She was lying. Not because she wanted to, but because she works for him and her visa depends on his signature. Yuki closed her eyes. A single tear ran down her left cheek and landed on her keyboard.
I don't blame her. I understand her position. But you deserve to know what the man sitting across from you has been saying about people who look like me in a language he assumed none of us could understand. The dining room was silent.
Not the polite silence of a pause between courses. The heavy, absolute silence of 63 people who had just watched the floor open beneath a man's feet. Nakamura sat down. Slowly.
The way a man sits when his legs have stopped working. His silver hair was still perfect. His Patek Philippe still gleamed. But something behind his eyes had collapsed, a structure that had held for 58 years, built on the assumption that the people he looked down on would never look back.
Brooks hadn't blinked. He picked up the Mont Blanc pen from the floor, placed it in his breast pocket, and closed the contract folder. Brooks pushed his chair back. The legs scraped against the hardwood floor, a sharp final sound like a door being bolted shut.
He picked up the contract folder, tucked it under his arm, and stood. We're done here. Nakamura found his voice. It came out thin, cracked, stripped of every ounce of authority that had filled it 5 minutes ago.
Mr. Brooks, please. This is a misunderstanding. She's twisting my words.
She's a waitress. You can't possibly take her word over mine. I watched you throw a napkin in her face, Nakamura. I don't need a translation for that.
It was an accident. I was upset about the suit. You understand. It's an expensive Save it.
Brooks turned toward the door. He was three steps from the table when Iris spoke. Mr. Brooks?
He stopped, turned back. Iris was already bending down. Not to kneel. Nakamura had asked for that, and she'd refused.
She was bending to pick up the papers scattered across the carpet. The ones that had fallen when Nakamura slammed the table, and his elbow caught Kenji's folder. It was reflex. She was a server.
Things fell on the floor, she picked them up. That was the job. She gathered the pages into a stack, eight, maybe 10 sheets, and straightened up to place them back on the table. But as she squared the edges, her eyes caught the header on the top page.
Japanese text. Internal financial report. Nakamura Industries Semiconductor Division. She read Japanese the way most people read English, without effort, without delay.
The characters resolved into meaning as fast as her eyes moved across the page. Revenue, semiconductor division, Q3 actual, 2.7 billion yen. She did the math without thinking. Six years of interpreting trade deals had turned currency conversion into muscle memory.