Chapter 2 - THE RECKONING OF COLIN WADEColin blinked, his alcohol-addled brain struggling to process the math. A man in a four-thousand-dollar suit walking into a dive bar in the industrial district was anomaly enough. A man looking at me—the broken, penniless ghost of Colin’s past—with absolute, terrifying reverence was entirely outside his universe.
"Your... your what?" Colin laughed, a nervous, barking sound that died instantly in his throat as two towering men in identical black overcoats stepped through the door behind Julian, sliding silent as ghosts into the perimeter.
Julian didn't raise his voice. He took three unhurried steps forward, his hand slipping inside his jacket pocket.
"Nora," he said softly, his gaze finally shifting down to me. The coldness in his eyes instantly dissolved into something fiercely, dangerously tender. "Up."
I didn't wait for him to offer a hand. I pushed off the floor with my heels, smoothing down my worn denim jacket, and stood on my own two feet. I looked Colin dead in the eye. The man who had spent five years telling me I was worthless suddenly looked like a schoolboy standing before an executioner.
"You... you know this guy?" Colin stammered, looking frantically around the room for backup, only to find every single patron pressed flat against the booths, terrified to breathe.
"Know him?" Julian tilted his head, the silver viper tie clip gleaming. "Colin Wade. Regional Director of Acquisitions for Sterling Logistics. You acquired three minor shipping companies last quarter, embezzled forty grand from the middle tier to pay off your gambling debts at the Havana Club, and you think you can put your shoe on my wife’s ribs?"
Colin’s face drained of every drop of blood until he looked like skim milk. "W-wife? No, she—she’s nobody. She’s just a—"
"A what?" Julian stepped closer. The air pressure in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "Say it, Colin. Finish the sentence."
Colin opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His knees began to knock together. The heavy brass buckle of his expensive belt looked suddenly ridiculous against his trembling frame.
"You left her in a rainstorm five years ago with seventy-four dollars in a chipped ceramic mug," Julian continued, his tone conversational, almost polite. "You told her she was a anchor dragging you down. Do you have any idea what an anchor does to a ship, Colin?"
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Julian stopped one inch away from Colin’s face.
"It holds it steady when the hurricane hits," Julian whispered. "She was my anchor. And you... you were just barnacles clinging to the hull."
