“Don’t wear that perfume again.”
She freezes. “Excuse me?”
“It’s distracting.”
A beat passes.
Then, “Noted.”
She leaves.
And I stay there, watching the empty space she leaves behind, already deciding I need to know who the fuck she really is. Something about her feels dangerous — and I’ve always had a taste for danger.
3
SAOIRSE
The door closes behind me, and the way Cillian looked at me stays hot on my skin.
I keep my pace steady as I walk the corridor, and I don’t let my face show anything that belongs to the girl from Riot Room. I’m Riley Quinn now, and I’m here to make men trust me with numbers that move more than freight.
My pulse refuses to behave.
Cillian Byrne’s eyes stay in my head as I pass a wall of notices and a faded safety poster that nobody reads. He looked at me like he’s deciding what I cost and what I break, and somehow, I’m hungry to prove myself to him.
Could be my daddy issues speaking for me, though. Years of trying to secure my father’s approval have put me in a place where I’m always eager to show what I’m worth. A man like Cillian would see right through that.
A clerk points me toward a door markedLOGISTICS. I nod and walk in.
O’Driscoll sits behind a desk with two monitors, a landline, a radio, and a stack of printed manifests that look older than the building. He looks up, takes me in, then flicks his eyes past me to the corridor. “You met him?”
“I did,” I reply.
He exhales through his nose and rubs his forehead once. “He takes an interest when he smells a risk.”
“I’m not a risk,” I say.
O’Driscoll’s mouth twitches as he pushes a chair out with his foot. He doesn’t buy it, but he doesn’t challenge it either. “Sit.”
I do as I’m told. He opens a folder and slides a single-page brief across the desk. It has a role outline, a few names, and a set of rules written in plain language.
“You’ll track physical shipments,” he says. “That means you check delivery schedules for trucks and containers carrying goods like whiskey, packaging, and export stock. When a truck or container arrives at the port, you confirm it matches what was scheduled.”
He begins counting off my duties on the tips of his fingers. “When something leaves, you confirm it’s the correct load going to the correct destination. If a shipment arrives late, arrives early, shows up incomplete, or doesn’t show up at all, you flag it.”
He looks at me to see if I’m listening, and I nod. “If paperwork says ten pallets and only nine arrive, you flag it. If a truck leaves without clearance, you flag it. Your job is to notice small problems before they turn into big ones.”
This is all routine stuff, I think to myself, which is good.
He taps one line with his pen. “Seals and handoffs matter. Chain of custody matters. Receipt timing matters.”
He looks up. “Do you know why?”
I keep my tone even. “It reduces theft and questions.”
He nods once. “Good.”
He leans back and folds his hands over his stomach. “You’ll deal with brokers and freight agents, speak to customs intermediaries when a container gets stalled, and log every conversation.”