
“Me.”
Aiko shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“The seating plan changed this morning.”
She pulled out her phone.
“That Burgundy was assigned to my father.”
Kazuki frowned.
“Why?”
“Daichi said my father especially liked Côte de Nuits.”
Daichi’s face hardened.
“I did not change the seating.”
Aiko showed us the message.
Sent from Daichi’s private account.
His expression turned cold.
“That wasn’t me.”
We were back inside a maze of half-truths.
Someone wanted Kazuki—or Aiko’s father—incapacitated during the banquet.
Why?
The strategic marriage was supposed to stabilize both families.
Unless destabilization was the point.
Ken quietly said, “There’s another reason tomorrow matters.”
I turned.
“What?”
“Tanaka Logistics is being merged into Mori Holdings at midnight.”
Keiko stared at him.
“How do you know?”
“I prepared the acquisition research.”
Her face changed.
“My father never told me.”
Shigeru looked ashamed.
“I intended to after the announcement.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Apparently everyone loves telling me things after they matter.”
The merger would combine shipping access, political relationships, and Takahashi-controlled hospitality contracts.
A perfect network.
Whoever controlled it could move almost anything through Tokyo.
Kazuki looked at Daichi.
“This marriage was never primarily about family.”
“No,” Daichi said quietly.
“It was about consolidation.”
“And you pushed it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daichi’s answer surprised me.
“Because rivals were moving into our shipping routes.”
“Which rivals?”
“Russian. Chinese. Two domestic groups.”
He looked tired.
“You dismantled half the old enforcement structure after your father died. I supported you.”
Kazuki frowned.
“You fought me every step.”
“I argued with you.”
Daichi’s voice sharpened.
“I did not betray you.”
That distinction mattered.
“You wanted the Mori alliance because you believed it kept the family strong.”
“Yes.”
“And you burned the warehouse.”
“Yes.”
The admission remained.
Daichi did not become innocent because another mystery existed.
He had made a catastrophic decision fourteen years ago.
But maybe he was not the architect.
I returned to Dad’s notebook.
One symbol appeared beside every compromised shipment.
A small triangle.
I had seen it before.
Where?
Then I remembered the wine auction.
Keiko’s diamond bracelet.
One charm shaped exactly like that triangle.
“Keiko.”
She looked up.
“Your bracelet.”
Her hand instinctively covered it.
“My mother’s.”
“Can I see it?”
She removed it.
Inside the triangular charm were three engraved initials.
S.T.H.
Shigeru Tanaka Holdings.
The company logo before it became Tanaka Logistics.
My father’s symbol did not mean Daichi.
It meant Tanaka.
Shigeru sat down slowly.
Keiko stared at him.
“Dad?”
He looked at her.
“I moved the shipments.”
“We know.”
“No.”
His voice became rough.
“I mean I moved the hidden shipments too.”
Silence.
“For Akihiro?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
He looked toward Daichi.
“For myself.”
There it was.
Shigeru had used the chaos after the fire to build his own network.
Not drugs.
Not weapons.
Information.
Black-market luxury goods.
Off-book payments.
Enough to make powerful men dependent on his routes.
“Did you try to kill Kazuki?”
“No.”
“Did you order tomorrow’s bottle switched?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Shigeru closed his eyes.
“Someone who knew our old system.”
“How many people did?”
“Five.”
“Names.”
“Akihiro. Daichi. Masato. Me.”
He stopped.
“And?”
His face went pale.
“One more.”
Kazuki already knew.
“My father’s adviser.”
Daichi whispered the name.
“Reiji Mori.”
Aiko’s father.
The man whose family Kazuki was supposed to marry into tomorrow.
Aiko went completely still.
“No.”
Shigeru looked at her with genuine pity.
“Your father designed the code.”
The room changed.
The strategic marriage had never been an alliance between unrelated families.
Reiji Mori had been inside the original conspiracy fourteen years ago.
Aiko whispered, “Then tomorrow isn’t an engagement banquet.”
Kazuki looked toward the counterfeit bottle.
“No.”
“It’s a takeover.”
Ken suddenly turned toward the security monitor.
A man in a dark coat was leaving the property.
Carrying my father’s notebook.
I looked down.
The book on the table was gone.
Daichi swore.
Kazuki’s security moved.
Too late.
The man disappeared through the service gate.
Aiko stared at the screen.
“I know him.”
“Who?”
“My father’s driver.”
She looked at Kazuki.
Then at me.
“If he has that notebook, my father knows we figured it out.”
Kazuki reached for his phone.
Aiko grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“My father has spent thirty years surviving by knowing which move everyone will make next.”
Her voice trembled.
“If you cancel tomorrow, he disappears.”
“What do you suggest?”
Aiko turned toward me.
“We give him exactly the banquet he expects.”
I understood.
“And switch the trap.”
Kazuki’s eyes found mine.
I should have been afraid.
I was.
But underneath the fear was something else.
Authority.
My father had hidden the truth in the one language I understood better than everyone in that room.
Wine.
Tomorrow, Reiji Mori expected to use that knowledge against us.
Instead, it would expose him.
Then Kazuki said quietly, “There is one more thing you need to know before we do this.”
I looked at him.
He held the recovered photograph of my father after the fire.
“I lied about one part of that night.”
My stomach dropped.
“Which part?”
His eyes filled with an old grief.
“Masato didn’t disappear before I could speak to him.”
May you like
He swallowed.
“He died in my arms.”
