Chapter 2: Negotiations
The silence in the tea room thickened after his words. The gentle plucking of the shamisen from the other room seemed to underscore the absurdity. Negotiate.They were negotiating a marriage. Eliza felt a hysterical bubble rise in her throat. She swallowed it down with a gulp of tea that was now lukewarm.
“Okay,” she said, her voice unnervingly calm to her own ears.“Ground rules. First, it’s a marriage in name and appearance only.Separate bedrooms. Always.”
“Agreed,” Tadashi said without hesitation. “My penthouse has three ensuite bedrooms. You may choose any. The primary bedroom has the best light; I suggest you take it.”
“Generous,” she noted, a flicker of surprise cutting through the numbness. “Second: no… physical expectations. Ever.”
He met her gaze, his expression unreadable. “That was implicit in the first rule, but explicitly stated is better. Yes. I am not looking for that. I am looking for a partner.”
Eliza let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Third: I finish my master’s. My translation work is mine. You don’t get to comment on it, or try to turn me into some corporate trophy wife who just plans galas.”
A faint, approving smile touched his lips. “I would not dare. Your mind is part of the appeal. A businessman with a scholar for a wife presents a certain… stable, intellectual image. It is a good look.”
“Right. Image.” She wrapped her hands around the ceramic cup, grounding herself. “Fourth: we’re honest with each other. No hidden mistresses or secret betrothals. If you meet someone, or if this becomes unbearable, we talk. We end it cleanly, after your birthday.”
“Loyalty and communication. The foundation.” He nodded. “I require the same. If your feelings for Mitchell resurface—”
“They won’t.”
The sharpness of her interruption hung in the air. She softened her tone. “They won’t. But if anything changes on my end, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Then we have an understanding.” He poured the last of the tea. “Now, practicalities. You said you live with him?”
“I moved in with him last year. My things are… our things are there.” The apartment, their shared space, suddenly felt like a contaminated site. “I can’t go back there. Not tonight.”
“Then don’t. You’ll come with me now. We’ll send for your belongings tomorrow with a professional service. It will be cleaner.”
The efficiency of it was breathtaking. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. Is there anything you need immediately? Medications, critical work files?”
Eliza thought. Her laptop, her portable hard drive with all her translation archives, the small locked box with her father’s watch and her mother’s letters.“Yes. A few things. But I don’t have a key. Mitchell… he has both copies. Said he kept losing his.”
Tadashi’s expression darkened a fraction.“A minor obstacle. I own a security firm, Eliza. We specialize in discrete access.” He pulled out his phone, typed a quick message, and put it away. “It’s handled. They will retrieve a specified list. We’ll provide it later.”
It was so easy. This man dismantled problems like she deciphered verb forms. A part of her wanted to rebel against the sheer, steamrolling convenience of it. The other part, the part that was shattered and screaming, clung to it like a life raft.
“What about the legal stuff? The pre-nup? My assets are basically my books and a failing sedan.”
“My lawyers will draft something fair. You will have your own lawyer review it, at my expense. The core will be simple: what is mine before remains mine, what is yours remains yours. Upon dissolution after a mutually agreed period, you will receive a settlement for your time and discretion. It will be generous. You will not want for anything.”
“And during?” she pressed. “I’m not comfortable just… not contributing.”
“You will be contributing your presence, your time, and your reputation. That is the contribution. However, if it makes you feel better, consider a monthly stipend for your own use as a consultancy fee. For being my cultural liaison, my public relations partner.” He leaned back, studying her. “This bothers you. The money.”
“It feels transactional.”
“It is,” he said, not unkindly. “But so are all marriages, on some level. We are simply being adults and writing the terms down first. It doesn’t mean we cannot also be… friends. Allies.”
Friends.Allies. Words that felt more solid than ‘lovers’ ever had lately. She thought of Mitchell’s smile, the one that never quite reached his eyes in the end. The empty promises. This was different. This was a contract. She understood contracts.
“Alright,” she said, her voice firmer. “Allies.”
“Good.” He gestured to the untouched sweets. “You should eat. The shock will wear off and you’ll be hungry.”
She picked up the pink blossom and took a bite. It was sweet, delicate, melting on her tongue. It tasted like a decision. “What’s next? Do we… practice? How do two people who just met convince a room they’re madly in love and getting married in two weeks?”
“We learn,” he said simply. “We start now. Tell me three things about yourself that Mitchell didn’t care about.”
