The remaining goons in the arcade room never bothered shooting at me. Once Kenjiro's roar echoed up through the floorboards, every muscle in their bodies locked up. One man simply dropped his submachine gun, clattering it against the linoleum, while the other took one look at Sayuri's horrified face, looked at me in my massage chair, and bolted for the service stairs. "Wait!" Sayuri squeaked, waving her brick phone like a useless talisman. "You two are leaving? What about the joint venture? Who's paying for the structural indemnity?" Nobody answered her. I sank deeper into the faux-leather cushions and pressed the button to recline. The blast door had melted into a slag heap of scorched alloys, but thankfully, the breeze coming through the ruined wall smelled mostly of cold night air and ozone instead of smoke. Perfect temperature for watching television. Or, in this case, watching my husband commit grievous bodily harm. I reached out, snagged a tall glass of iced melon soda from the mini-fridge by the crane machine, and dragged my plush recliner toward the balustrade overlooking the central grounds. Below, floodlights turned the raked gravel into a blazing white arena. Kenjiro stood dead center. His black silk dress shirt was torn down the left shoulder, exposing the coiling black ink of a horned dragon stretching across his collarbone. In his right hand, a curved steel blade gleamed crimson beneath the halogen wash. Surrounding him were twelve heavily armored mercenaries wearing night-vision goggles and kevlar vests. Or rather, seven standing mercenaries and five piles of discarded tactical gear that were groaning in agony. Right at Kenjiro's wingtip shoes, coated in banana peels, crumpled coffee filters, and yesterday's shredded financial documents, sprawled Oba-san Chiyo. She looked considerably less regal than she had five minutes ago. Her designer kimono was smeared with soggy coffee grounds, and a bruised orange rind clung tenaciously to her elaborate hair bun. She wheezed, spitting out a piece of cardboard. "Kenjiro!" she rasped, clawing at the sharp stones. Her sweet grandmotherly facade had dissolved, leaving behind the shrill, frantic screech of a cornered predator. "You fool! Open your eyes!" Kenjiro spared her no glance. He side-stepped a bayonet thrust from an approaching commando, caught the man's wrist, snapped the joint backward with a sickening crack, and drove his elbow directly into the soldier's throat. The man dropped like a sack of wet flour. "You track garbage onto my clean gravel, auntie," Kenjiro murmured. His tone was conversational, almost gentle, which made it ten times more terrifying. "Listen to me!" Chiyo shrieked, scrambling onto her knees. She pointed a trembling, manicured finger directly toward the balcony. Directly at me. I took a sip of my melon soda. The straw made an obnoxious, slurping noise that carried clearly into the open air. "She did this!" Chiyo bellowed, voice cracking with hysterical venom. "The girl! Your useless little trophy! It was all her! She lured me into the blast zone! She triggered the garbage chute! She has been running an entire counter-intelligence ring behind your back while pretending to be an invalid! She wants your seat, Kenjiro! She manipulated the ledger, she coordinated the ambush, she orchestrated the whole thing to replace you!" Sayuri, who had crawled to the balustrade on her belly like a traumatized salamander, blinked down at the scene. "Wait... Reika is a syndicate mastermind? Then why did she drop my eight-figure promissory note into an aquarium?" I ignored her, swirling the ice in my cup. Kenjiro stopped. The two remaining commandos hesitated, weapons raised, baffled by the ranting old woman coated in rotting food. Slowly, Kenjiro tilted his head up. His gaze found me in my silk robe, feet propped on the railing, slurping green soda through a bendy straw. His dark expression melted into an expression of sheer, unadulterated tenderness. "Reika," he breathed. The yard was dead quiet, save for his reverent murmur. "My sweet, frightened dove. Look at you... forced to drag your chair all the way to the railing just to see if your husband was still alive. The trauma you've endured tonight..." Chiyo choked on her own spit. "Are you deaf?! I said she threw me down a trash chute!" Kenjiro finally shifted his gaze back down to the old woman. The tenderness vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, predatory sneer that promised violence. "My wife," Kenjiro said, each syllable ringing like an iron bell, "does not have a single scheming bone in her body. She spends three hours choosing bath salts. Yesterday she cried because the butter was too cold to spread on her toast. You honestly expect me to believe my fragile angel plotted a clan takeover?" "She literally pushed the lever!" "She clearly stumbled while fleeing for her life from your barbaric assault," Kenjiro countered coldly. He stepped forward, grinding his leather heel down on the barrel of a discarded shotgun, snapping the metal receiver. "You insulted my hospitality. You brought rifles into my home. And worst of all... you ruined my wife's evening rest." Chiyo scrambled backward, kicking through the trash heap. "You're blind! You're a lovesick idiot! She's laughing at you!" "No, auntie," Kenjiro chuckled, a dark, rumbling sound that made the remaining two mercenaries exchange frantic looks and slowly back toward the gate. "The only fool here is you. Did you truly believe your quiet little meetings in the southern docks went unnoticed? Did you think I didn't trace the wire transfers from your shell companies in Panama three weeks ago?" Chiyo froze. The color drained completely from her wrinkled face. "I knew the exact hour of your strike," Kenjiro continued smoothly, flicking a drop of blood off his blade. "I simply allowed you to assemble your entire treasonous faction in one place so I could exterminate the root alongside the branch. The only detail I failed to foresee... was that your incompetence would lead you right into the incinerator system." He raised his sword. The steel caught the glare of the overhead floodlights, burning like white fire. "Any last words before I cleanse the family registry?" Sayuri was staring in awe. "God, the market efficiency of wiping out your debts and your rivals in a single fiscal quarter... he's a genius..." "He's loud," I muttered, shifting slightly to relieve the pressure on my lower back. The drama down there was practically resolved. Kenjiro was about to execute the traitor, the guards would sweep up the bodies by sunrise, and I could finally take a three-hour nap in the west wing while the maid staff scrubbed the arcade room. Life was returning to its proper, zero-effort equilibrium. I leaned my head against the lounger's headrest and looked up at the foggy night sky. Across the garden, perched high atop the perimeter wall, sat the massive neon billboard advertising 'Sapporo Gold Beer' in buzzing pink and blue tubes. Something moved along the iron gantry behind the glowing 'S'. A silhouette lay prone on the catwalk, hidden from the ground floodlights. A long, heavy barrel rested on the steel frame, aimed down at the back of Kenjiro's neck. The sniper was steady, unaffected by the carnage below, finger easing onto the trigger while Kenjiro raised his blade to execute Chiyo. Kenjiro was completely open. His back was turned. He couldn't see it. And worse—if he died, his crazed syndicate relatives would audit the finances, freeze the bank accounts, and revoke my black card before breakfast.

The Husband Unleashed