The Unkillable Warlord

A Hundred Against One

Tasha met him in the warehouse office this time, laptop already open, three folders spread across the desk like evidence at a trial.

"Marchetti doesn't own Ironbrook Freight," she said, before Grant had even closed the door. "Not really. He's a front for it."

"A front for who?"

"I don't know the name yet. Just a holding company registered out of state, three layers removed from anything with Marchetti's fingerprints on it." Tasha turned the laptop toward him. "Whoever's above him has been using Ironport as a test case. Buy up struggling logistics companies, consolidate the docks, control every shipment coming in or out of the city. Your dad's business isn't the target. It's the last obstacle."

Grant scanned the documents, the shell layers, the pattern of failed companies stretching back further than he'd expected.

"How many other families has this happened to?"

"Six that I can prove," Tasha said. "Probably more I can't."

Grant sat back, letting the shape of it settle into place, the way a battlefield used to reveal itself once he stopped looking at individual soldiers and started looking at formations.

"Then this was never going to end with us paying off a debt," he said. "Even if we found the money, he'd find another reason."

"Probably by next quarter," Tasha agreed.

"How long have you known this and not told anyone?"

"I've known pieces of it for two years," Tasha said. "I didn't have all the pieces until last night. And I didn't have anyone worth telling until you decided not to fold."

Grant looked at the shell company diagram again, the neat little boxes representing families who'd lost everything before he'd ever met them.

"The other five families," he said. "Do any of them still live in Ironport?"

"Three do. Struggling, mostly. One works nights at a gas station he used to own the loading dock next to."

"Get me his name," Grant said. "Get me all three names."

"So we don't fight for thirty days," Grant said slowly. "We fight to take the whole thing apart."

Tasha raised an eyebrow. "That's a very big jump from paying off a loan shark."

"It's not a jump. It's the only version of this where we're not back here in six months with a new debt and a new deadline." Grant stood, pacing now, the way he used to when a plan started forming faster than he could speak it. "Marchetti's got maybe a dozen men he actually trusts. Kessler's one of them, and Kessler resents him. That's a crack. You've got three years of falsified records, that's a crack. And somewhere out there are six other families who got squeezed out just like we're about to be."

"You want to build an army out of people who lost everything," Tasha said.

"I want to build an army out of people who know exactly how this works, because they've already lived through it," Grant said. "A hundred men who think they're fighting one desperate kid is a losing bet for them. One coordinated group who knows every weakness in the system Marchetti built? That's a different fight."

Tasha studied him for a long moment. "You talk like you've done this before."

Grant didn't answer that directly. "How fast can you get me contact information for the other families?"

"Two of them, fast. The rest, I'll have to dig."

"Do it."

Tasha started gathering the folders, then paused. "You never answered me. How fast can you build an army out of people who've already lost once?"

"Faster than you'd think," Grant said. "Losing once teaches you exactly what you're not willing to lose twice."

Grant's phone buzzed. Reggie's number.

*Talked to eleven guys. Nine are in. Two want to meet you first.*

Grant read the message twice, feeling something settle into place that hadn't been there in this body before. Not power. Not yet. Something closer to the first thread of a formation coming together.

"Tasha," he said, "I need everything you have on Kessler. Not Marchetti. Kessler specifically. His finances, his family, anything that tells me what he actually wants out of this life."

"Why Kessler?"

"Because you don't beat a wall by punching it," Grant said. "You beat it by finding the one brick that was never properly set."

His phone buzzed again. Different number this time. Unknown, same as the warning texts before.

*Heard you're recruiting. Cute. Marchetti wants you to know something. Five days left. And he's stopped finding you amusing.*

Grant read it twice, then set the phone face down on the desk.

"They know about Reggie already," he said quietly.

Tasha's face went pale. "That means someone's still watching. Someone close."

Grant looked at the folders spread across the desk, at the message glowing faintly on the overturned phone, and felt the shape of a much larger war finally come into focus.

"Then we find out who," he said, "before they find out everything else."

Tasha closed her laptop slowly. "You're not scared. I watched your face when that message came in. Most people go pale. You just went quiet."

"Being scared doesn't tell you who the leak is," Grant said. "Being quiet does. It lets you think."

"That's a strange way to be built."

"Maybe," Grant said. "Or maybe I just learned a long time ago that panic never won anybody a fight worth winning."

Tasha didn't ask what he meant by that. Something in the way he said it told her not to.