Chapter 3 - Confession in the Dark
For a long moment, the only sound in the office was the heavy patter of rain against the reinforced glass and Callum’s ragged, shallow breathing.
"How... how did you find out?" Callum choked out, his hands dropping limply to his sides as he realized fighting back was mathematically impossible against a man trained in the brutal realities of the Boston underworld.
"She left her medical file on her desk," Ronan said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "She was too exhausted to hide it anymore. And you were too arrogant to realize that even a dying girl keeps better logs than a corporate thief."
Callum let out a wet, desperate laugh that sounded more like a sob. He slumped back against the bookshelf, his tailored suit jacket rumpled and ruined. "I had to, Ronan. You were going soft."
Ronan’s eyes narrowed. "Soft."
"Yes! Soft!" Callum hissed, finding a sudden surge of bitter, hysterical courage. "Ever since you brought her in from that marketing firm three years ago, you changed. You stopped expanding into Providence. You renegotiated the dockworker contracts instead of breaking them. You started looking at the bottom line like a suburban accountant instead of a syndicate boss. If I didn't take control of the administrative board, the old families were going to eat us alive from the inside out!"
"So you decided to murder my secretary," Ronan said flatly.
"She wasn't just your secretary!" Callum shouted, his voice cracking. "Everyone on the floor saw the way you looked at her. Everyone knew she was the only person in this city who could walk into your office unannounced and make you put down your gun. If she had your kid, you’d marry her. You’d legitimize everything. You’d turn Mercer Terminal Holdings into a boring, law-abiding shipping conglomerate and leave men like me out in the cold!"
"You were never in the cold, Callum," Ronan said quietly, his gaze piercing through the traitor like a laser. "You had a six-figure salary, a house on the cape, and my absolute trust. That wasn't enough for you. You wanted the throne."
"And now you're going to kill me," Callum whispered, staring down at the polished toes of Ronan’s boots. "Go ahead. Make it quick. Toss me off the fourth-floor balcony into the alley. Tell the boys it was a tragic accident or a drug overdose."
Ronan stared at him for a long, silent beat. The temptation to snap the man's neck right here, to paint the mahogany desk with his betrayal, was a physical weight pulling at his muscles. Every instinct he had inherited from his father screamed for blood, for an immediate, brutal execution that would serve as a warning to anyone else who dared touch what was his.
Then he thought of Sienna—lying in a sterile hospital bed, holding her flat stomach, whispering about a baby she thought she couldn't protect. He thought of the tiny, curled heartbeat on that ultrasound scan.
"No," Ronan said slowly, stepping back and straightening his cuffs. "I’m not going to kill you tonight, Callum."
Callum blinked, looking up in sheer confusion. "What?"
"Killing you now would be too easy," Ronan said, his voice dropping to a chilling whisper. "It would be a mercy. A quick end to a pathetic life."
He walked over to the desk, picked up the altered shipping manifests for Antwerp, and tossed them onto Callum’s lap.
"Starting tomorrow morning," Ronan continued, "you are going to sign over every share of stock you hold in Mercer Terminal Holdings to a trust bearing Sienna Brooks's name. You are going to resign your position due to 'sudden personal health reasons.' And then, you are going to pack a single suitcase, buy a one-way ticket to the most miserable, godforsaken city on the other side of the Atlantic, and never, ever step foot in the state of Massachusetts again."
Callum stared at him, bewildered. "And if I don't?"
"If you don't," Ronan smiled—a humorless, terrifying baring of teeth—"I won't kill you. I’ll hand your complete financial records, your offshore bank routing numbers, and your encrypted communications with the Providence syndicate directly to the federal prosecutor handling RICO cases in the First Circuit. You’ll spend the next forty years sharing a concrete cell with men who don't like corporate embezzlers very much."
May you like
Callum’s jaw trembled. He looked at the manifests, then up at Ronan’s unyielding face, and slowly nodded. "I... I'll sign the papers in the morning."
"You'll sign them tonight," Ronan corrected, tossing a golden fountain pen onto the desk. "Right now. Because my patience expired about five minutes ago."
