Chapter 17: The Next Morning

The next morning, at precisely 7:00 AM, I sat alone at Arthur Pendelton’s massive mahogany desk. The room was silent, cold, and smelled faintly of stale coffee and industrial rain. Three screen monitors glowed before me, displaying nothing but red financial losses and urgent, unpaid vendor notices. The silence pressed in, a heavy blanket.

My desk phone, an old, clunky model Arthur had insisted on keeping, suddenly rang. Its insistent mechanical buzz shattered the stillness. I picked up the receiver without hesitation.

“Maya,” Captain Sam Trujillo’s harsh voice crackled through the speaker from the Pier 17 gate. His tone was flat, devoid of any warmth.

“Marcus is gone,” he continued, “but the crew isn’t working for an outsider who ruined our insurance rating. Two hundred dock workers just walked off the ships. You have thirty minutes to give us double overtime pay, or Kestrel loses its last remaining contract.”

I stared at the rain beating against the executive glass window—the exact same window where Marcus had trapped me yesterday. The water outside was just as deep, just as dangerous.

I slowly gripped the phone, my knuckles white. I thought surviving Marcus meant I had finally won my freedom, but sitting behind Arthur’s desk, I realized the water was just as deep—and I was now the one holding the wheel.