“You’re folding me in,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And Patrick?”
“He’ll adjust.”
Kinsella’s gaze flicks toward the far end of the pier, then back to me. “He won’t like losing this.”
“I’m not asking him to.”
Another beat.
Then he nods once, short and decisive. “Fine. We restructure.”
It’s not surrender. It’s survival.
I hold his gaze a moment longer to make sure he means it, then I extend my hand. He hesitates half a second before taking it, grip firm, eyes steady.
“I’ll call my haulers,” he says. “Tell them to cooperate.”
“Do that.”
He steps back toward the office, already pulling his phone from his pocket. One of my men approaches to confirm the transfer signatures, and Kinsella waves him inside to finalize the documentation.
The yard doesn’t look tense.
It looks procedural.
Men are moving pallets again. A crane shifts a container into place. My compliance team continues scanning manifests, marking two trucks for secondary inspection and clearing a third without incident.
I turn away from Kinsella and walk toward the inspection lane, coat moving cleanly with each step, men parting without being told. Neutral ground is over.
Just then, the first crack of gunfire explodes like a period at the end of a sentence I hadn't finished writing. It’s sharp, close, and fundamentally wrong for a Tuesday afternoon. One moment, the yard is a rhythmic machine of clacking containers and idling engines. The next, it’s a mosaic of shattering glass and screaming metal. A pallet near the inspection lane explodes into a cloud of pine splinters, and the air is suddenly thick with the ozone tang of spent casings and the brine of the harbor.
“Down!” Roarke’s voice is a guttural roar, cutting through the chaos with the authority of a man who has lived through a dozen such ends.
He doesn’t hesitate. While I’m still registering the ricochet shrieking off a steel frame, he’s already moving, his silhouette a blur against the grey concrete. I pivot, my hand already findingthe cold, familiar weight of the piece tucked into my waistband. Two vans have breached the far end of the pier, doors spilling open with a clinical, terrifying coordination. This is clearly an execution. Patrick isn't interested in paperwork anymore.
I find cover behind a steel container just as a hail of lead tears through the space I occupied seconds before. The side mirror of a nearby SUV vanishes in a spray of silver shards.
“You should’ve expected it,” Roarke says, his breathing impossibly steady as he checks his magazine.
“I did,” I rasp, the words tasting like dust. “Just not this fast.”
The yard has dissolved into a nightmare of movement. Smoke from a ruptured cargo crate mingles with the rising mist from the water, blurring the lines between friend and foe. I step out from the edge of the steel, the world narrowing to the sight of a van door. I fire twice, the recoil a sharp, honest jolt up my arm. An attacker drops, his body dragged back behind the chassis by his shadows. This was designed to bleed me, to show the city that my new empire comes with a tax paid in bone and breath.
A scream cuts through the din—sharp, young, and full of a terror that doesn't belong on my docks. It’s one of the new boys. I move toward it instinctively, and that's when the world punches me.
It’s a violent, white-hot impact just below my ribs, a force that hurls me back against the container wall with a thud that rattles my teeth. Heat floods outward from the wound, a sickening, wet warmth that soaks into my shirt instantly. I don’t fall—I refuse to fall—but the horizon tilts on its axis.
Roarke is there in a heartbeat, his heavy hand shoving me lower, his body a shield between me and the vans. “You’re hit,” he snaps, his eyes raking over me with a professional's detachment.
“Through?” I manage to choke out.
He glances at my side, then shakes his head, his jaw tight. “Grazed. But you’re leaking, Cillian. Stay down.”
“Hold the line!” he shouts to the men, his voice carrying over the crackle of fire.