The question was a punch to the gut. It was also brilliant. She put the rest of the sweet down. “My thesis is on conditional temporal clauses in Pre-Imperial Gogashōnian battle incantations. He called it ‘word-nerd stuff.’ I volunteer at the city’s stray familiar shelter every other Sunday. He said it was ‘depressing.’ And…” She hesitated, then pushed on. “I have a scar on my left knee from when I was seven and tried to cast a levitation spell on my bicycle before I had the core stability for it. He thought it was ugly. Said I should get it magically buffed out.”
Tadashi listened, his gaze unwavering. “The temporal clause work is fascinating. My company’s encryption is based on similar syntactic principles. We will have much to discuss. The shelter work is commendable. We will find a way to continue it that fits our public schedule. And the scar is a mark of daring. A early, failed experiment in defiance of gravity. It is not ugly. It is a story.”
Eliza stared at him. No one had ever reframed her life like that. Mitchell had only ever tried to shrink it, to sand down the edges so she fit neatly into the narrative of his career. Tadashi, in three sentences, had expanded it.
“Your turn,” she managed to say, her throat tight.
“My favorite food is my grandmother’s takeyaki, not the fancy restaurant version. I box for stress relief, not golf. And I am allergic to lilies. They make my eyes swell shut.”
She filed each fact away, a tiny, intimate archive. “Noted. No lilies at the wedding.”
“There will be a wedding.Soon. It needs to be large enough to be credible, small enough to arrange quickly. My team will handle the logistics. You will need a dress.”
The word ‘wedding dress’ sent a fresh, cold wave through her. She’d spent months picking out the other one. Off-white silk, delicate lace. It was still hanging in the closet at the apartment. “I can’t wear white.”
“Wear whatever colour you want,” Tadashi said, his voice gentle. “Red, black, gold. It is your statement to make.”
Pink. She could wear pink. A statement indeed. It was delicate and soft and very her. Another thing Mitchell didn’t like he tried to take all of her feminine qualities and turn her into something different. And then she remembered the sweet little cottage. She used to go to with her grandmother and how it was a pastel palace.
“There is one more thing,” he said, his tone shifting, becoming more serious.“My family. They will be… inquisitive. My mother will likely fly in. She will test you. My father’s lawyers will investigate you thoroughly. There can be no trace of this being a arrangement. We must be consistent. We must have a story.”
“We met…?” she prompted.
“We met at the Lexor Christmas party. Introduced by a mutual friend. Lucas, perhaps. We felt an instant, profound connection. We talked all night at the teahouse. We realized life is too short to wait. A whirlwind. It is cliché, but clichés are often believed because they are common.”
“And the mutual connection would be Sakura,” Eliza said, a slow, grim smile forming. “Which is true, in a way. She did connect us. By fucking my fiancé.”
“Language she will never hear from you,” Tadashi said sharply, though his eyes held a matching gleam. “To the world, we are blissful. Giddy. Lucky to have found each other. You are thrilled to have been rescued from a stagnant relationship. I am overjoyed to have found a woman of substance and intellect. We are a perfect match.”
“We sell the dream.”
“We sell the upgrade,” he corrected. “To both our former partners, and to the world.”
He settled the bill with a simple black card. As they stood, he helped her with her coat, his hands lingering for a moment on her shoulders. A practiced, gentle gesture. A claiming. She felt a shiver that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
His town car was waiting, a dark silhouette at the curb. The snow had started again, fat, lazy flakes drifting through the halo of the streetlights. He opened the door for her. Before she slid in, she looked back at the serene glow of the teahouse.
“I should text him,” she said, the real world intruding.“Mitchell. He’ll be wondering where I am. He might be worried.” Even now, the old habit of caring about his feelings tugged at her.
Tadashi took her phone from her hand. His fingers brushed hers. “No,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He powered it off and handed it back.“Let him wonder. Let him worry. Let him check the coat closet and find it empty. Your first act of loyalty to our new arrangement is silence. Your absence will be your answer.”
The finality of it was a clean cut. She looked at the dark screen of her phone, then up at his face, etched in the winter night.She nodded.
The drive to his penthouse was quiet. They didn’t speak. The city slid by, a river of light reflected on wet pavement. He pointed out his building, a sleek tower of glass and steel in the financial district, as they pulled into a underground porte-cochere. A doorman in a long coat hurried to open the car door.
“Good evening, Mr. Ishii.”
“Good evening, Carl. This is Ms.Heart. She will be staying with me indefinitely. Please ensure she has full access and every courtesy.”
“Of course, sir.Welcome, Ms. Heart.”
