Lukas's office occupied the top floor of a mirrored building in the heart of Minato. From the outside, it looked like any other law office—the fake name on the sign, the polite receptionist, the silent hallways. Inside, it was the nerve center of everything moving through Tokyo's shadows.
Lukas sat behind the dark oak desk, his jacket draped over the back of the chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His right hand was still throbbing. He stared at his swollen fingers as if they belonged to someone else—someone he thought he'd buried a long time ago.
He hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the alley. The woman curled in on herself. The boy clinging to her. And that look—too quick, almost nothing, yet it had stuck to him like a burn mark.
The door opened without a knock. Only one person in the world came in like that.
Takeshi stopped in front of the desk with a slim folder in his hand. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before, which meant he hadn't slept either.
“I found everything,” he said, setting the folder on the desk.
Lukas didn't move. He looked at the folder as if it might bite.
“Talk.”
Takeshi opened the folder and pulled out a photograph. It was an ID photo—a serious face, tired eyes, hair tied back. Even in that lifeless picture, there was something in her gaze that didn't fit with the rest. A light the camera hadn't been able to extinguish.
“Her name is Suh Oliveira. Thirty-one years old. Brazilian.”
Lukas raised his eyes.
“Brazilian?”
“Brazilian. She met her husband in Brazil. A Japanese man. They came here together, got married, and had a son. The boy's name is Lee. He's five.”
Five years old. The same age Lukas had been when his world fell apart. He felt something tighten in his chest, but he didn't let it show on his face.
“Keep going.”
“The husband's family never accepted her. They abused her. Humiliated her. She put up with it as long as she could, but she decided to leave. She moved out and went to live with her ex-sister-in-law—the only one in the family who treated her like a human being. She sells vegetables at a vegetable stand in the Adachi neighborhood to support the boy.”
Takeshi paused. He knew Lukas far too well not to notice what was happening behind that motionless face.
“And the husband?”
“They're still legally married. She wants a divorce, but he won't sign. And there's more.” Takeshi pulled another sheet from the folder. “The money she makes selling vegetables? He takes it. All of it. He shows up, takes it, and disappears. She barely gets to keep anything.”
The silence that settled over the office had weight. Lukas didn't move. He didn't raise his voice. But Takeshi saw his jaw lock, the tendons in his neck stand out, and his eyes—those eyes that made armed men back away—darken in a way he'd seen only once in his life.
“Bring him to me.”
“Lukas...”
“Bring him to the warehouse. Today.”
Takeshi put the folder away. He didn't argue. When Lukas spoke in that tone, there wasn't an argument in the world that could change what was going to happen. All that remained was to make sure it happened the right way.
The warehouse stood in an abandoned industrial zone in Kōtō. Stained concrete walls, fluorescent lights flickering overhead, the smell of rust and damp. It was the kind of place where people walked in on their own two feet and didn't always walk out the same way.
Suh's ex-husband was tied to a chair in the center of the empty space. The ropes bound his wrists behind the backrest and his ankles to the chair legs. He had a cut on his lip—he'd resisted when Takeshi's men grabbed him. He hadn't resisted for long.
Lukas entered alone. His footsteps echoed across the concrete. He was dressed in black from head to toe, his hands in his pockets, his face completely expressionless. He stopped two meters from the chair and looked at the man as if examining a bug trapped beneath glass.
The ex-husband raised his head. His eyes were swollen from crying, but now they showed anger. The anger of cowards—the kind that only appears when they think they can bark.
“Who are you?” he spat. “What do you want with me?”
Lukas didn't answer. He stood there, his hands still in his pockets, letting the silence do the work.
“Is this about Suh?” The man laughed. A nervous, forced laugh. “What are you, her lover? Huh?”
Lukas slowly took his hands out of his pockets.
“Lucky for you, I'm not.”
The punch came without warning—sharp, precise, landing on the same spot on the man's already-cut face. His head snapped to the side, and a thread of blood ran down his chin. He groaned and coughed, and when he opened his eyes again, the anger was gone. In its place was fear.
Lukas crouched until he was eye level with him. His voice came out low, almost gentle—which made everything much worse.
“You're going to sign the divorce papers. Today. Now. And then you're going to disappear from her life and the boy's. Without a trace. No coming back. No messages, no phone calls, and never showing up on her street corner again.”
“You can't... you don't know who you're—”
The warehouse door opened. Takeshi entered, stopped beside Lukas, and looked at the tied-up man with the calm of someone who'd seen this a thousand times.
“Open your eyes,” Takeshi said firmly. “And take a good look at who's standing in front of you.”
The man looked. Really looked, for the first time. And then he saw it. On the side of Lukas's neck, rising up the nape before disappearing beneath his shirt collar—the tattoo. Interwoven black lines forming the symbol known throughout Japan's underworld. The mark carried by only one person in the entire country.
The Leader.
The color drained from the ex-husband's face as if someone had pulled a plug. His eyes widened. His mouth opened and closed without a sound. His whole body began to tremble in the chair, the ropes creaking with the movement.
“You... you're...”
“Sign,” Lukas said. Nothing more.
Takeshi placed the papers in the man's lap and freed one of his hands. The pen was offered like a last chance.
The ex-husband signed. His hand shook so badly that the signature came out crooked, smeared, almost illegible. But it was there.
“I'm sorry,” he stammered, his voice catching. “I'll disappear. I swear. Never again. I swear, I swear...”
Lukas had already turned his back. He walked to the warehouse door without looking back. Takeshi collected the papers, checked the signature, and put them in the folder.
Outside, the night air was cold. Lukas stopped, took a deep breath, and looked up at Tokyo's starless sky.
“She can't know,” he said without turning around.
Takeshi stopped beside him.
“She won't.”
“Get the divorce document to her in a way that makes it look like he decided on his own. Like he disappeared of his own free will.”
“Understood.”
Lukas remained silent for a long moment. The wind slapped against the fabric of his overcoat. Somewhere in the city, in a cramped studio apartment in the Adachi neighborhood, a thirty-one-year-old woman was putting her son to bed without knowing that her life had just changed.
“Takeshi.”
“Hmm?”
“Her name is Suh.”
Takeshi looked at his friend. Lukas wasn't smiling—he almost never smiled. But there was something different in his face. Something Takeshi hadn't seen in years. Maybe something he'd never seen before.
“Yeah,” Takeshi replied softly. “Her name is Suh.”
They stayed there a little longer, two men standing in front of an empty warehouse in a forgotten industrial zone, while the entire city slept, unaware that the most dangerous man in Japan had just done the kindest thing he'd ever done in his life.
And all because of a whispered “thank you” in a dark alley.