I cross the room and pick it up just as it begins to vibrate again. I answer.
“What?” I say before he can speak.
Father doesn’t waste any time in greeting me. “What the hell are you doing?” he demands, his voice already raised.
“I’m working.”
“Working?” he snaps. “He moved on Kinsella’s pier this morning. Did you know that?”
My mind races.
“No.”
“He seized the contracts and absorbed the route into his own structure,” Patrick continues, his tone sharp and furious. “That corridor was neutral. It was supposed to stay neutral.”
Kinsella’s pier. That’s the smaller independent dock Cillian mentioned shutting down before. “He’s consolidating,” I say carefully.
“He’s making a power grab,” he retorts. “And it cuts into my distributors.”
There it is.
“You didn’t tell me he was moving this week,” he continues.
“I didn’t know.”
“You’re in his bed.”
“That doesn’t mean he hands me board minutes,” I reply evenly.
Hetsks. “You were supposed to slow him. Not let him strengthen.”
“You told me to gain his trust,” I remind him. “I did.”
He snorts on the other end. “And while you were earning tea and soda bread, he absorbed a pier that fed three of my outer lines.”
I close my eyes briefly. “He’s locking down synthetics,” I say, albeit this bit of information is useless and we both know it.
“I know what he’s locking down,” Patrick snaps. “And that pier gave us flexibility.”
Us.
“Then you should’ve moved faster,” I say quietly.
There’s a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, colder. “He’s positioning for full corridor control. Once he finishes consolidating neutral ground, there’s no buffer between his docks and my routes.”
“You’re overextended,” I say before I can stop myself.
His silence is dangerous. “You forget who you’re speaking to,” he says.
“No,” I reply. “I don’t.”
Another breath.
“You need to accelerate,” he says finally. “Destabilize him. Quickly.”
“How?”
“Create doubt inside his structure. Shift a contract. Leak something. Make his men question him.”