Chapter 8 - The Harbor Captain
Rowan ended the call without speaking.
Maeve exploded.
“No. No, you don’t get to go silent. You don’t get to do that terrifying calm thing while they threaten my daughter!”
Piper was upstairs, still asleep, unaware her name had become a weapon in a war she never chose.
Maeve’s hands trembled so badly she pressed them flat against the dining table.
Rowan looked at Finley. “Lock down the house.”
“Already doing it.”
“Double the men on the back.”
“Yes.”
“Call Crowe.”
Finley hesitated. “And August?”
Rowan’s eyes turned colder. “Bring him.”
Maeve looked between them. “Who is August?”
“The man who employed Colm,” Rowan said.
“The man who might know what’s on that drive?”
“Yes.”
“The man who might have helped them threaten my child?”
Rowan did not soften the truth.
“Yes.”
Maeve picked up the flash drive and closed it in her fist. “Then I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to say no to me.”
“If August sees you, he sees leverage.”
“He already sees leverage. Her name is Piper.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened.
Maeve stepped closer to him. “You said protection comes with strategy. Fine. Here’s mine. I am done being moved around by people who think poor mothers are furniture. If this drive came from my husband, if my daughter is threatened because of it, then I sit in the room.”
Finley watched them in silence.
Rowan held Maeve’s gaze.
Then he said, “You sit behind glass.”
Maeve exhaled. “Fine.”
“You do not speak unless I ask.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Rowan added, “Because August is old, cruel, and very good at turning grief into confession.”
Maeve wanted to argue.
But she thought of Piper.
“Fine.”
They took August Reed in a way that involved no public scene.
That was what frightened Maeve most about Rowan’s world. Men did not need explosions when power could move quietly. One minute August Reed was leaving a private cigar lounge near the harbor. The next, he was seated in a windowless office beneath one of Rowan’s legal security buildings, his phone removed, his driver dismissed, his face hard with insult.
Maeve watched from behind one-way glass with Finley beside her.
Rowan waited inside the office, wheelchair positioned across from August, a small recorder on the table between them.
August Reed looked like an old ship captain carved from salt and bad decisions. White beard. Thick hands. Eyes that had watched men drown and calculated the cost of rope.
“You could have called,” August said.
“I did. Last night. You were busy with harbor trouble.”
August smiled. “Harbors are troublesome.”
“So are lies.”
August leaned back. “Careful, Rowan. A wounded king should count friends before accusing them.”
“I counted last night. The chairs did it for me.”
Maeve felt the insult land.
August’s smile faded.
Rowan placed Colm’s photograph on the table.
August looked at it and gave nothing away.
“Colm Reilly,” Rowan said.
“Runner. Thief. Coward.”
“Bookkeeper.”
August’s eyes moved.
Small.
But Maeve saw it.
So did Rowan.
“Colm copied records before he vanished,” Rowan said.
August’s hands folded on the table. “Did he?”
“The records were hidden with his daughter.”
August’s gaze sharpened. “That was stupid of him.”
Behind the glass, Maeve’s nails dug into her palms.
Rowan said, “Why did Vivienne access his safe deposit box?”
August chuckled. “You think Vivienne tells me her errands?”
“I think Vivienne used your docks to move money.”
“I think you’ve been sitting too long, boy.”
The room went icy.
Even behind glass, Maeve felt it.
Rowan’s voice remained quiet. “Say that again.”
August looked at the wheelchair.
For one second, his old loyalty warred with his ambition.
Ambition won.
“You heard me.”
Rowan nodded once.
The office door opened.
Finley entered and placed three photographs on the table.
Maeve leaned closer to the glass.
The first showed Silas Venn near the Sterling Court.
The second showed Garrett outside the same cigar lounge as August.
The third showed August himself standing beside Vivienne Hale in a private dock office two weeks before Rowan was shot.
August’s expression finally changed.
Rowan said, “You taught me something when I was nineteen.”
August stared at the photos.
“You said every betrayal has two prices. The first is what they paid you. The second is what you thought you deserved.”
August looked up slowly.
“What did you think you deserved?” Rowan asked.
August’s voice roughened. “Respect.”
“You had it.”
“No. I had employment.” His face darkened. “Your father treated me like family. You treated me like infrastructure.”
Rowan absorbed the blow.
“I trusted you with the harbor.”
“You audited me.”
“I audited everyone.”
“You questioned my shipments.”
“Because someone was stealing through them.”
August’s eyes flashed. “I kept your father’s empire alive before you could shave.”
“And you sold it to Vivienne because I made you file clean manifests?”
August slammed a hand on the table.
Maeve flinched.
Rowan did not.
“You were turning us into clerks!” August snapped. “Men feared the Hale name. Then you started talking about compliance and licenses and retirement funds for men who used to break knees.”
Maeve felt sick.
There it was again.
The same accusation.
Rowan had tried to change something ugly into something survivable, and they had called it weakness.
Rowan leaned forward slightly. “Did you help plan the shooting?”
August’s jaw clenched.
“Answer me,” Rowan said.
August’s eyes moved to the recorder.
Then to the glass.
He knew someone watched.
“Vivienne brought Silas,” August said finally. “Garrett brought access. I brought timing.”
Maeve covered her mouth.
Rowan’s face emptied.
Finley, beside Maeve, went deadly still.
August continued, voice lower. “The plan was injury. Not paralysis.”
Rowan said nothing.
“That’s the truth,” August said. “You were supposed to be scared. Step back. Let Vivienne manage things while you recovered.”
“Manage things,” Rowan repeated.
“She said if you kept going legal, everyone would lose.”
“And Colm?”
August looked away.
Maeve’s heart stopped.
Rowan’s voice sharpened. “Colm.”
August exhaled. “He found transfers. He tried to sell them to me first. I told him to run.”
Maeve’s eyes filled.
“You told him to run?” Rowan asked.
“I owed him that much.”
“Where is he?”
August’s face changed.
Guilt.
Old and buried.
“Dead?” Rowan asked.
August whispered, “I don’t know.”
Maeve almost collapsed from the force of those words again.
August looked toward the glass as if sensing her. “Silas took him. After that, I never saw him.”
Rowan wheeled back.
The recorder kept blinking.
August leaned forward. “Rowan, listen to me. Vivienne is not trying to win territory anymore. She’s cleaning the board.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the waitress, the child, Garrett, me, even you—anyone tied to that shooting or that drive—is disposable.”
The office lights flickered once.
Finley’s phone buzzed.
He looked at it.
His face changed.
Maeve turned toward him. “What?”
May you like
Finley’s voice was tight.
“The guard outside Piper’s room isn’t answering.”
