Chapter 35: The Room Where It Happened
Takumi stormed into the marble lobby of his corporate office, heels of his shoes clicking sharply against the polished floor. His suit was crisp, his hair slicked back with precision, but the shadow in his eyes betrayed something darker—rage barely restrained by routine.
He passed by reception with a tight nod, ignoring greetings. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he adjusted his cufflinks. Inside, his thoughts churned.
She really thought she could run.
His jaw tightened.
You just wait, Rina. When I find you, there won't be anywhere left to hide.
As Takumi stepped off the elevator, his boss greeted him near the executive floor with an unusually placid smile. "Mr. Sakamoto, good. There's an important meeting happening in Conference Room 4B. A few high-profile visitors—this one's important. Please attend on my behalf. I have a prior engagement."
Takumi blinked, thrown for a moment. His boss never missed meetings.
"Of course," he said, adjusting his tie.
Something felt off, but he pushed the thought aside. There were more important things on his mind.
Like Rina.
She thinks this is over. She thinks she can vanish. Just you wait. When I'm done here, I will destroy every illusion you've built around yourself.
He shoved open the glass door of the boardroom.
The meeting had already begun, or so he thought. Instead of the usual suited executives, four unfamiliar faces turned to greet him.
He froze.
A woman with calm, unreadable eyes stood at the head of the table. Her dark hair was pulled back into a neat twist, and her tailored blazer gave her an air of effortless authority. She didn't need to raise her voice to command the room. Her presence was enough.
Next to her sat a lean man with messy dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses, tapping idly on a sleek tablet. He barely looked up, but when he did, his stare cut through the air like cold steel.
At the far side of the room, a tall man leaned casually against the wall, his arms crossed. There was a faint smirk playing on his lips, but nothing about his posture was relaxed.
And near the window, the last figure—calm, unreadable, dressed in a sleek black blazer and trousers, arms crossed as she leaned against the windowsill, eyes sharp and assessing like a hawk. Her hair was pulled back into a low, effortless ponytail, but there was nothing casual about her presence. She watched Takumi with the quiet intensity of someone who had seen too much and remembered everything.
Takumi's heart stuttered.
Audrey. Kenzo. Damian. Hana.
He took a step back, barely masking his surprise.
"Good morning," Audrey said smoothly, standing up to shake his hand. "Mr. Sakamoto, thank you for taking the time."
"Of course," Takumi replied, still stiff. "I was told this was a priority meeting?"
"Indeed," Kenzo said, nodding politely.
Damian smiled, all charm. "Let's not waste your time."
They all gestured toward the chair at the center of the table.
Takumi hesitated but sat, curiosity slowly eclipsing discomfort.
Hana pulled out a sleek tablet and tapped to wake it up. Audrey reached into a folder.
"Mr. Sakamoto," Audrey began, her voice even, "we appreciate your time. We're not here to discuss projections or quarterly numbers."
She paused, holding his gaze with quiet certainty.
"This meeting is about something more important. It's about accountability."
Takumi blinked, caught off guard by the shift in tone. "Excuse me? What exactly is this supposed to be about?"
Hana turned the tablet toward him. On the screen, a photo of Rina's bruised shoulder. Another showed a hospital form. A third—a still frame from inside their own home—Takumi mid-swing, Rina flinching, eyes wide with fear.
"These are records of abuse," Hana said. Her tone never changed, but her eyes were burning.
Audrey slid a folder across the table. "Your wife's hospital visits. The patterns. The silence. The cycle."
Kenzo reached into his bag and placed a USB drive next to the folder. "And the footage you thought was gone. We restored it. Every frame. From your hallway cameras. From the living room you thought was private."
The tablet now played the video in full view. Rina crying. Takumi shouting. His hand grabbing her arm. The moment that proved everything.
Takumi's expression hardened. "You people have no idea what you're interfering with. Do you know who I am? Who you're messing with?"
He looked from one face to the next, trying to read them—but their calm, controlled expressions told him nothing. And that unsettled him more than he expected.
Then, slowly, his eyes narrowed.
His voice dropped. "Wait..."
His mind began to turn. The missing surveillance footage. The doctored CCTV logs. The receptionist's confused smile. The locked-out contacts. The fake leave notice at Rina's office.
It clicked.
"It was you," he muttered, disbelief bleeding into fury. "You helped her disappear. You're the ones who scrubbed everything."
No one denied it. They didn't have to.
Damian gave a slight shrug, smiling coldly. "Took you long enough."
Takumi's face twisted in disbelief. "What?" he whispered, his voice quivering, as if the word might steady the ground shifting beneath his feet.
Audrey didn't flinch. She leaned forward, her voice steady. "With all the evidence we've gathered—every video, every hospital form, every file—you will take these documents and go to the police. You'll confess. All of it. Not just the abuse, but the cover-ups. The manipulations. The lies."
Takumi blinked, stunned. "Excuse me?"
Audrey's eyes narrowed, but her tone never rose. "Because if your punishment came from us, Takumi... it'd be a lot harsher."
