37. Nari
THIRTY-SEVEN
NARI
She brought the sketchbooks to Keiser Tower on a Thursday morning, wrapped in the linen cloth Suki kept them in, carried against her body like a newborn.
Dojin was in his office. Standing, not sitting, because the man was incapable of receiving news from a chair.
He watched her come through the door, watched the bundle against her ribs, and his expression shifted—not curiosity, not confusion.
Recognition. He understood she was carrying cargo that cost more than anything in this building.
“These belonged to my grandfather.” She laid the bundle on his conference table.
Unfolded the linen. Three sketchbooks, their covers worn soft with handling, their spines cracked from years of being opened to the same pages.
Hideo’s handwriting on the labels—dated, meticulous, each one covering a specific story arc.
1987. 1991. 1994. “The unpublished Sora Nightwind material. Everything Mercer built Voidborn from.”
Dojin didn’t reach for them. His hands stayed at his sides. He looked at her—a question.
“You can touch them.”
He picked up the first sketchbook like a museum curator handling an original manuscript.
Both hands. Fingers along the spine, not the pages.
He opened it slowly, letting the binding settle into its natural angle instead of forcing it flat.
His thumb didn’t cross into the margin of any illustration.
He turned pages with the edge of his nail, not his fingertip, so the oils from his skin wouldn’t transfer to the paper.
He knows how to handle original art. Not because someone taught him for this moment. Because he’s handled originals before. Because he cares about the thing itself, not what the thing is worth.
She watched his face as he read. The shift was gradual—brow drawing in, jaw setting, the stillness in him deepening degree by degree as he turned pages and the scope of what Mercer had stolen became visible in ink and graphite and her grandfather’s steady hand.
“These are extraordinary.” His voice had dropped. Not quiet dense. Compressed. Carrying more weight than the two words were built for. “Your grandfather was a master.”
“I know.”
He set the first sketchbook down. Picked up the second.
Opened to a spread she knew by heart—Hideo’s mythology laid out in ink and annotation, Japanese and English filling the margins.
The architecture of a fictional world, built with the precision of an engineer and the soul of a poet.
Dojin’s jaw flexed. His hand on the page was rigid.
“Mercer stole this.” His voice had gone dangerous. “From him. From you.”
“The bear thing?”
“The bear thing.”
She’d been braced for a range of reactions.
Skepticism—these could be recreations. Diplomacy—let’s verify before we assume.
Caution—we need to be strategic about this.
She had not been braced for rage on her grandfather’s behalf, delivered through trembling hands and a jaw rigid with the effort of not closing into fists.
“The dates are authenticated.” She kept her voice level.
One of them needed to be the steady one right now, and he was busy having a species-appropriate fury response.
“Three independent experts. We have voice notes from 2017 where Hideo describes these storylines in detail. And James has the chain of custody documented back to Tomas Crane.”
“Crane.” Dojin set the sketchbook down. His control was visibly recalibrating—the CEO surfacing through the alpha’s anger, pulling the pieces into a framework he could act on. “The former archivist. Reo flagged that name two weeks ago.”
“Reo flagged it because I flagged it to James, who flagged it to Reo, who flagged it to you. We’ve been running a very efficient flag relay.”
The corner of his mouth moved. A fraction. The rage didn’t leave his eyes, but the fraction meant he was present, hearing her, not lost in the red of it.
“We need your father.”
“My father’s been waiting for this call for days.”
James Wixx arrived at Keiser Tower in a navy suit and the energy of a father who had been building a legal weapon in his home office and was ready to deploy it.
He brought two file boxes. He brought a laptop and tabbed folders organized by evidence type.
He brought the smile he wore into courtrooms—pleasant, precise, and deeply alarming to opposing counsel.
Reo met them in the council room on thirty-nine.
He’d set up the long table with monitors at each station, printed timelines on the wall, and a whiteboard already sectioned into four quadrants: EVIDENCE, CHAIN OF CUSTODY, LEGAL STRATEGY, NEXT STEPS.
The organization was military. The handwriting was surprisingly elegant.
“Reo Tanaka.” He offered his hand to James. “Head of security.”
