Chapter 3 - The Audit of Blood
By 3:00 a.m., the main office of Carver Shipping at the Port of Providence was illuminated by nothing but the green glow of computer terminals.
Martin Hale, the sixty-eight-year-old steward who had served the Carver family since Daniel’s father was a young man, sat at a corner desk, a heavy pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. Beside him stood Marcus, a young forensic data specialist who had been brought in from the Boston district under a strict non-disclosure agreement.
The door swung open, and Daniel walked in, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the charcoal jacket still missing. He brought with him the cold smell of the harbor rain.
"What do we have, Martin?" Daniel asked, leaning over Marcus’s shoulder.
"It’s worse than Caleb Monroe thought, Daniel," Martin said, his old voice heavy with a deep, systemic exhaustion. "The Whitlocks haven't just been skimming off the top of the logistics contracts. Claire’s father, Arthur Whitlock, has been using the engagement agreement between you and his daughter as a political shield to run illegal high-tech components through Pier 14. They’ve been using Aaron Brooks’s old mechanical logs to authorize the container movements without your signature."
"And the local authority?"
"Chief Inspector Davis from the maritime division was paid four hundred thousand dollars over the last twelve months through a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands under Claire Whitlock’s personal maiden name," Marcus injected, tapping the screen to bring up a series of bank routing forms. "She isn't just the pretty fiancée playing high society, Mr. Carver. She’s the primary signature on the offshore accounts that paid for the night shift schedules the week Aaron Brooks had his 'accident.'"
Daniel stood perfectly still, his hands resting on the edge of the desk. The silence in the room grew so heavy that Marcus stopped typing, his fingers hovering over the keys as he looked up at the mafia boss with an instinctual, animal fear.
"Aaron Brooks was a good man," Daniel said quietly, his voice like the grinding of stones beneath a river. "He looked after the boys on the line. He took care of the equipment. When his father died ten years ago, I promised him the Carvers would always have a place for his family. And Arthur Whitlock killed him in my own backyard."
"Daniel," Martin said gently, standing up to place a hand on the younger man's arm. "The engagement party guests are still talking. Claire went back to her father's estate in Newport three hours ago. She’s demanding an apology from you. She told her father that you humiliated her in front of forty people for the sake of a pregnant kitchen girl."
"Let her demand," Daniel said, pulling a heavy silver revolver from the drawer beneath the main desk and checking the cylinder with a single, practiced click. "Martin, take three of the boys from the service wing and go to St. Jude’s. You stay outside Hannah’s door. If a single person without a Carver security badge enters that floor, you don't call the police. You handle it."
"Understood, Daniel. And what about the Whitlocks?"
"Arthur Whitlock wants a merger," Daniel said, his face hardening into an expression that had once made the five families of New York cede the entire New England coastline to his control. "He wants to combine our shipping lines so he can bury his filth under my name. I’m going to go give him his merger."
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He turned back to Marcus. "Keep digging into those accounts. I want every dollar the Whitlocks own traced, marked, and frozen by the time the sun hits the harbor. I don't want them to have enough money left to buy a pack of cigarettes when I’m done with them."
Daniel walked out into the corridor, his boots echoing against the concrete floors of the port facility. Outside, the rain was beginning to slacken, replaced by a thick, gray coastal fog that rolled in off the Atlantic, swallowing the cranes, the ships, and the multi-million dollar mansions of the elite in a cold, uniform shroud.