The lobby was a monument to minimalist wealth—dark stone, a single monumental sculpture of flowing water, the scent of bergamot and linen. The elevator was silent and swift, opening directly into his apartment.
The penthouse was not what she expected. It was spacious, yes, all clean lines and floor-to-ceiling windows offering a breathtaking, dizzying view of Cyan’s skyline. But it was also stark.Nearly empty. A vast living room held a single charcoal sofa and a low table. A few unopened boxes were stacked in a corner. It felt like a very expensive hotel suite, temporary and impersonal.
“The branch launch has required most of my attention,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He walked to a panel on the wall, tapping it. Soft, warm light bloomed across the ceiling. “The bedrooms are down that hall. The primary is on the left. It has the best view. Linens are in the closets. The kitchen is fully stocked, though I rarely use it. Help yourself to anything.”
Eliza stood in the center of the vast, cool space, hugging herself. The adrenaline was bleeding away, leaving a profound, hollow exhaustion. The reality of what she’d agreed to settled on her like a heavy coat.
“It’s very… clean,” she said.
“It is empty,” he corrected softly, coming to stand beside her. He looked out at the glittering city, his hands in his pockets. “It has been waiting for a life to be lived in it.” He turned to her. “It is yours as much as mine now. Fill it with your books. Make it messy.”
A lump formed in her throat. She nodded, unable to speak.
“I will be in my office for a while,” he said, gesturing to a closed door. “Making the first arrangements. The room is yours. Goodnight, Eliza.”
“Goodnight, Tadashi.”
He paused, then did something unexpected. He stepped forward and kissed her, very softly, on the cheek. It was chaste, brief, but deliberate. His skin was warm. “For practice,” he murmured, his voice low. “And because it is what a man does when he brings the woman he is supposedly desperately in love with home for the first time.”
Then he was gone, the door to the office clicking shut behind him.
Eliza stood frozen, her hand rising to touch the spot on her cheek. It tingled. She walked slowly down the hall, pushed open the door to the primary bedroom. It was as minimalist as the rest, dominated by a huge bed and the spectacular, sprawling view. She ignored the view. She sat on the edge of the bed, the firm mattress giving slightly beneath her.
She looked down at her left hand. The pale band of skin where her engagement ring had been was stark against her complexion. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the solitaire. It glittered coldly in the dim light from the city.She had her answer. She had her new, insane, brilliant, terrifying path. She had a ring to sell, and a life to start over.
And in the other room, she could hear the low, steady murmur of Tadashi’s voice, already on the phone, building their new world. She pulled out her phone and texted the list of stuff she needed to Tadashi. Not expecting him to reply he replied immediately and said it is ‘done. Get some sleep’.
—
Mitchell jerked awake on the couch, his mouth dry and tasting of stale champagne. The party had bled into an after-party at some club. Sakura’s perfume, something floral and expensive, still clung to his shirt. He fumbled for his phone.No messages from Eliza. A thick, sour dread pooled in his stomach.
He’d expected… something. Tears.Screams. A thousand missed calls. Radio silence felt wrong.
He called her. It went straight to voicemail.
He shoved himself up, his head pounding. He took a shower, the hot water doing nothing to scrub away the gnawing anxiety. By noon, when there was still no word, he drove to their apartment. His hands were sweaty on the steering wheel.
He saw the van first. It was unmarked, matte black, idling with a quiet, expensive purr. Two men in dark, tactical-looking but civilian clothes were carrying a large, sealed plastic crate from the building’s service entrance. A third man, tall and with a military bearing, stood observing, a tablet in his hand. The doorman, old Mr. Grady, was just… watching, his face pale.
“Hey!” Mitchell jogged over, his lawyerly indignation surfacing. “What’s going on here? That’s my building!”
The tall man with the tablet turned. He had a face that gave away nothing. “Are you Mitchell Wright?”
“Yes. What are you doing?”
“Retrieving the personal effects of Eliza Heart per her authorized instructions.” The man’s voice was flat, professional. “The building management has verified the authorization. Please do not interfere.”
“The hell I won’t!” Mitchell moved to block the path to the van. One of the crate carriers stopped, setting the box down gently but firmly. He didn’t speak, but his stance widened. He didn’t look like a mover. He looked like he could dismantle Mitchell without breaking a sweat.
The man with the tablet stepped closer, lowering his voice.“Mr.Wright. This is being done legally and peacefully. The alternative involves a restraining order, which my client is prepared to file immediately based on grounds of emotional distress and infidelity. The evidence is quite solid. Do you really want to make a scene?”
