Chapter 3 - Blood on the HarborWhile Harper spent her first afternoon in her new corner office trying to figure out how to lock the door without trapping herself inside, Adrian was three floors down in the subterranean logistics terminal, dealing with a very different kind of design problem.

The terminal was vast, dim, and reeked of diesel and salt water. Shipping containers stacked twenty high formed steel canyons beneath the Baltimore night sky.

Tied to a concrete pillar in the center of the loading bay was a man named Joey “The Shank” Moretti—nephew to Don Salvatore Moretti, the aging patriarch of the city's oldest mafia family.

Joey was bleeding from a split lip, his tailored silk shirt ruined by oil and sweat.

“You can’t do this, Crowe!” Joey spat, straining against industrial zip-ties. “My uncle will tear this port apart brick by brick! You think you own Baltimore just because you wear a nice suit? We built the docks before your grandfather learned how to steal!”

Adrian stood five feet away, slowly rolling up his sleeves. Cole stood beside him, holding a heavy leather ledger filled with handwritten entries of contraband shipments, tax evasion routes, and payoffs to city councilmen.

“Your uncle sent three men into my building yesterday,” Adrian said quietly, his voice carrying effortlessly across the cavernous bay. “They weren’t carrying cargo. They were carrying suppressed pistols, looking for a vulnerability in our administrative wing.”

“They were looking for your shipping manifests!” Joey snarled.

“They walked past the fourteenth floor,” Adrian continued, as if he hadn’t heard him. “They walked past the graphic design department. They didn't know who Harper Lane was. But they tracked mud onto the carpet where she walked.”

Joey blinked, confused. “Who the hell is Harper Lane? Some accountant?”

Adrian stepped forward, his eyes narrowing into two shards of winter ice.

“She’s an inconvenience,” Adrian murmured. “And I am the only person allowed to inconvenience her.”

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With a single, blinding motion, Adrian drew a Browning 9mm from his holster and pressed the cold steel directly against Joey’s forehead.

“Tell your uncle,” Adrian whispered, “that if another Moretti soldier steps foot inside Crowe Meridian Holdings without signing a guest pass at the front desk, I won’t just take his shipping lanes. I’ll feed him to the harbor fish one finger at a time.”