Chapter 4 - The Inventory of five percent
The fifth floor was a single, open-concept space filled with the kind of minimalist, white-walled luxury that Marcus thought meant success. There were no books, no family photographs, no signs of a life lived—just six-thousand-dollar Italian sofas, a chrome bar that looked like a dental clinic, and an uninterrupted view of the Financial District across the dark water.
Marcus was standing by the window, a glass of amber scotch in his right hand, his phone held to his ear with his left. He was wearing an expensive silk shirt that was unbuttoned at the throat, his face flushed with the kind of greasy, nervous sweat that always took over when he was out of his depth.
"What do you mean, she’s still in the ICU?" Marcus was shouting into the phone, his voice echoing off the concrete ceilings. "The truck driver said she went through the guardrail at sixty! She shouldn't be talking to anyone—"
The elevator doors behind him clicked open.
Marcus spun around, his phone slipping from his fingers to clatter against the polished white epoxy floor. The scotch glass didn't break; it just rolled into the corner, leaving a dark, wet trail of liquor across the clean surface.
"Jack," Marcus whispered, his hand moving instinctively toward the pocket of his trousers before he saw my eyes. He stopped, his fingers freezing against his hip like a man who had just touched a live wire. "Jack... look, I heard about Hannah. It’s an accident, man. I was just calling the hospital to see if she needed a private room—"
"You sent the text, Marcus," I said, walking toward him, my boots leaving small, dark prints of Brooklyn mud on his expensive floor.
"What text? I don't know what you're talking about!" Marcus cried, taking two rapid steps backward until his spine hit the glass of the window behind him. "The union guys... they said she was looking into the shipping manifests from the Pier 42 development! She was going to federal prosecutors, Jack! She was going to ruin the whole restructuring! I did it for the family! I did it to protect the company!"
"She didn't know anything about Pier 42, Marcus," I said, stopping three feet away from him. The bridge outside the glass gave a low, musical hum as a subway train crossed the span, casting a series of rapid, yellow bars of light across his face. "She left New York ninety days ago because I told her I didn't love her. She was living in a cottage in Newburgh, working at a public library, trying to figure out how to raise my child without me finding out."
Marcus’s mouth fell open, his jaw slack, his eyes shifting from my face to the white epoxy floor as the mathematics of the situation finally reached his brain. "A... a child? She’s pregnant?"
"Sixteen weeks," I said.
"Jack... Jack, listen to me," Marcus stammered, his hands rising in front of his chest, palms outward, shaking. "I didn't know about the kid. I swear to God, I didn't know! I thought she was just trying to leverage the divorce settlement to get more of the logistics stock for her environmental group! The text... it was just a warning! I didn't tell the truck driver to hit her! He just followed her too close on the bridge—"
I didn't let him finish the sentence. I grabbed the front of his silk shirt with both hands, lifted him six inches off the floor, and slammed him back against the reinforced glass of the window. The structure gave a deep, groaning click, the reflection of the Manhattan lights vibrating around his head like a halo of needles.
"You're going to call the district attorney, Marcus," I said, my face so close to his I could smell the cheap scotch and tobacco on his breath. "You're going to tell him that you organized the hijacking of the Pier 42 manifest. You're going to give him the names of the three board members who signed the Delaware checks. And then you're going to sign over your five percent share in Callahan Logistics to a blind trust for the benefit of the St. Mary’s Neonatal Care Unit."
"And if I don't?" Marcus choked out, a small drop of blood beginning to leak from his nose where his face had hit the glass.
"If you don't, Marcus," I whispered, my voice dropping into that dark, quiet register that had made our father leave Boston thirty years ago, "I won't call the police. I’ll call the boys from the Newark local. And I’ll let them know that you were the one who gave the feds the logistics codes for the warehouse raid last November."
Marcus went completely gray. His hands dropped to his sides, his chest collapsing as the air left his body in a long, rattling sigh of defeat. "The... the trust documents are in the safe behind the bar, Jack. The combination is forty-two-eight-one."
May you like
"Get them," I said, dropping him back onto his feet.
I didn't watch him walk toward the bar. I turned back toward the window, looking out across the river at the dark, frozen skyline of Manhattan. The lights of the financial district looked small and distant, like sparks from a furnace that had been left to burn itself out in the cold.
