That Night, She Wept Like a Child Forsaken by the…

That night, I went back to the office because I’d left my keys at my desk. The whole building was as black as a tomb, except for a sliver of cold light leaking from the CEO’s office on the top floor. I thought the security system had malfunctioned, but when I pushed the door open, I found the woman who could tear people apart in meetings until they couldn’t lift their heads, sitting alone at her desk, crying. Her name was Celeste Ashford, notorious in the industry as the “Lady Yama”—not even thirty, juggling hundreds of millions in deals, killing without spilling a drop of blood. I should have just grabbed my keys and left, but her eyes hooked me like a barb; something came over me, and I asked the first question. Everything that came after dropped like a runaway elevator — in the izakaya…