Chapter 5 - The Rat in the Gutter
By three o'clock in the morning, Cole Maddox was soaked to the bone and shivering so hard his teeth clicked like castanets.
He had walked nearly four miles in the freezing rain before finding an unmonitored gas station off Route 25. He used his last emergency twenty-dollar bill to buy a prepaid burner phone and a pack of soggy cigarettes.
Huddled under the leaking awning behind the dumpster, his breath misting in the raw air, he dialed a number he had sworn he would never use unless the world fell apart.
The phone rang four times. Then a voice, cold and cultured, answered.
"Yes?"
"It’s me," Cole gasped, coughing violently. "It’s Maddox."
Silence stretched across the line for ten agonizing seconds.
"Maddox," the voice said slowly. "You are using an unsecured line at three in the morning. That implies one of two things: either your coalition was ratified ahead of schedule, or you have suffered an unprecedented catastrophe."
"She played me, Victor!" Cole snarled, his voice rising into a cracked, hysterical pitch. "Nora! She’s Samuel Bellamy’s daughter! She owns North Harbor! She owns Blackwood! She owns my security, my docks, my accounts! She stripped me of everything in front of Devereux, Grange, and Winter!"
Another long silence. Then, a low, quiet chuckle came through the earpiece.
"Did she really?" Victor Sterling said, sounding almost amused. "Samuel’s little girl. I must admit, I underestimated her patience. Twelve years playing the orphan, three years playing the submissive housewife... she has her father’s discipline. More than her brothers ever had."
"Victor, listen to me!" Cole pleaded, his arrogance completely shattered. "I have men in Philadelphia who will still listen to me! I have contacts in South Boston! Send a car for me. Give me two hundred thousand in cash and ten good shooters. I will go back into Blackwood and put a bullet through her head before sunrise!"
"Cole," Victor said softly, like a schoolmaster speaking to a dull child. "You are remarkably stupid."
Cole froze. "What?"
"Do you honestly believe that after twelve years of calculated preparation, Nora Bellamy would leave you with men who listen to you? Do you think the Philadelphia yards are still yours? Do you think Julian Vance is out looking for you?"
"Julian... Julian is my man! I pay him half a million a year!"
"Julian Vance was Samuel Bellamy’s personal protege since he was ten years old, you illiterate moron," Victor said with crisp, venomous clarity. "Julian Vance belonged to Nora before you ever learned how to button a tuxedo. If Julian hasn't put a bullet through the back of your skull yet, it is only because Nora wants you alive to serve as bait."
Cole felt the cold rain sink deeper into his bones, chilling his very organs. "Bait? Bait for what?"
"For me, Cole. For me."
"Victor... you promised me! You said if I broke the old alliances, you would back the Maddox Circle! You said we would split the eastern ports fifty-fifty!"
"I promised that to a man who possessed leverage," Victor replied smoothly. "You possess nothing. You are a penniless vagrant standing beside a garbage bin in Long Island. You have no value to me alive. And dead, you are merely a mess someone else will have to clean up."
"Victor, don't hang up! Don't you dare hang up on me!"
"If you ever call this number again, Cole, I will not bother sending you to a warehouse. I will have your tongue cut out and delivered to Miss Bellamy as a peace offering. Goodbye, Cole."
The line clicked off.
Cole stared at the burner phone. The rain dripped from the brim of his soaked collar, running into his eyes, mixing with the hot, bitter tears of humiliation.
He had nothing.
The woman he had commanded to pour champagne for his mistress was the queen of the empire he thought he had built. And the man he thought was his secret patron viewed him as nothing more than a used match.
May you like
Cole threw the burner phone against the brick wall of the gas station, shattering it into plastic shards. He sank onto an overturned milk crate beside the dumpster, burying his face in his trembling, calloused hands, and wept like a child in the dark.
***