Mitchell’s blood ran cold. Infidelity.Evidence. “Who are you? Who is your client?”
“That is privileged. Heart has terminated her tenancy and her relationship with you. All shared assets per the cohabitation agreement—which you insisted on, if you recall—have been digitally itemized. Her personal property is being removed. Yours will remain. Is there a problem?”
Mitchell stared, his mind racing. This was too fast, too clean. This wasn’t Eliza. Eliza was messy, emotional. She cried during dog food commercials. She wouldn’t… she couldn’t organize this.Sakura. The coat closet. Oh, god. She’d seen.She knew.
But this reaction… this was nuclear.
“I need to talk to her,” he said, his voice weaker than he intended.
“Ms. Heart has no desire to communicate with you at this time. Any further contact should be directed through our firm. Good day, Mr. Wright.”
The man gave a curt nod. The carrier picked up the crate, loaded it into the van, and closed the doors with a soft, definitive thump. All three men got in the van. It pulled away, silent as a ghost.
Mitchell stood on the curb, feeling the December wind cut through his jacket. He looked up at their—his—apartment window. The life he’d known, the manageable, comfortable life with the woman who loved him more than he loved her, was gone. Packed into black crates and driven away by strangers.
He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over Sakura’s number. Then he stopped. A new, deeper chill seeped into his bones.
Eliza hadn’t just left him.
Someone had taken her.
Mitchell stood frozen on the sidewalk, the van’s taillights dissolving into the midday traffic. “No desire to communicate,” the man had said.A paralegal. Security. Her client. The words buzzed, hornet-sting syllables that made no sense. Eliza didn’t have clients. She had ancient scrolls, app-making freelancers who needed translation APIs, and him. His mind snagged on the black crates, the brutal efficiency of it all. This wasn’t a tantrum. This was a fucking extraction.
A cold chill shot down his spine as he raced up to his apartment.
This can’t be real, he thought, fumbling with the brass keys, his fingers numb and stupid.It was a prank. A performance to punish me. She’s inside, crying on the couch, waiting for me to grovel.
He shouldered the door open. He saw the foyer tile, the living room rug.
Nothing looked out of the normal.
And then he looked down. The neat row of her shoes by the door—the scuffed flats, the tall leather boots she’d splurged on, the ridiculous fuzzy pink slippers her sister gave her—was gone. The space was a naked strip of floorboards. There wasn’t even a dust bunny left.
His breath hitched. He whirled to the coat closet, yanking the door open. Empty hangers clicked softly in the sudden draft. All of her coats—the peacoat, the yellow rain slicker, the vintage wool she’d found at a thrift store—gone. He looked up at the shelves above. The box of trinkets from her childhood she never fully unpacked.Gone.
He rushed into the living room, not caring about his shoes tracking slush. It felt hollow. The antique brass lamp she’d bought for its ‘warm glow’ still stood, but the book she kept on the side table—that dense, leather-bound Gogashōnian grammar primer with its onion-skin pages—was missing. The air felt thin.
Then his brain caught up. The flower she’d hung in the south-facing window, a prism thing that threw rainbows on the walls at three PM.Gone. No, scratch that. The damn curtains were gone. The whole rod was bare.
“Eliza?” His voice sounded weak, swallowed by the rooms.
He ran to the kitchen. The cabinet where her absurd mug collection lived stood half-open. Her favorite, the chipped one with the silly ‘Word Girl’ graphic, was gone. The whole row of mugs, just gone, leaving his boring corporate-branded ones alone and pathetic. He wrenched open the china cabinet door. Her grandmother’s antique tea set, the one she painstakingly restored with that gold leaf adhesive, had vanished. He counted his wine glasses. They were all there. Only her things.Selected.Precise.
He stalked toward their bedroom, a frantic energy pulling him forward. The door to her walk-in closet gaped open. The light was off. He slapped it on.Empty.
Just empty space and a faint scent of her lavender sachet. His own clothes hung undisturbed on his side, a neat, guilty row. Her dresser drawers were all pulled out, empty and askew. The small jewelry tray that sat on top, the one he’d bought her in Italy, was wiped clean.The bed. The king-size bed was just a bare mattress. The gray linen sheets, the duvet with the navy piping, the stupid pile of decorative pillows she loved—all gone. He stood there, looking at the naked expanse of memory foam.
And then he noticed. The air smelled of lemons and cleaning solution. Not the usual lived-in smell of coffee grounds and her peach hand cream. He stared at the naked mattress. Looked past it, to the baseboards. They were gleaming. There was no dust. He ran a finger along the top of the kitchen counter. It was slick, sterile.