Takumi pushed his chair back, his expression folding into a twisted mixture of panic and rage. "Are you insane? If I go to the police, I'll go to prison. I'll lose everything. My career, my family's name, my entire future. What do I gain by doing this?"
His voice cracked with disbelief. "You people are crazy."
Audrey stood, calm and composed. "We're not here to bargain, Takumi. You have twenty-four hours. Take the documents, go to the police, and confess everything—what you did to Rina, the cover-ups, the erased footage, all of it."
Takumi blinked, stunned. His breath caught in his throat.
"Because if you don't," Audrey continued, her voice low and clear, "we will go public. Every file, every recording, every hospital record will be everywhere—news outlets, your company's inbox, social media. And then you won't just lose everything. You'll be buried beneath it."
The room held its breath.
And for the first time in his life, Takumi Sakamoto realized:
He wasn't the most powerful person in the room.
No one said another word.
Kenzo rose first, tucking the tablet under his arm with mechanical precision. His face betrayed nothing, but his eyes flashed with cool finality. Hana stood next, moving with deliberate slowness, her gaze slicing through Takumi like a blade.
Damian leaned in just enough to make Takumi flinch, his voice dropping low and mocking. "Tick tock."
Audrey was the last to stand, her expression unreadable, her steps unhurried. She offered Takumi a single nod—a quiet, devastating farewell—before turning away.
The door shut behind them with a definitive, echoing click.
Takumi sat frozen in the eerie silence of the conference room, the walls pressing in on him. His hands, still clamped to the edge of the table, had turned ghostly pale.
In front of him: a USB drive, a folder of evidence, and a single, brutal truth.
He was trapped.
The minutes stretched, heavy and suffocating, as panic clawed up his throat. Takumi's mind raced, desperate for a way out, but the walls of his empire were already cracking.
And outside the room, the clock had started ticking louder than ever.
FLASHBACK – Safehouse, a few days earlier.
The dim lighting cast long shadows across the walls of the safehouse's main room. Maps, documents, and USB drives were scattered across the table. The team sat around it, tension hanging thick in the air.
Damian broke the silence first, drumming his fingers against his mug. "I still don't get it. We have everything. Every video, every record. Why not just take this straight to the police ourselves?"
Audrey, seated at the head of the table, didn't hesitate. Her voice was low but razor sharp. "Too easy."
Damian frowned. "Easy sounds good sometimes, Bennett."
"Not this time," Audrey said firmly. She leaned forward, palms flat against the table. "Takumi has built his life around control. Around being untouchable. If we just hand him over, he'll spin it. He'll twist the narrative."
Kenzo nodded, tapping the USB thoughtfully. "He needs to feel the loss himself. He needs to choose to fall—or realize that no one will catch him. That he built the cliff he's standing on."
"He needs to know powerlessness," Hana added, voice cold and steady. "That someone like him—who thinks fear makes him untouchable—can still be cornered."
Audrey looked around the table, her eyes sweeping over each of them, her voice quieter but sharper. "We don't just want him to lose. We want him to understand what it feels like to be helpless. To feel the floor disappear beneath his feet and know he put the cracks there himself."
She paused, steadying her breath. "Because that's what he did to Rina. And now he gets to taste it. Not just defeat. But the weight of knowing—it was his own hands that built the fall."
Silence.
Then Damian grinned, shaking his head lightly. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
Audrey let out a soft, tired laugh. "Just don't hurt anyone who can't fight back."
Damian nudged Hana with his elbow, smirking. "Mental note: if she ever glares at me like that, I'm switching teams."
Hana rolled her eyes but a rare smile tugged at her lips. "You wouldn't last two minutes."
Kenzo adjusted his glasses, deadpan. "Statistically, he wouldn't last thirty seconds."
Audrey shook her head fondly as the tension, just for a moment, broke into something lighter—something almost normal.
The team nodded, the plan solidifying between them without another word.
Back at the conference room, Takumi still sat paralyzed, the walls pressing inward, suffocating.
A bead of sweat rolled down his temple, mixing with the cold dread pooling at the base of his spine.
His eyes darted between the folder, the USB, and the door—his supposed escape routes now feeling like traps.
They really left.
And they left him alone with his ruin, as if daring him to face it.
Takumi gripped the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles turned white. His breath came in short, shallow bursts, heart pounding an erratic rhythm against his ribs.
He glanced again at the evidence before him, as if sheer willpower could make it vanish.
"No," he whispered to no one. "This... this isn't real."
But it was.
And the silence screamed louder than any accusation could.
His thoughts roared louder than the blood in his ears.
What if they're serious? What if they've already sent this somewhere?
He lurched forward and grabbed the folder with trembling hands, flipping through it as if he might find some escape clause hidden between the evidence.
Nothing.
Takumi stumbled to his feet, his chair screeching behind him.
He took a step toward the door—then stopped.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Unknown number.
One new message.
The screen lit up: 23:56:48 — and counting.
Takumi's breath caught.
They were counting down.
And they meant it.
The chapter closed with Takumi standing in the center of the silent boardroom, every exit sealed by his own crimes.
And the clock didn't just tick.
It thundered.