Chapter 10 - Blood Over Gold
Eight months later.
The fifty-second floor of the Henderson Maritime Tower overlooked the entire New York harbor. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, cargo ships the size of small towns moved quietly across the grey water, their hulls cutting through the white foam.
I stood behind a massive mahogany desk, dressed in a tailored navy suit. It wasn't flashy. It didn't scream for attention like George Sterling’s suits had. It was simple, elegant, and cut for work.
A soft chime sounded on my intercom.
“Mr. Henderson?” my executive assistant spoke.
“Yes, Sarah?”
“There is a woman in the lobby. She doesn't have an appointment, but she refuses to leave. She says her name is Fiona.”
I looked out at the ships in the harbor for a long moment.
“Send her up, Sarah.”
Two minutes later, the double doors of my office opened.
Fiona walked in.
The transformation was shocking. The seven-thousand-dollar designer gowns were gone. She wore a simple beige trench coat from a mid-tier department store, her hair pulled back into a hasty ponytail. Her face was pale, thin, the sharp cheekbones no longer looking elegant, but hollow. The arrogance that had once defined her posture had vanished completely, replaced by a nervous, twitching humility.
“Blake,” she whispered, standing ten feet from my desk, clutching a worn leather handbag.
“Fiona,” I said calmly, remaining behind my desk. “What do you want?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes darting around the massive corner office, taking in the maritime models, the oil paintings of the shipyard, the sheer scale of the empire she had tried to steal.
“I… I wanted to see you,” she said, her voice shaking. “My father was sentenced yesterday. Seven years at Otisville Federal Correctional Facility.”
“I know,” I replied. “The SEC released the briefing this morning.”
“They took the house, Blake,” she sobbed, taking a step closer, tears welling in her eyes. “They took everything. My mother is living in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens. She’s working as a retail consultant. We have nothing left. The banks froze all of our personal accounts.”
She reached the edge of my desk, leaning forward, her hands trembling as she looked at me with desperate, pleading eyes.
“I made a mistake, Blake. A terrible, horrific mistake. I was young, I was terrified of my parents, I was listening to my mother’s poison. But I loved you! You know I loved you! If you could just… if you could just give me a position here. An administrative job. Anything. Or help us with the legal fees… for old times' sake.”
I looked at Fiona Sterling.
I remembered the girl who used to laugh with me in coffee shops. But more vividly, I remembered the girl who had covered her mouth and giggled while her mother called my father trash before five hundred people.
I reached into my desk drawer.
I pulled out a small, faded photograph. It was a picture of my father, taken thirty years ago, standing on the girders of the Harbor Bridge in the dead of winter, his face covered in soot, smiling proudly as he held up a steel wrench.
I set the photograph on the desk facing her.
“Do you know who that is, Fiona?” I asked softly.
She looked down at the photo, then back up at me, confused. “It’s… it’s your father.”
“That’s Arthur Henderson,” I said. “The man who worked sixty hours a week so I could eat. The man whose shoes your mother mocked. The man you called embarrassing.”
I stood up, buttoning my suit jacket.
“My father taught me that a person’s worth is measured by how they treat someone who can do nothing for them. On our wedding day, you thought my father had nothing. And you treated him like garbage.”
I walked around the desk and stopped three feet from her.
“There are no jobs for you here, Fiona. There is no legal assistance. There are no old times.”
Fiona’s face crumpled. “Blake… please… don't be so cold.”
“I’m not being cold,” I said, looking her dead in the eye. “I’m being fair. Goodbye, Fiona.”
She stood there for ten seconds, waiting for a crack in my armor, waiting for the naive, soft-hearted boy she had manipulated for three years to reappear.
He was gone.
Fiona turned around, pulled her cheap trench coat tight around her shoulders, and walked out of the office with her head bowed. The mahogany doors clicked shut behind her.
An hour later, I took the private elevator down to the basement parking garage.
Sitting in the executive parking bay, parked directly between a five-hundred-thousand-dollar Rolls-Royce and a armored Mercedes SUV, was Arthur’s nineteen-ninety-eight Ford pickup truck. The paint on the hood was peeling, and the muffler had a low, familiar rumble that echoed off the concrete walls.
My dad was leaning against the tailgate, wearing his clean flannel shirt, sipping coffee from a thermos.
He saw me walking toward him and grinned.
“How was the board meeting, Mr. CEO?” he asked, his gray eyes sparkling with amusement.
I loosened my tie, took off my suit jacket, and tossed it into the truck’s passenger seat.
“Exhausting, Dad,” I smiled, stepping up beside him. “The board wants to expand the terminal in Baltimore.”
“Good,” Arthur said, handing me a metal cup of hot coffee. “We’ll drive down there tomorrow. I’ll show you the foundation pillars. If you don't pour the concrete right in salt water, the whole thing rots from the inside out within ten years.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, taking a sip of the bitter, piping-hot coffee.
May you like
We leaned against the tailgate of that old truck together, looking out toward the exit of the garage, where the afternoon sun was breaking through the city clouds.
We didn't need the orchids. We didn't need the crystal chandeliers. We had the only thing that money could never buy: an unbroken bond, an unshakeable name, and hands clean enough to look the world in the eye.
