Friday, September 20th, 10:26 am

“…so with this process in place and with your generous donation, we can confidently claim that we will decrease veteran homelessness by thirty percent within the next decade. We also don’t think it’s unreasonable to—”

I placed my hand on the conference table. “I’m sorry… what?”

The gentleman at the head of the conference table glanced from the power point presentation he was stepping us through to look at me. Then he glanced at Charity uncertainly.

“Did you have a question?” he asked.

“Let me get this straight… you want to reduce veteran homelessness by thirty percent over ten years?”

The man simply stared back at me, his eyes looking particularly owlish in his coke-bottle thick lenses. “I know it seems ambitious… but—”

“Ambitious? Thirty percent in ten years doesn’t seem like much.”

Some of the other members of The Homefront Foundation immediately put their heads together and began murmuring.

“Forgive me,” retired Army Corporal Malcomb Sanders said from his seat near the other end of the table. “Miss Malano said she’d given you our records.”

“She did,” I said. “I just haven’t had a chance to read them.”

“Ah,” he said, sounding slightly disappointed. I couldn’t blame him. Everyone sitting at this table probably had a combined twenty-five years or more of experience working with veteran-based non-profits, and I was just some rich, ignorant asshole here to sign a check. These guys were used to catering rich, ignorant, check-signing assholes, so I could literally hear the restraint in their voice, keeping them from sounding condescending. I knew what they were thinking, though—that this wealthy guy doesn’t have to work for a living. The least he could do is read the fucking material we gave him days in advance. Especially when all the important stuff was marked and tagged for my benefit.

The thing is, though. I hadn’t read the material. Charity had vetted these guys. Erin had double-checked Charity’s work. Chloe and Psalter vouched for them. The Reddit community loved them. These guys were the real deal… not some evil non-profit pocketing seventy percent of the profits.

And I didn’t want to read the material. Over the last few days that I’d had those reports on my desk, I’d been dealing with my own personal and business-related crap, and when I hadn’t been dealing with that…

Well, there were several ladies in the house who enjoyed regular attention.

When no one else seemed to know what to say to address what appeared to be my disappointment, I continued, “What would it take to end all homelessness by the end of the year?”

By the looks on their faces, I might as well have asked them what it would take to fit an entire football team inside a Fiat.

“I’m sorry,” Sanders said. “That’s not doable.” There was a hint of condescension creeping into his voice.

“Because you don’t have enough money?”

“Because it’s September. It’s not logistically possible.”

“What if it were January?”

Sanders glanced at one of his companions, the two of them sharing a disbelieving look.

“Could you do it by the end of next year?”

“One hundred percent of veterans housed?” Owlish asked.

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Not one hundred percent, sir. There are simply some veterans who will have pushback. Then there’s zoning and building issues… those differ across cities and states.”

“But closer to one hundred percent than thirty?” I asked.

“By next year?” asked the man sitting across from Sanders.

“Yeah.”

“With enough money, and more than a year…” He scrubbed at his mouth in thought.

“It’s a lofty goal,” Sanders said, but not impossible with enough money.”

I fixed him with a look. “Realistically, how much do you need to make it happen?”

He glanced at his co-workers, then back at me. “A hundred million to get us started?”

“You’ll get two hundred and fifty million,” I said.

The silence that permeated the conference room was so palpable I could feel it.

And then Owlish dropped his PowerPoint remote, causing the rest of his team to begin talking excitedly to themselves.

“Sir, there’s no way you can possibly—”

All of us suddenly turned our attention to the door as Erin opened it and poked her head inside. She immediately spotted me with her eyes. “Emergency call,” she mouthed.

“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this. Charity will work out the details and fill me in later.” I stood up to leave, and every person at that table did the same. Several of them approached me, offering their hands as they thanked me.

“Sir, are you serious?” Malcolm said as I shook his hand.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll take me some time to get all of it to you, but I’ll try to get a decent chunk to you by the end of next week, so you guys can get started. I keep sitting in on these meetings, and it feels like you’re all fighting over scraps. These guys fought for our country, and a lot of them get out and have no support system. I want to change that, but some guys are gonna die from exposure or drugs if it takes ten years to reach a third of them. I want results as soon as possible. *********** a suitable city to start with, keeping scalability and replicability in mind. This is a national problem, and I want it fixed. Keep Charity in the loop, and let’s meet again at the end of the year.”

