The Weight of Snow
The warehouse smelled of salt and rust, the kind of cold that settled into bone rather than skin. Out beyond the loading dock's corrugated doors, Tokyo Bay lapped against the pilings in slow, indifferent rhythm, and snow fell in thin, reluctant flurries that melted the instant they touched the concrete. Kenji Sato stood at the center of it all, his overcoat still buttoned, his hands still clean, watching three men kneel in a neat row like offerings arranged for some ancient, bloodthirsty god.
"You know why you're here," he said. His voice did not rise. It never needed to.
The man in the middle—young, maybe twenty-five, with a split lip and a tremor he couldn't hide—lifted his head. "Sato-san, please, we didn't know the shipment was—"
"You knew." Kenji crouched, bringing himself level with the man's terrified eyes. "You knew exactly whose containers you were skimming from. Three months, Arai-san. Three months of product disappearing from my docks, and you thought I wouldn't notice a two percent shortfall becoming five, becoming eight?"
Behind him, Tanaka shifted his weight, the old enforcer's scarred knuckles flexing against his thighs. He'd been with the Sato clan for over…
