3

I woke that morning to the phone beside my pillow buzzing nonstop.

When I checked the screen, I found more than fifty missed calls and a flood of messages.

The port managers, the business contacts, even the police were looking for me.

[Freighter Three is being held by customs. Come back at once!]

[Soren wants to end all cooperation!]

[Iris, where are you?!]

The one at the very top was from Don Vincent.

He clearly had no idea that his precious niece had thrown me out of the Family.

I had barely answered the call before he was roaring at me.

"Iris, where did you go? I gave you the largest cut and the widest authority in this Family so you could drop everything and go have fun?

"Nothing has gone this badly in all these years. How long was I gone for you to create a mess this big?"

I started to speak. "Vincent, I've already been—"

He cut across me. "I don't care what you're doing. Get back to headquarters and put all of it right! Whatever else there is, I'll settle with you when I return!"

He hung up, and when I called back there was only a cold busy tone.

The phone buzzed on and off all day and I answered none of it.

Then in the evening Callen, who had been with me for years, sent a message with a secretly recorded audio file attached.

That was how I learned what five days had done to the Family.

After I left, the people at every post stopped pulling their weight.

The long-serving men already knew how to shirk responsibility, and with no one watching them, they stopped trying altogether.

The rest were the new people Kelly had brought in, who couldn't even read a manifest.

Kelly was young, headstrong, and inexperienced. Without me out front to cover for her, the whole Family lost its backbone.

They couldn't produce the goods Soren wanted, and he said on the spot that he would never do business with the Vincent Family again.

I heard Kelly went rigid where she stood when the news reached her.

Her mild, polished facade vanished as she flew into a rage at headquarters.

Her voice on the recording was shrill and grating.

"I raised your benefits, let you clock out on time, and this is how you repay me?

"Why did the deal fall through? Are you all useless?!

"Nobody leaves today until you come up with a way to fix it!"

Callen followed it with a string of messages.

"You should have seen it. The elders berated Kelly for hours. Her eyes were red from it.

"Aiden spoke up for her and got torn apart for it too."

I looked at the screen and gave a cold laugh.

A crisis that serious would have taken everything I had, even if I handled it myself.

Without me they had nothing.

It was destined to be a sleepless night for the Family.

At eight I put up a new post.

[A rainy night calls for a whiskey.]

The photo showed a crystal glass on the windowsill, rain outside, and firelight flickering through the room.

I had never pretended to be a good person. I remembered exactly how viciously they had torn me down on my way out.

Now it was time to pay them back.

Replies came quickly, all of them from men who used to work under me.

"Iris, I'm only now finding out how much you mattered..."

"Same."

Within seconds the comments were deleted.

When I woke the next day, my feed was full of reposts of Kelly's post.

The original had gone up at 1:17 a.m.

[The rougher the sea, the bigger the catch. What fails to knock me down only makes me stand taller.]

I looked at it and couldn't help laughing out loud.

Just then someone called me.

It was Vera.

I hesitated a few seconds before I answered.

After I answered, the other end stayed silent for a long time.

I was about to hang up when Vera finally asked through her tears, "Iris, could you come to headquarters?"

My voice was flat. "No."

My immediate refusal clearly stunned her.

I had been the one who protected her most, after all.

"Please... If you don't come, I'm finished. Kelly has pushed all of this onto me."

That actually caught my interest.

I got up, took my coat off the back of the chair, and went out.

I wanted to see for myself just how far the Vincent Family had come apart without me.

And I wanted to know exactly what Vera meant by "finished."