I Broke His Rule to Get Near Him, So the Billionaire Made Me Count novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Crane Cab

"No comment," I said to the reporter, and I hung up with my thumb shaking.

Royce was already sitting up, with the sheet in his fist.

"Colt," he said.

"Who else knows?" I said.

"Nobody who would call before breakfast."

The story was online by nine that morning.

It had my work photo, my father's name, and a picture of Royce in a suit outside the federal courthouse.

Three thousand people had shared it by noon.

I drove to the terminal at ten that night with my jaw set.

Quitting would have been a way of saying it was true.

The crew room went silent when I came through the door.

Twenty men looked at their boots.

Nobody said my name, not Lozano and not Mari and not Escobedo.

I took my gloves from my locker and stood with my back to them, and the quiet pressed on my neck.

Teo crossed the room and put a new pair of gloves in my hand.

"We always knew whose girl you are," he said under his breath. "Go on, mija. Go breathe."

I went.

I walked until I reached the foot of the old ship-loader on Dock Eight, the crane nobody has run since spring.

A ladder climbs its leg, one hundred and forty feet, to a glass cab at the top.

I climbed.

I climbed until the wind was louder than my own head.

Then I sat in the operator's chair with the whole Ship Channel spread out below me.

The tanks shone white.

Dock Six was a black finger in the water, and I could see its gate from there.

I did not cry.

I looked at that gate until the ladder rang.

Somebody was coming up, slow and steady, and I knew the weight of him before the hatch opened.

Royce came through the floor in his dark jacket, breathing hard from the climb.

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