7. Dojin
SEVEN
DOJIN
His mother called at eleven. Colette Keiser operated on a schedule that appeared spontaneous and was, in fact, choreographed with the precision of the opera career she’d retired from.
Tuesday calls at eleven. Thursday tea with her network.
Sunday dinners she described as intimate and staffed like state functions.
He picked up on the third ring. A deliberate count. First ring was eager. Second was reasonable. Third communicated that a man running a billion-dollar company had other priorities but loved his mother enough to answer before voicemail.
Colette had never once acknowledged this strategy.
“Dojin, mon chéri.” Her voice poured through with the warmth and projection of a mezzo-soprano who’d filled La Scala without a microphone. “I have the most wonderful news.”
Wonderful news from his mother required full attention and an empty desk, because wonderful news always involved plans she’d executed, agreements she’d sealed, and food she’d started preparing—all before informing anyone else of their participation.
“What news?”
“Do you know Suki Saitō?”
The name hit like a physical knock. The Saitō Wixx Family. Four hours since the demo reel and he was already tracking anything connected to her—logging the name before his mind had fully consented to it.
“Of her.” He kept his voice even. “Hideo Saitō’s widow.”
“We met at a gathering last week. Extraordinary woman. Tiny. Devastating. She makes tea that could end wars.” Colette’s voice rose with the cadence that meant she was building toward a point and relishing the construction. “She has a granddaughter.”
She has a granddaughter whose voice made your bear try to come through your hands at six in the morning, and your mother is about to connect those facts with the surgical precision of a woman who has been engineering your personal life since you were twelve.
“Maman.” A warning.
“A voice actress. Very accomplished. Suki tells me she’s—”
“I know who Nari Wixx is. We’re casting her for Voidborn.”
The operatic kind—a rest between movements.
“Quelle co?ncidence!”
“It’s not a coincidence. It’s you.”
“It is a beautiful, organic alignment of—”
“Maman. Stop.” The command in his voice worked in boardrooms and bear councils and occasionally on his mother, when he timed it right. “What have you done?”
“I’ve done nothing. I had a conversation with a charming woman whose granddaughter is talented in a field relevant to your business. The universe provides.” A breath. “We should have them to dinner.”
“No.”
“The Saitō Wixx family. Six people. Intimate. I’ll make duck.”
“We haven’t met.”
“Which is why dinner is essential. You can’t work with someone you haven’t fed, Dojin. That’s barbaric.”
She is weaponizing bear biology against me. My own mother is using my instincts as a tactical instrument.
And the worst part was that she wasn’t wrong.
“The duck is already marinating.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You called to inform me of a dinner you’ve already started preparing, for guests you haven’t invited, to meet a woman I haven’t hired.”
“Sept plats. Seven courses. Don’t argue with the duck, Dojin.”
“You’ve been working with a matchmaker. Gerri Wilder. Through your Book Club.”
The briefest hesitation. Colette recovered fast—she always did—but the pause confirmed everything. “It’s a book club, darling. We discuss literature.”
“You’ve never finished a book at that club. You discuss your children’s love lives and drink champagne. I’ve known this for two years.”
A sound on the other end—half laugh, half concession. “You are your father’s son. He always knew more than he revealed.”
“I’m my mother’s son. She taught me how to recognize a scheme.”
She hung up. Because Colette didn’t end phone calls—she concluded performances.
Dojin set down the phone. Stood. Walked to the window where Manhattan spread beneath him—sharp and bright, lunch rush hour, cranes and glass and ambition stretching to the horizon.
His city. His territory. His sleuth in the floors above and his company in the floors below and a kingdom built on three generations of strategic patience.
His mother was orchestrating a seven-course dinner to introduce him to a woman whose voice had cracked his composure at dawn.
A matchmaker was involved. The duck was marinating.
And what he felt—what had been manageable and patient and controlled for thirty-four years—pressed against every careful limit with a singular, territorial demand that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with possession.
He turned from the window. Opened his laptop. Pulled up the Voidborn production file. Nari Wixx’s headshot loaded—dark eyes, bold mouth, an expression that dared the camera to blink first.
He studied it the way he studied everything that mattered: with complete attention and controlled intensity. Then he closed the file, opened the production schedule, and sent a note to the Chelsea studios doubling the allocated booth time for the Voidborn lead sessions.
More studio time. More recording days. A sound decision. Responsible. The kind of resource allocation that served the project and happened to guarantee he’d be in a room with that voice, in person, within the week.
It’s a production decision. It serves the project.
His bear growled. Low. Constant. A resonance frequency that bears produced involuntarily when fixated on a target—and he let it run because denying it would be a lie and Dojin Keiser did not lie to himself.
Not a three. Not even close.
The rational man knew it was too early. The alpha knew it was too early to say it. But the bear—patient, deliberate, certain the way only a Kodiak could be certain—had already decided.
Now the man had to catch up.