This went beyond removal. This was sanitization.
His heart hammered a sick, uneven rhythm against his ribs. He stumbled to the small laundry room off the hall, yanking open the washing machine’s door. A damp, warm smell billowed out. Inside, tumbled in a silent, watery heap, were their sheets. The gray linen set. Still wet. Someone had stripped the bed and run a cycle. They didn’t just take her. They had washed her out of the fabric of the place, erased her like a stain.
He closed the machine door, the soft click deafening.
She wasn’t just gone. Every trace of her, the physical clutter of her life, her quiet, warm noise, had been systematically catalogued and excised. She had been extracted with the cold, clean finality of a tumor. It was terrifying.
He fumbled for his phone, his hands trembling so badly he dropped it. The screen flashed with a dozen pointless notifications. He snatched it up, his thumb smearing across the glass, and punched Sakura’s contact.It rang. And rang. His throat was too tight to swallow.
Finally, a click, then her voice, groggy and thick with sleep. “Hello?Mitchell? God, what time is it? Something the matter, sweetie?”
“She’s gone,” he blurted, the words tumbling out in a panicked rush. “Eliza.Like, gone gone. I just saw movers—not movers, like fucking commandos—they were loading her stuff into a black van. The apartment…Sakura, it’s empty. All her things.Even the curtains. They took the fucking curtains and washed the sheets.”
Silence on the line. A rustle of fabric, the sound of her sitting up. When she spoke again, the sleepiness was gone, replaced by sharp, sober alarm. “Excuse me, what? Back up.What movers? Slow down.”
He took a shuddering breath, pacing the clean, silent wasteland of his kitchen. “I went to the party last night after you left.I waited. She never came home. I fell asleep here on the couch. I called, she’s off the grid. I drove home at lunch and saw them loading her stuff. This guy with a tablet, he had… an aura.He knew. He knew about us. He said evidence of infidelity.”
“Evidence,” Sakura echoed, her voice flat. “What evidence?”
“I don’t know! The closet? Did she see us?” He couldn’t fight a spike of defensive anger. “Why didn’t you check? You said you peeked, you said it was clear!”
“I thought it was clear. It was dark, Mitchell! But that’s not the point. Military contractors don’t move a scorned girlfriend’s teacups because of a little cheating. Who is she connected to? What did you tell me about her?No family. Bookworm friends. Who has access to that kind of—movers?”
Her rapid-fire logic splintered his panic into sharper shards. It fell into place with a sickening click. She wasn’t just being dramatic. This was systematic.Professional.
His apartment felt suddenly alien, a stage set after the show had closed. Her sunshine was gone, and what remained was just his sterile footprint, exposed and strangely pathetic. He saw his bachelor life reflected in the polished floors, and it looked shockingly small.
“You said she was a soft touch,” Sakura pressed, her mind clearly racing now. “You said she wouldn’t kick up a fuss. Does she even have money for that?”
“No,” he whispered, staring at the blank space where her coat used to hang. “She doesn’t.”
“Then she’s not the one who called them.” Sakura’s voice dropped low, serious. “Mitchell.Listen. Someone did this for her. That’s far more dangerous. We need to know who.”
The phone felt like ice in his hand. “What do I do?”
“Nothing.You do absolutely nothing. You go back to work.You act normal. You let your messages to her go to voicemail. Do not call her again.” She took a sharp breath. “And for god’s sake, do not talk to Lucas. He’s got a guilty conscience and a loose tongue. We wait.We watch. We find out who just picked her up off the map.”
The line went dead.
Mitchell lowered the phone. He stood in the silent, gleaming apartment.It was clean. Impossibly clean. It was a museum of her absence. He sank down onto the bare floor, the new, cold silence pressing against his ears.
Across town, nine glittering blocks west, Eliza stared out at a completely different view. The penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows framed the gray winter sky. Beside her, Tadashi handed her a simple bowl of steaming rice topped with a perfectly fried egg.
“It’s all I can reliably make,” he said, a slight, sheepish shrug in his shoulders. He nudged a bottle of sweet soy sauce toward her. “But it’s better than talking to him.” Eliza accepted the bowl, the ceramic warm against her palms. She was sure Mitchell would break soon to speak to her and maybe he would if these military men didn't show up at his door first because were already threatening punishment. And her ring? Tadashi lawyered it up, amicably dissolving assets.
"That’s okay," she said quietly, taking a bite. "You need more seasoning than soy sauce."
"It’s okay. Practice leaves us room to grow."