Page 11 of The Heir's Defiance

I cross behind the loader and head toward the trailer office. Someone’s left a pallet jack angled across the path. I step around it.

By the lockers, a younger guy waits, watching me with measured stillness. He doesn’t speak until I’m close, and when he moves, it’s just enough to hand off the envelope from his jacket pocket.

“Left where you said,” he says. “No one else touched it.”

I take it, and he doesn’t walk off right away. He shifts his weight, pulls a crumpled pack from his pocket, and lights a cigarette with indifference that suggests he’s done this handoff before. The flame catches, and he exhales through his nose without looking at me.

I note the close-cut hair under his cap and the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. He’s dressed like the rest of them—work boots, heavy canvas jacket—but his eyes track every movement I make. This is one of Draco's men, not an average dock worker or laborer.

I take the envelope from him and jerk my chin upward at him. He nods once, then turns back the way he came. The drop spot is just behind the lockers, shielded on three sides by the steel siding and the stack of broken pallets no one’s bothered to move. It’s quiet there, easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The man doesn’t look back as he walks off, flicking ash near the wheel well of a parked truck before disappearing behind the forklift lane.

I don’t check the envelope there. Whatever’s inside it was important enough to move through quiet channels—no courier, no message, just a handoff in a corner of the yard where no one looks too hard. Ronan said it would come through someone we trust, someone tied to Draco, and that it would be something we needed to see for ourselves.

I don’t give myself room to speculate. I slide it into my jacket pocket and stay focused on the rest of the yard, careful not to draw attention. There’s still work happening behind me, and I want to be gone before anyone realizes I was here at all.

Back in the car, parked along the south exit where no cameras reach, I open the flap. Inside is a single photo, with no note or markings to explain it. Corbin is sitting in a café I recognize. He’s halfway through a sentence, one hand resting on a chipped mug, the other lifted slightly, gesturing toward someone across from him. Whoever it is isn’t visible, just the start of a sleeve and the edge of a hand. The frame cuts it short.

It’s one of the Fitzpatricks’ shops—not one they advertise. Just another café on a block they’ve held for years. If this was taken two nights before the fire, then someone wants me to believe he was feeding them intel. Or at least spending time with them, maybe fencing something for them. A deal gone wrong?

I keep the photo flat, then slip it back into the envelope and place it in the glovebox. It’s one more piece of something ugly and unfinished, and I don’t know yet whether it’s meant to warn us or inform us.

Putting the car in gear, I pull away. I take the long route east, passing the edge of the docks and winding back through the industrial quarter. Traffic isn’t heavy, but it slows near the bridge. The envelope stays in the glovebox, tucked out of sight, but not out of mind.

I keep thinking about the angle of Corbin’s hand in the photo, the way his shoulders were set. He wasn’t nervous. He looked comfortable. That bothers me more than I want to admit. The longer I drive, the more I start to question whether the photo was meant to expose something or stir it up. Either way, I can’t shake the feeling that someone wants a reaction—and they’re watching to see what we do with it.

I should turn back, drive to the estate, bring the photo to Ronan, start the process of pulling it apart piece by piece. Instead, I slow near an abandoned petrol station and ease into the cracked lot. The gull that had been perched on the broken sign lifts off when I kill the engine. I sit still for a moment. Then I reach for my phone.

I call Nora and get her voicemail. The line rings out while I watch an older man shuffle out of a shopfront and start sweeping thesteps in lazy circles, dragging the bristles more than pushing them, not in any hurry to get the job done.

I try again, not expecting anything different but needing to try anyway. I need some sort of stress relief, and I felt that sitting across from her the other night. Still nothing. The silence that follows grates harder than it should. I drop the phone onto the passenger seat and stare out through the windshield, drumming my fingers against the wheel, thinking maybe I should leave it alone. Then I pick it back up and call her again, not because I think she’ll answer this time, either, but because something in me refuses to let it go just yet.

This time, Nora picks up.

"You’re relentless," she says, and I can hear motion behind her voice—shoes on tile, a cupboard closing. She sounds unbothered, almost amused.

I rest my arm against the door. "You screen everyone or just me?"

"Depends on the day," she says. "And the caller."

"Bad timing?" I ask, though the second she picks up, something in me already settles. It isn’t anything she says, not even the tone of her voice—just the fact that she answered. That she's on the line. For the first time all day, I’m not wrapped so tightly that I can’t breathe.

"We’ll see," she says, not committing to anything yet, and I let the sound of her voice stretch between us for another second before answering. There’s a short pause, then she asks, "What do you need?"

"Something to get my head on straight." I hear the flick of a lighter on her end, followed by a faint exhale. She’s quiet, waiting for me to go on. "There’s been too much talking today," I add. "Too many questions without answers. Figured a little company might make it easier to breathe." I don't just come out and tell her what I'm really thinking. I let her read between the lines. We ended the last conversation way too quickly.

"You always this vague when you want something?"

"Only when I’m trying to keep it simple," I say, but it's not the full truth. I want her in a way I don't fully understand yet, a want that’s too physical to ignore and too complicated to act on without caution. It isn't just about company or taking the edge off—though right now, either would do. It's that something about her unsettles me in a way I don’t hate.

I hear a soft clink in the background, maybe the sound of a glass touching down on a counter. "And what is it you think I can help you with, Connor?"

"I don’t know yet. But it’s easier to figure that out in person," I tell her, watching the slow pass of a bus in the far lane of the road, the windows blank and fogged. I don’t know what I expect her to say, only that I want to keep her on the line a little longer, long enough to soften whatever edge I’ve been walking all day.

Nora's voice lowers, steadier now, but it carries the faintest curl of interest beneath it. "You’re not subtle," she says, like she finally understands what I want but wants to hear me admit it.

I shift my weight in the seat, my fingers tightening against the steering wheel before relaxing again. "I wasn’t trying to be," I say, and it’s the truth. I don’t have it in me tonight to play it cool.If she hadn’t picked up, I’m not sure what I would’ve done with the rest of the night.

"You calling for a favor, or just a distraction?" she asks, and I imagine her eyebrow raised as she says it, the slow stir of curiosity breaking past her practiced distance.

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