Chapter 9 - The Ghost in Buffalo
The winter wind howling off Lake Erie carried the scent of frozen iron and industrial exhaust.
In a dimly lit dispatch office on the outskirts of Buffalo, Adrian Vale sat behind a dented steel desk covered in plastic laminated route maps and half-empty styrofoam cups of cheap black coffee. He wore a heavy flannel work shirt, his hands rough and calloused from three months of handling freight manifests and unloading pallet jacks when the warehouse was short-staffed.
His jawline was still sharp, but the hollow arrogance in his eyes had been replaced by a weary, grounded focus.
The small television mounted on the office wall was tuned to a national news channel.
Adrian stopped typing on his ancient keyboard.
The screen displayed live footage from the steps of the New York Stock Exchange. Evelyn Hartwell stood beside the Governor of New York and the Secretary of Transportation, ringing the opening bell to celebrate Hartwell Global’s unprecedented expansion into green-energy maritime freight.
She looked radiant. Powerful. Untouchable.
A younger dispatcher sitting across from him leaned back in his squeaky swivel chair, tossing a crumpled bag of chips toward the trash can. "Man, look at her. Evelyn Hartwell. Richest woman in maritime transport. Can you imagine being married to someone like that? Some billionaire guy down in the city had her for five years and threw it all away because he thought he was smarter than her. What an absolute clown."
Adrian looked at the television. He watched Evelyn smile—that brilliant, enigmatic, razor-sharp smile that he had lived beside for five years without ever truly seeing.
"Yeah," Adrian whispered, his voice quiet, steady, and devoid of the old venom. "He was a fool."
"You say something, Adrian?" the coworker asked, glancing over.
"Nothing," Adrian said, turning his eyes back down toward the paperwork on his desk. "Just check the delivery times on the Cleveland freight line. We’ve got snow coming in tonight, and the drivers need to clear the pass before the freeze."
May you like
He picked up his cheap plastic pen and went back to work.
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