0019 ~ Vincent ~ The echo of gunfire continued to rattle off the steel hulls, but my vision narrowed, cutting through the smoke and confusion of the pier.
I swept my weapon across the horizon, my eyes locking onto a shadow moving in the distance.
The shooter was using the stern of my private yacht—moored at the far end of the dock—as tactical cover.
I raised my arm, aligning the iron sights of my pistol with the silhouette.
I had spent years perfecting my marksmanship; under normal circumstances, I would have put a bullet directly between his eyes without a second thought.
But a corpse couldn’t answer questions.
I adjusted my aim slightly to the left, targeting the meat of his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
The loud crack of my weapon was answered by a sharp cry from the target.
The automatic gunfire ceased instantly, replaced by the sound of metal clattering against the concrete.
“Get the paramedics down here immediately to tend to the injured workers,” I ordered Luca, never lowering my firearm.
“Right away, boss,” Luca replied, pulling his radio from his belt to coordinate the emergency dispatch.
“The rest of you, go drag that piece of garbage over to me,” I commanded the surrounding security crew.
They nodded in unison, moving out with weapons drawn to flank the yacht.
Within ten minutes, the silence of the harbor was broken by the wailing sirens of approaching ambulances.
The emergency personnel moved efficiently, loading the three injured dockhands into the transports before focusing on the bleeding CEO of Steele Industries.
Tony was sitting propped up against a crate, a thick piece of gauze pressed against his mangled shoulder.
I walked over, looking down at his pale face.
“Are you going to survive this, Steele?” “I’ll live,” he groaned through grit teeth, his voice straining as a paramedic began checking his pulse.
“But it hurts like an absolute bitch, Lockwood.” “The round passed clean through the tissue, Mr.
Steele.
It’s just a flesh wound,” the paramedic reassured him, adjusting the straps on the gurney before lifting him up.
“You’ll be completely stable once we get you to the theater.” Tony simply grunted in pain as they wheeled him toward the back of the vehicle.
I watched the doors slam shut.
In a city like New York, the underworld was divided by clear, historical boundaries.
Every major player knew the names that ran the boroughs—the Hamish family, the Lockwoods, the Pembertons, the Steeles, the Norris clan, and the Moores.
It was a complex web of fragile alliances and unspoken truces.
Because of the immense influence and institutional respect wielded by both the Hamish and Lockwood factions, the local police and federal authorities knew exactly when to stay away from my docks, leaving us to handle our own security breaches.
The Hamish family was the empire that had kept me alive.
When my mother, Elena Gallagher, passed away from a sudden illness, I was left entirely on my own at just seven years old.
I spent months wandering the alleys of the city, learning how to survive by digging through industrial dumpsters for scraps of stale bread.
That was how Quentin Hamish, the feared Don of the Hamish syndicate, discovered me.
Quentin was a powerful, hardened man, but he carried a quiet sorrow.
He and his wife, Lindsay, had been married for over a decade without an heir.
Lindsay possessed a fragile body; every pregnancy she carried resulted in either a tragic stillborn or a late-term miscarriage.
When Quentin found me shivering behind one of his warehouses, he didn’t see a stray—he saw a son.
They legally adopted me, bringing me into the Hamish manor and raising me with the finest education and training.
But my stability was severed when I turned eleven.
Quentin and Lindsay were traveling back from a high-profile wedding of an associate in Paris when their private plane suffered an engine failure over the Atlantic.
There were no survivors.
Their sudden deaths devastated me, leaving me an orphan for the second time.
It was during the highly publicized funeral for the Hamish couple that my true identity surfaced.
Benjamin Lockwood, the patriarch of the Lockwood dynasty, saw my face broadcasted on the evening news.
The physical resemblance between us was undeniable—I was a carbon copy of him in his younger years.
Benjamin immediately hired a team of private investigators to dig into my background, discovering that I had been adopted by the Hamish family.
A mandatory DNA test confirmed the truth: I was Benjamin’s biological, illegitimate son from a brief affair with my mother.
Almost overnight, the name Vincent Gallagher was erased from the registries, along with the Hamish title.
I was legally documented as Vincent Lockwood.
Yet, in the quiet corners of my mind, I never truly abandoned those names; I kept them active in certain financial circles and private ventures, a silent vow to keep the memories of the people who actually loved me alive.
Once the bloodline was verified, I was brought into the Lockwood manor to live alongside my brother, Logan.
We were practically the same age, though Logan was the legitimate heir, born to Benjamin’s high-society wife just two months before my own birth.
Integrating into that cold, competitive household was a lesson in survival, but I refused to become a dependent on the Lockwood fortune.
Even though Benjamin groomed me for years to take over the massive Lockwood Group conglomerate, I rejected the corporate throne.
Instead, I chose to build my own logistics empire from scratch, naming it Hamish Group Logistics to honor the legacy of Quentin and Lindsay.
I was their true continuity, and I would build a kingdom in their honor.
“Who authorized this hit?” I asked, my voice dropping an octave as my crew threw the shooter onto the concrete before me.
The assassin was remarkably young, his jacket soaked in dark blood from the shoulder wound I had delivered.
He remained silent, glaring up at me through a mask of sweat and defiance.
I knew exactly what he was attempting to do—playing the loyal soldier.
“I see you want to make this interaction tedious,” I muttered, a cold smirk touching my lips as I squatted down to look him dead in the eye.
“That’s perfectly fine by me.
I enjoy a game that requires effort.” The young man flinched slightly, the bravado slipping from his eyes as he took in the lack of warmth in my expression.
I stood back up, turning to my security detail.
“Take him down to the underground holding cells at the compound.
Place him in the isolation wing—the section where I store my most valuable assets.” “Understood, boss,” the guards replied, hauling the groaning shooter off the pavement and dragging him toward a waiting van.
I pulled a crisp, white silk handkerchief from my coat pocket and raised it to my face, deliberately wiping away the dried droplets of Tony’s blood that had sprayed across my cheek during the opening volley.
“Boss, do you want me to initiate an immediate digital sweep to trace his phone and bank accounts?” Luca asked, stepping up to my side as the van drove away.
“We can find out who put up the contract by midday.” “No,” I replied, folding the stained handkerchief into a neat square.
“That would resolve the mystery far too quickly.
I want to uncover the architect of this little ambush the old-fashioned way.
It’s much more methodical.
We let the isolation do the work, building the terror in that young man’s mind until he begs for the chance to tell us who he’s operating with.” I tossed the blood-soaked silk into Luca’s open palm.
“Dispose of that.” “Consider it done, boss,” Luca nodded.
“Clean up the remaining brass on the pier, coordinate with the harbor master to ensure the afternoon shipments stay on schedule, and then meet me back at the main office,” I instructed.
“Understood,” he said, turning back toward the docks to direct the clean-up crew.
I turned and walked toward the curb, signaling Randall with a brief wave of my hand.
He opened the rear door of the Rolls-Royce immediately, and I stepped into the quiet luxury of the vehicle.
As the engine purred to life and we tore away from the Fulton Harbor gates, I leaned my head against the leather headrest, staring out at the passing Manhattan skyline, wondering which of my rivals had finally grown desperate enough to try and take my life on my own territory.