Chapter 13 - The Warehouse Floor
The Elizabeth industrial park was wrapped in a greasy mist off Newark Bay when my town car pulled past the security barriers.
The smell of diesel fuel and brine hung thick in the freezing air.
I stepped out onto the asphalt, my tailored wool coat contrasting sharply with the neon vests of the dockworkers.
I did not go to the administrative offices; I walked straight into the belly of the transfer terminal.
Racks rose fifty feet toward the corrugated steel ceiling, stacked with pallets of medical supplies and consumer electronics.
Forklifts sped past with sharp horn blasts, their operators ignoring the corporate visitor.
Near aisle fourteen, I found Vincent.
He was kneeling on the concrete, struggling to hand-tape a split pallet of industrial batteries.
His designer jacket had been replaced by a dirt-streaked nylon vest with the Vanguard logo stamped on the back.
His hands were blackened by grease and dust, a smear of sweat cutting through the grime on his forehead.
He was panting, his shoulders trembling from lifting sixty-pound cartons for six continuous hours.
I stopped ten paces away and simply watched him.
He didn't notice me until my shadow fell across the wooden pallet he was wrestling with.
Vincent looked up, his jaw dropping, his breath catching in his throat.
"Clark?" he gasped, his voice cracking from exhaustion.
"You're falling behind your scan quota, Vincent," I said quietly.
A flash of the old, arrogant Vincent flared in his sunken eyes, then flickered out, crushed by raw physical weariness.
"Did you come down here just to mock me?" he spat, leaning against the rack to pull himself up.
"To see the great Vincent Hawthorne covered in warehouse dirt?"
"I don't have time to mock you," I said coldly.
"I came to ask you about the four million dollars you owed to the Macao syndicate last September."
Vincent went dead white.
Even beneath the grease on his cheeks, the blood drained entirely from his face.
"How... how do you know about that?" he stammered, looking frantically around at his fellow workers.
"Because Father forged my name on a fraudulent property covenant to pay them off," I stated plainly.
"And now Julian Cross owns that note, and he is coming for my company."
Vincent staggered back, catching himself against the iron upright of the shelving unit.
"No... Dad told me... Dad said he handled it through an old family investment account!"
"Dad doesn't have an investment account, Vincent!" my voice cut through the drone of the warehouse like a whip.
"He hasn't had real capital in ten years!
Every suit he bought you, every sports car he leased for your vanity, came from loans secured against lies!"
Vincent covered his face with his dirty hands, his chest heaving.
"I didn't know he forged your name, Clark.
I swear to God, I didn't know!"
"You didn't care to ask," I retorted, stepping closer until I could smell the stale coffee and panic on him.
"You took the wire transfer.
You took your clean slate and went back to drinking champagne at the athletic club while Father committed a federal felony."
"What are you going to do?" Vincent whimpered, the illusion of his brotherhood completely destroyed.
"Are you going to send him to prison?"
"I am going to save my company," I replied.
"And whether Father wears an orange jumpsuit depends entirely on what you do in the next twelve hours."
"Me?
What can I do?
I'm nobody here!
I'm just a number on a scanner!"
"You are going to take off that vest," I told him.
May you like
"You are going to get into my car.
And you are going to walk into your parents' penthouse and tell them that their golden child is done playing the victim."