James took it. Assessed him the way lawyers assessed everyone—quickly, thoroughly, with a verdict arriving before the handshake ended. “James Wixx. Entertainment law. Your timeline is thorough.”
“Your daughter’s side-by-side analysis is the foundation. I built from her work.”
James glanced at Nari. She recognized the look—the pride he wouldn’t vocalize in a room full of men because the Wixx family did their emotional processing in private, over green tea, in a brownstone kitchen with Suki presiding.
They worked for four hours. James laid out the legal architecture: original authorship established through dated sketchbooks, expert authentication, and Hideo’s voice notes.
Chain of custody traced through Crane’s six years as family archivist to the shell company structure linking Meridian Creative to Mercer Global.
Nari provided the creative analysis—which elements of Voidborn were lifted directly from Hideo’s unpublished work, which were modified, and which were added by Mercer’s team.
Reo mapped the corporate structure and identified the individuals who had handled the stolen materials at each stage—including the two operatives from Nari’s break-in, whose lobby footage matched a private security firm on Mercer’s payroll.
Dojin contributed what he knew from the business side: the Meridian pitch, the due diligence Keiser Entertainment had performed (clean on the surface, deliberately structured to be), the production timeline.
She watched Dojin with her father. The deference wasn’t performed—it was genuine.
When James corrected a legal assumption, Dojin absorbed it without ego.
When James asked for specific financial records, Dojin pulled them up and handed them over without redaction.
When James paused to re-read a section of the evidence chain and the room went quiet, Dojin waited.
Didn’t fill the gap with chatter or redirect to keep the meeting moving. Let the lawyer work.
He defers to expertise. Not power, not seniority, not status—expertise. My father has spent thirty years in entertainment law and Dojin treats that experience like the asset it is instead of the obstacle most CEOs consider it.
James noticed too. She could tell by the incremental shift in his posture—the loosening of his shoulders by millimeters, questions directed to Dojin instead of through Reo.
He was accepting Dojin into the trust radius.
For James Wixx, who trusted opposing counsel like most people trusted weather forecasts, this was seismic.
At hour three, Reo ordered food. It arrived on platters—onigiri, miso soup, pickled vegetables, grilled fish. The kitchen on thirty-eight, obviously. Nari watched her father eat a piece of grilled salmon with focused, silent appreciation.
“Who made this?”
Reo tipped his head toward Dojin, who was marking up a timeline with a red pen and didn’t look up.
James ate another piece. Said nothing. But Nari saw him file the information—he’d been evaluating his daughter’s romantic interests since she was sixteen and had never once been impressed.
At hour four, they had a strategy. Continue production publicly—Nari would keep performing, the studio would keep animating, and Mercer would have no reason to suspect the legal case building behind the scenes.
Simultaneously, James would pursue Crane’s testimony and compile the authentication reports into a package that would give them leverage for either a settlement or a lawsuit.
“This is a war of documentation.” James closed his laptop. “Mercer’s weapon is money. Ours is evidence. Evidence is cheaper and harder to destroy.”
Dojin stood. Offered his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Wixx. Your expertise is the backbone of this.”
James took the hand. Held it longer than a professional handshake required. “Protect the sketchbooks. Those are irreplaceable.”
“Already arranged. Reo’s team has a secure archive. Climate-controlled, biometric access.”
James released his hand. Nodded once. Turned to Nari. “Walk me out.”
In the elevator, James was quiet for twelve floors. The Wixx family processed vertically—in elevators, on staircases, through the four flights of the brownstone. Movement and thought were linked.
“He’s good.” James watched the floor numbers descend. “He’s honest.”
From James Wixx, entertainment lawyer, who had spent three decades watching powerful men in boardrooms and had learned to spot the difference between performed integrity and the real article—this was not a compliment. It was a verdict.
Nari didn’t respond. Didn’t need to. Her father wasn’t asking for confirmation. He was giving permission, in the understated Wixx tradition, for her to trust what she was already trusting.
The elevator doors opened. James stepped out, turned back. “The salmon was excellent.”
The doors closed. Nari smiled at her reflection in the polished steel.