Dante
The air in this sterile conference room tastes like a compromise I don’t want to make. It’s clean, sanitized, and smells of fresh paint. Nothing like the port itself, which smells of salt, rust, and diesel. A real smell. An honest smell. This room is a lie, built to pretend two warring families can just shake hands and share their biggest prize.
Port Fortuna. My birthright. Now I have to split it with the goddamn Blakewoods.
My captain, Marco Bellini, stands beside me, staring out the panoramic window at the western docks. Our docks. His knuckles are white where he grips the back of a chair.
“I still say this is a mistake, Dante,” he mutters, his voice a low growl. “Showing weakness. Letting those animals through the gate.”
“The Vargas Cartel is at the gate, Marco. And they aren’t knocking politely.” I straighten my tie, my eyes fixed on the long, empty mahogany table. “This isn’t weakness. It’s strategy. My father sees it. You need to see it too.”
“I see the enemy we know, and the enemy we don’t. I prefer to kill the one I can look in the eye.”
“And you’ll get your chance. Just not today.”
The door opens. I don’t turn. I watch their reflections slide across the polished table. Antonio Blakewood enters first, the old lion, his face a mask of grim resolve. He looks tired. Good.
Behind him is his son, Lorenzo. He’s built like one of his own dock thugs, all swagger and cheap cologne that fails to mask the scent of ambition. He catches my eye in the reflection and gives a smirk that isn’t a smirk at all. It’s a promise of future violence.
Then a third figure follows them in, and for a moment, the air changes. Danica Blakewood. I’ve seen her at society events, always on her father’s arm. A perfect little princess in silk and pearls. She’s a ghost, moving silently in her brother’s shadow, her eyes downcast. She is the living embodiment of a political asset. Beautiful, silent, and utterly irrelevant to the business at hand. An ornament.
Antonio takes the seat opposite my father, who has been sitting silently this whole time. Lorenzo and Marco take their places, squaring off like bulls in a pen. The girl, Danica, hesitates before taking a chair slightly back from the table, next to her brother. Out of the way. As she should be.
“Falcone,” Antonio says, his voice like gravel. A simple acknowledgment. No pleasantries.
“Blakewood,” my father replies, his tone equally cold.
Lorenzo unrolls a set of blueprints onto the table with a theatrical flourish. The same plans our teams have been looking at for a week. The new co-management schematics.
“Our territories are clearly defined,” Lorenzo begins, his thick finger stabbing at the map. “The eastern docks, cranes one through twelve, and the adjacent warehouses belong to Blakewood.”
“We are aware of the terms,” I say, my voice cutting him off. I lean forward, my eyes locking with his. “The question is not about lines on a map. It’s about enforcement. Your people have a habit of getting lost.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightens. “My people know how to follow orders. And how to handle trespassers.”
“This is precisely the attitude that will get us all killed,” Antonio says, silencing his son with a glare. He looks at my father. “The agreement is about shared security. A united front. We need to discuss the central checkpoint protocol.”
Marco scoffs softly beside me. “The protocol is simple. Falcone security runs the checkpoint. We have the better trained men.”
“An interesting fantasy,” Lorenzo counters, leaning across the table. “But Blakewood men will be handling security. We don’t trust your vipers to check our cargo without skimming it.”
The old arguments. The same tired dance of dick measuring that has cost both our families millions. I let them posture. I watch and I learn. Lorenzo is predictable. Eager to prove himself. That makes him weak.
My father holds up a hand. “The security will be joint. A Blakewood captain and a Falcone captain will run the checkpoint on alternating shifts. That is the agreement.”
They argue the details for an hour. Patrol routes. Radio frequencies. Acceptable use of force. Through it all, the Blakewood princess remains silent. She stares at the blueprints on the table, her expression unreadable. She hasn’t said a word. Hasn’t moved. She’s probably bored out of her mind, dreaming of whatever party she’s planning next.
“The primary concern is throughput,” Marco says, trying to sound strategic. “We need to keep the trucks moving. The single inspection point is designed for maximum efficiency.”
“It’s a good design,” Lorenzo agrees, puffing out his chest as if he designed it himself. “State of the art.”
And then, a new voice enters the fray. It’s quiet, soft, but it cuts through the masculine drone like a scalpel.
“But the queuing theory is flawed.”
Every head turns. Danica Blakewood is leaning forward slightly, her gaze fixed on the blueprints. Her hands are folded in her lap, but her eyes are sharp. Focused.
Lorenzo looks at her like she just grew a second head. “Danica, what are you talking about?” His tone is sharp, embarrassed.