“Of course,” he said, shaking my hand vigorously. “Thank you so much, sir.”

“No,” I said. “Thank you for all you’re doing… and for your service.”

After shaking a few more hands, I managed to get out of the door, leaving Charity to deal with the details while I turned my attention to whatever Erin deemed an emergency.

“What is it?” I asked Erin as I shut the door behind me.

“It’s Sachiko Tanaka,” she said, palm over the phone’s mouthpiece.

“About fucking time,” I huffed. “What’d she say?”

“That she wants to talk to you.” Erin raised an eyebrow when I gave her a look. “She told me she didn’t want to talk to me. Only you.”

She handed me the phone. I took it, muttering, “Don’t rich people know how to text?”

“Hey, Sachiko,” I said as I lifted the phone to my ear. “It’s been a minute. Glad you made it out alive.”

“You know I made it out alive,” she replied coolly. “Your men killed the assassin.”

I couldn’t read her tone—no guilt, no gratitude, no indication whether it was her or Hiro who’d ordered the hit. She was hard enough to read in person. Over the phone? Impossible.

“I want to meet,” I said.

“Good,” she replied. “So do I. That’s why I called.”

“Not you,” I said. “Hiro.”

“My father will not meet with you.”

“Why? Because he’s afraid I’ll kill him—or because he lacks the self-control not to leap over the table at me?”

“It’s because you see things like that.”

“What? That he’s either a coward or he can’t keep his hands to himself?”

“Yes. He’s a very prideful man. You know this.”

“You realize how petty that sounds, right?”

She sighed. Didn’t answer.

“How the hell did he ever do business with people?”

“Everyone else has always been respectful of my father,” she said. “They understood what he was capable of. He’s grown used to a certain standard of decorum.”

“All I see,” I said, “is a daughter trying to shield her snowflake boomer dad from reality—and from the consequences of his own actions.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sachiko snapped, venom lacing her voice. It stopped me. Made me shift gears.

“Why are you working for him?” I asked, quieter. “You know he doesn’t value you.”

Silence.

Goddamn stubborn family loyalty.

Don’t get me wrong—I would’ve done anything to make my sister smile, or to make Richie happy. I’d kill for my mom and dad. But they were good people. Honest. They made mistakes, but they took responsibility for them.

Jacob? I would’ve sold him out for half a candy bar. And Hiro made Jacob look like a choirboy. As far as I could tell, that man showed no visible affection for a daughter who had given him everything.

I wanted to say it—just step out of the way. Let an accident happen.

But fuck… I couldn’t.

I’d danced with the idea at the sushi place… but this? This would be a real suggestion. Too real. And I wasn’t Hiro Tanaka. I didn’t want to be that.

“Well,” I finally said, “I don’t want to meet with you. And he doesn’t want to meet with me. Looks like we’re at an impasse. Guess I’ll have to fight fire with fire.”

You see, over the past few days, things hadn’t gone quiet between us. They’d escalated.

Tuesday, the day after the assassination attempt and my interrogation of Carla, I woke up to bad news. The software company supporting one of our major tech divisions, LumenVir Tech, had pulled out of a three-year contract before it was due to expire. Now, my company had warehouses full of useless hardware. Worse still, our clients’ security systems were malfunctioning. LumenVir was scrambling to onboard replacement software, but millions had already been lost, and trust had been damaged.

Our lawyers were suing. Psalter’s team traced it back to a shell corporation, and of course, they were able to trace it back to Hiro.

So, I decided to pursue him.

Not that I had some brilliant plan to take him down.

Erin, a specialist from Psalter’s team, and a couple of lawyers from YPV’s international division brought me three options. I picked a real estate firm called Shinsei Development Group—mainly because it was Erin’s favorite.

I had no idea how they managed to pull it off, but my team convinced Tokyo to freeze the company’s assets and launch a surprise audit.

It turned out to be a hell of a bigger hit than I expected.

Last night, I found out Shinsei wasn’t just a real estate company—it was laundering money through bloated construction budgets and running fronts for underground casinos and illegal brothels.

In one accidentally brilliant stroke, I’d wiped out two of the Tanaka family’s enterprises.

And it had achieved the mission of getting Hiro’s attention, because I was back on the phone with Sachiko Tanaka after days of trying to call them.

I wish I could’ve seen Hiro’s face when he got the news.

“Fire with fire?” Sachiko said, sounding irritated.