“Those?” Kevin says, confused. “I assumed you knew.”
My fingers curl against the desk. “Why would I know?”
“You instructed it,” he says slowly. “Said they were sensitive. Told us to load them, unload them at the destination port, but keep them off the log. Explicit orders not to open them.”
My pulse thuds once. Hard.
“When did I give those instructions?” I ask.
“Two weeks ago,” he answers, evidently surprised. “You called from your private line.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
“I didn’t,” I say quietly.
Silence.
“You’re sure it was me?” I ask carefully after a while.
“I’d swear to it,” he says. “The voice…the way of speaking. You even used the phrase you always do— ‘no deviations.’ I thought it was odd, but you’re the boss.”
I hang up after a few more clipped questions, promising to call back when I have more information.
I don’t move for a long moment.
The yard manager is solid. I vetted him myself. Background checks, credit checks, loyalty. He’s clean. Which means this wasn’t an internal slip or incompetence.
Someone impersonated me.
Someone close enough to know my habits. My speech patterns. My private line.
And they used my ships.
I push back from the desk and stand, pacing once, twice, heat crawling up my spine. I’ve spent years scrubbing my father’s filth off this company, cutting ties, firing people he brought in, legitimizing every inch of this operation.
And someone thought they could drag us—me—back into the mud.
My gaze flicks to the outer office.
Mila is typing now, focused, unaware that my world just tilted on its axis. Innocent chaos in a space that suddenly feels compromised.
I exhale slowly, forcing the anger down into something colder. Sharper.
This wasn’t random. And whoever did it is going to regret choosing my ships.
Chapter Three
Mila
A week in, and I still don’t understand how I’m employed.
Not just employed—still employed.
Every morning I wake up half-expecting the universe to finally catch up with me. A spilled drink. A wrong email. A fall that takes out a senior executive. Something…anything that proves I was right not to get comfortable.
But somehow…nothing happens.
Well, nothing catastrophic.