She doesn’t look at him. She keeps her eyes on the plans. “The model assumes a steady, consistent arrival rate. But container traffic isn’t consistent. It clumps. You’ll have surges at peak hours, especially with vessels from two different families unloading simultaneously.”
Silence descends on the room. It’s so quiet I can hear the distant cry of a gull outside the window. She just said ‘queuing theory’. What in the hell does a Blakewood princess know about queuing theory?
Marco lets out a short, derisive laugh. “Clumps? Sweetheart, this is a port, not a bowl of oatmeal. We’re not worried about clumps.”
The condescension in his voice is thick enough to choke on. I see a flicker of something in her eyes. Not hurt. Not embarrassment. Annoyance. Pure, cold annoyance.
She finally lifts her head, and for the first time, her eyes meet mine across the table. They are a deep, startling brown. And they are not the eyes of an ornament.
“You should be,” she says, her voice steady and clear. Her gaze does not waver. “Your single checkpoint creates a bottleneck. At peak hours, you’ll have a static line of trucks stretching back half a mile. They won’t be traffic. They will be targets. One man with an explosive could paralyze this entire port for weeks.”
My blood runs cold. Not because she’s wrong. But because she is absolutely, undeniably right. It’s the exact vulnerability my own security analyst pointed out yesterday in a private briefing. A flaw Marco, in his arrogance, had dismissed as ‘unlikely’.
Lorenzo’s face is a storm cloud of fury and shame. “Danica, that is enough,” he hisses. “Stick to what you know.”
“She’s right,” I say.
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Everyone looks at me. Marco’s jaw drops. Lorenzo looks like I just slapped him. My own father raises an eyebrow.
I keep my eyes on her. “It’s a fatal funnel. We identified the same risk.” I don’t mention Marco’s dismissal of the point. That’s an internal matter. But I validate her, here and now.
I see a flicker of surprise in her eyes before she masks it, her gaze dropping back to the blueprints. Her point was not a lucky guess. It was an analysis. Cold, logical, and brilliant.
“What would you propose?” I ask her directly. The question is a test. Was that her one and only good idea?
She hesitates for only a second. “You need a secondary checkpoint for overflow. And you should reactivate the old southern service tunnels. They aren’t on this schematic, but they bypass the main entrance and lead directly to the secondary loading bays. It would split the traffic flow, increase efficiency, and eliminate the vulnerability.”
She knows about the service tunnels. Tunnels even some of our own veteran guys have forgotten about. I stare at her, really stare at her, for the first time. The perfect silk dress, the subtle makeup, the demure posture. It’s all a costume. A facade. Beneath it, there is a mind at work. A mind that sees things my own overconfident captain missed.
Antonio Blakewood is looking at his daughter with a strange expression I can’t quite decipher. It’s not pride. It’s something closer to alarm.
“An interesting suggestion,” my father says, his voice neutral. He looks at Antonio. “We will have our teams run a new simulation based on this… input. For now, the terms of the agreement stand. We begin joint operations tomorrow at dawn.”
The meeting is over. Antonio stands, nods curtly, and turns to leave. Lorenzo practically yanks his sister’s chair back, pulling her up with him. He mutters something in her ear that makes her flinch, but her expression remains placid.
As she walks past, her scent drifts towards me. Not a heavy perfume, but something clean. Like milk and honey. It’s an unexpected detail.
She doesn’t look at me again.
They leave. The door clicks shut, leaving me, my father, and a fuming Marco Bellini alone in the room.
“What was that?” Marco explodes. “You took her side? A little girl who doesn’t know the first thing about running a port?”
“She knows more than you, apparently,” I say, my voice dangerously quiet. “She saw a flaw you dismissed. A fatal one.”
Marco’s face turns red. “She got lucky. A stupid guess.”
“There was nothing lucky about it,” I snap, pushing back from the table. I walk to the window and look down at the sprawling docks. At the trucks lining up, just as she described. “That wasn’t a guess. That was a calculation.”
My father comes to stand beside me. “The girl is more than she seems.”
“I’m aware.”
Something has shifted. The game I thought I was playing, the predictable war against the hothead Lorenzo and the old man Antonio, just got a new piece on the board. A queen, disguised as a pawn.
I think of her eyes, the cool intelligence behind them. The way she held my gaze. A flicker of curiosity, sharp and unwelcome, ignites inside me.
Who is Danica Blakewood? And what other secrets is she hiding behind that pretty, vacant face?
This truce just got a lot more interesting.
