“Understood,” I say.
She watches my hands as I open the folder. “You’ve worked ports,” she says.
“I have.”
“Then you know the first rule.”
I look up. “Small errors hide big ones.”
Brona’s mouth twists. “Good.”
She points at a line on the schedule. “Spanish freight agent calls at noon. He likes to talk. You let him, then cut him off.”
I nod once.
Brona steps away and I start working.
I match gate logs with booking sheets. I cross-check driver names with carrier lists. I note which loads arrive too clean and too early. I note which ones drift in with no urgency. A pattern starts to take shape within thirty minutes.
This place runs tight.
Men move in lanes. Forklifts obey marked paths. Paper trails line up more often than they should in a criminal port. Security checks happen on time. Nobody laughs while they work. Nobody slacks. Nobody steals small.
That last part surprises me the most.
My father taught me to expect greed and mess. He taught me to expect a rival syndicate built on chaos and violence and lazy men who would sell out their own mothers for speed.
This looks like discipline.
Kavanagh walks past my desk with a clipboard and a grim face. He checks a man’s badge, checks a seal, then checks the seal again. The foreman answers without attitude. That tells me more than any speech.
A radio crackles. Someone calls for medical on the yard floor.
I stand before I think.
Brona looks over. “Sit,” she says.
I sit. I keep my eyes forward. Riley Quinn does not run to injuries on day one.
Still, the room shifts. Chairs scrape. A few men move quickly toward the door.
I watch through the glass.
A young worker sits on the ground near a pallet stack, one hand pressed to his forearm. Blood shows through his fingers. Another man crouches beside him and speaks into a radio. The medic arrives within seconds, not minutes. That is not normal in most operations. That is money spent on keeping bodies functional.
A black SUV rolls into the yard and stops near the scene.
My stomach tightens as Cillian steps out. He walks over and kneels beside the injured worker. The men around them go quiet. Even the forklifts pause.
Cillian says something I can’t hear through the glass. The worker looks up at him, pale and shaken, then nods. Cillian’s hand comes up and presses briefly against the boy’s shoulder. He gestures at the medic, then points toward the office block, and the medic nods.
Then, he stands and turns his head slightly, scanning the yard. His gaze lifts toward the operations windows.
A shiver runs up my spine as my body reacts in a way I hate. My thighs tense and my mouth goes dry. I keep my face calm, yet I know he sees something. He sees everything.
He holds my stare for a second too long.
Then he looks away and walks beside the stretcher as it moves toward the medic bay.
