"Wait—when exactly did Yashida Ichirō announce Mariko as his heir? You're certain it was yesterday?" Bella asked.
Natasha put a few more questions to her contact on the other end of the line, then confirmed with absolute certainty: "Yesterday, no question about it. Lawyers were present when the will was drawn up, along with representatives from the foundation and a senior executive from Yashida Corporation. Yashida Ichirō passed away that same evening."
"That's impossible. Could it be a false report?" A thin, hazy veil seemed to settle over Bella's thoughts.
Natasha hung up and shot her a puzzled look.
"Six days ago, I watched Yashida Ichirō die with my own eyes," Bella said, voicing what had been nagging at her. "He was killed in the fighting on Izu Ōshima. I even examined the body myself. So how could he have shown up yesterday to name an heir?"
Neither of them could work out an answer. Natasha was fairly indifferent to the whole affair—it had been a matter of chance that she'd gotten involved at all, and it made little difference either way. Bella, however, found her curiosity piqued. She wanted to look at the old bastard's corpse and settle the question of whether he was truly dead.
The body had since been transported to Hiroshima Prefecture for burial. If they wanted answers, they would need to exhume the coffin and conduct their own examination.
But Bella was wary of the opposition she'd encounter. Neither she nor Natasha was suited to wading too deeply into this mess—brawling openly with dozens or even hundreds of enemies? That wasn't the role they were supposed to be playing.
What she needed was someone to throw into the water first and see what bit.
That afternoon, at two-thirty—less than three hours before the old bastard's funeral—an even more staggering piece of news began spreading across Japan's major mainstream media outlets.
Mariko Yashida, the newly named heir to the Yashida family fortune, had announced her engagement to the American mutant known as Wolverine—Logan. According to the announcement, Logan had saved her life in a moment of heroism, and she had fallen deeply in love with him—so deeply that she intended to transfer all assets held in her name to her fiancé.
The announcement sent shockwaves through the financial and political world on both sides of the Pacific. Assets worth well over ten billion dollars had a way of commanding attention.
Even Bella was caught off guard. This wasn't how things were supposed to unfold—it bore almost no resemblance to what she remembered. She turned the sequence of events over and over in her mind, trying to identify where things had gone sideways.
Logan and Mariko, engaged? The whole thing was profoundly wrong.
The old bastard's death was one mystery. Logan's behavior was another.
She had originally hoped to let events play out more naturally and keep her own fingerprints off the situation as much as possible. Now, it seemed, subtlety was no longer an option. She would have to use the most direct method available.
Mustachio Max stared at Bella's message for a long moment, reading it over a full ten times before he steadied himself enough to contact Shingen Yashida. What he passed along was, by any measure, extraordinary news—at least from Shingen's perspective.
At that same hour, Zōjō-ji Temple was in absolute chaos. The Yamaguchi-gumi had deployed over two hundred members, who were locked in a bloody melee with the guards and police on-site. Logan, in the midst of it all, had carved his way into the temple three times to pull Mariko out and retreated three times, leaving wreckage behind him.
The once-serene Pure Land Buddhist temple was now drenched in blood. Bodyguards and yakuza alike lay dead across the grounds; severed limbs were scattered where they'd fallen. The air reeked of iron and filth in a way that turned the stomach.
Shingen Yashida had seen through Max's bluster early on and had been searching for the real power behind him. He'd been too occupied these past two days—matching wits with the old bastard over control of the family enterprise—to pursue the matter further. He hesitated a moment when Max's call came through, then answered.
"Shingen-san," Max said, choosing his words with deliberate care. "My divination indicates that your father died six days ago."
My father? Shingen Yashida blinked. He had spoken with the old bastard just that morning—and the man had apparently already been dead at the time?
The confusion lasted only a moment. What followed was a rush of barely suppressed elation. If the will had been signed by a man who'd already been dead for six days, could it even be considered legally valid? The single biggest obstacle to his claim on the inheritance had just been swept aside.
He kept his expression neutral. "What proof do you have?"
Max repeated the words Bella had prepared for him: "I'll need Shingen-san to do something for me, in due course."
"Agreed. Whatever it is—you have my word."
"Good. The proof is straightforward enough—I imagine you can work it out yourself. A man who's been dead for several days looks markedly different from one who died only the day before. Send a trusted associate to examine the body, and the discrepancy will be obvious."
In truth, Bella had no idea whether a forensic examination would yield anything conclusive. It didn't matter. The moment Shingen Yashida went looking for the old bastard's corpse, he would walk straight into the trap that had been laid for him—and then things would get genuinely interesting.
Shingen Yashida was no great businessman, but as an underworld figure, he was formidably capable.
Operating under the alias Akihiko, he held a position of considerable standing in Japan's criminal organizations. He moved quickly—shoring up his alliances among key figures in business and government, then that very afternoon leading a sizeable contingent of yakuza enforcers toward the Yashida family's ancestral estate in Hiroshima, where the old bastard's body had been interred.
The Yashida family had once possessed a genuine castle passed down from their ancestors, but an atomic bomb had reduced it—and everything else for kilometers around—to rubble. The buildings standing today were all postwar reconstructions.
Shingen had barely brought his convoy into the town at the foot of the castle when a swarm of ninja burst from the shadows and attacked without warning.
He didn't recognize any of them. If there wasn't something deeply wrong here, there was no such thing as suspicion.
The yakuza muscle and the ninja collided in an instant.
The ninja moved with practiced precision—their coordination flawless, their techniques fluid and elusive. They exploited every inch of familiar terrain and the traps they had seeded throughout the approaches, inflicting real casualties on the yakuza.
At the front, ninja advanced with katanas. At the rear, others drew bows and loosed arrows in waves. They looked as though they had walked straight out of the Sengoku era.
Arrows flew like a locust swarm. More than a few bare-chested yakuza enforcers toppled into spreading pools of blood.
The killing didn't break the yakuza's will. These were big, powerful men—they came in swinging cleavers, riding the savage energy that only men with something to prove could generate. Several of the minor bosses fought with daggers, reckless and predatory as starving wolves. Even as katana blades punched through their bodies, they drove forward and tore ragged holes through the ninja formations.
Shingen Yashida himself was the deadliest fighter on the field. He wielded a katana in each hand, sweeping left and right with ruthless efficiency, and very few ninja could survive even three exchanges with him.
From a rooftop a safe distance away, Bella and Natasha watched with undisguised fascination. Natasha, who had limited knowledge of Japanese swordsmanship, could only appreciate the spectacle in broad strokes. Bella's eye was sharper, and the more she watched, the more impressed she became. This was her first look at Shingen Yashida—and she had to admit: the man was something else.
He was striking for his age—that rare kind of middle-aged man who projected authority without even trying. And his fighting ability was extraordinary.
She had worried that her "guinea pig" wouldn't hold up under pressure. That worry was gone now.
She settled back and waited. Whatever was lurking behind all of this, she intended to see it.