Chapter 16
Knox
The Port of Stockton didn’t look like anything special from the outside. Just steel fencing, shipping containers stacked like dull-colored bricks, cranes stretching into the sky, and the smell of diesel and river water clinging to everything.
It didn’t look like the kind of place empires ran through.
Mendez drove past the main security booth without slowing.
Knox expected at least a pause: a credential check, a radio call, a moment of scrutiny.
Instead, the guard glanced up, recognized the SUV, and lifted the barrier without a word.
The second SUV, carrying four of Dominic’s men, followed close behind and received the same treatment.
“That’s it?” Knox asked.
Mendez didn’t take his eyes off the road. “You thought we’d sneak in?”
“I thought there’d be… something.”
“There is,” Mendez said. “You just don’t see it.”
Knox looked back at the guard booth as it shrank in the side mirror. Something cold settled under his ribs. They weren’t slipping past security. They belonged here.
Inside the yard, forklifts moved in steady lines between container rows. Dockworkers in reflective vests crossed lanes with clipboards and coffee cups. A patrol vehicle drifted by without slowing. The entire port operated with the calm rhythm of routine.
Mendez drove deeper into the yard until he slowed near a blue container set slightly apart from the others. Two men in reflective vests stood nearby, hands in their pockets, posture loose but eyes alert. Knox recognized them from the warehouse. “Those ours?”
“Of course.”
The second SUV parked behind them. Its doors opened almost in sequence as four men stepped out and dispersed with quiet efficiency.
Knox got out into the diesel-heavy air and realized that this wasn’t a simple pickup.
A dock supervisor approached, Port Authority insignia stitched neatly over his jacket, clipboard tucked against his side. He greeted Mendez with easy familiarity. Paperwork exchanged hands—bills of lading, container IDs, clearance stamps. Everything looked legitimate, stamped and signed.
Knox leaned closer and caught enough detail to understand that on paper, this container held industrial irrigation components shipped from overseas.
When Mendez handed the folder back, Knox saw the folded cash slide into the supervisor’s palm, shielded mostly by paper. The supervisor didn’t hesitate. He tucked it away, made a small notation on his clipboard, and stepped aside.
Right, Knox thought. Okay.
As if on cue, a white vehicle rolled down the lane and stopped a short distance away. U.S. Customs and Border Protection was written across the door in bold lettering.
Knox felt the shift before anyone spoke. The four men didn’t tense, not exactly, but their attention sharpened.
The officer climbed out, adjusting his sunglasses, and crossed to them with the unhurried walk of a man who had nowhere in particular to be. He exchanged a nod with the supervisor before stopping in front of Mendez. “Everything good?” he asked.
“Like always,” Mendez replied.
A thick envelope appeared from inside Mendez’s jacket. It passed hands with the same casual ease as the paperwork. The officer slid it into his inner pocket without opening it, walked to the container and tapped the side twice with his knuckles. “Cleared.”
He didn’t check the seal. Didn’t ask to see inside. Didn’t pretend to perform any kind of inspection. He simply returned to his vehicle and drove off.
Knox stared after him. “That’s it?”
“That’s the arrangement.”
One of their men stepped forward and cut the security seal. The snap of metal carried in the open air. The container doors swung open, revealing stacked cartons labeled industrial irrigation parts, which matched the paperwork exactly.
“Looks clean,” Knox said.
A blade sliced through cardboard. Inside was another layer of packaging, thick vacuum-sealed plastic. Another cut, and bright pills stamped with a small crown spilled into view.
Knox stared at them.
Ecstasy.
“How much?” he asked.
Mendez didn’t answer immediately. He reached into the open carton and lifted one of the sealed bundles, turning it over in his hand before tossing it back. “Count the pallets,” he said.
Knox scanned the container. “Twenty-two. How many per pallet?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
The math formed in his head before he could stop it. There were six point six million pills sitting in a container that had just been cleared by federal customs without inspection.
He was quiet for a moment. “This a one-off?”
Mendez almost smiled. “Pills? Every week.”
Knox didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t sure there was anything to say.
He was still trying to process the size of what he’d stepped into.
He’d seen Dominic’s power up close before—fast, personal, brutal when necessary.
But this was different. This wasn’t dominance through fear; it was dominance through structure.
One of the men was already resealing the cartons. Another swung the doors closed and replaced the cut seal with a fresh one.
“You don’t unload here?” Knox asked.
Mendez shook his head. “Cameras everywhere. You don’t unload product in a place you don’t control.” He nodded toward the container. “This gets logged as irrigation parts going to Stockton Ag Supply.” A pause. “We own Stockton Ag Supply.”
“And the Customs guy?”
“Retires in three years with a house he couldn’t afford on salary.”
A freight truck was backing slowly into position at the lane. Knox watched it settle on its suspension as the container locked into place.
“So what happens now?”
“Now it moves like it was always meant to move,” Mendez said. “That truck takes it to a cross-dock facility outside city limits. That building’s ours too. Container gets opened, the pallets get broken down, product moves—some local, some north, some south. Nothing sits long.”
“And customs doesn’t follow it?”
“Customs already cleared it.” Mendez looked at him evenly. “Once it’s out of port jurisdiction it’s just another shipment on the road. Unless someone has reason to look. And no one does.”
“So who sells it? Once it’s broken down?”
“Depends on the load,” Mendez said. “But Dominic doesn’t deal. By the time it hits the street, it’s at least three hands removed from him.”
Knox was quiet for a moment. The freight truck pulled away with the container, already just another truck on its way somewhere.
“This is bigger than I thought,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Dominic hadn’t brought him here to impress him. Knox understood that now. There was nothing showy about any of this—no theatrics, no demonstrations of force. He’d brought him here to see if Knox understood what it meant to operate on this level.
This wasn’t chaos; it was architecture.
He was a man who’d built himself into something so large that gates lifted, uniforms nodded, and millions passed through open hands as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
* * *
He knew something was wrong the second he opened the apartment door. The television was blaring, some commercial bouncing off the walls. Underneath, there was a sound he recognized instantly—his mother crying frantically.
The apartment felt overheated. Suffocating.
She stood in the middle of the living room, hair half out of its clip, eyes wild in a way that made his stomach drop every time he saw it.
“You were supposed to be here,” she said before he could speak.
“I was at work,” he answered automatically, closing the door behind him. His voice sounded distant to his own ears.
“No,” she snapped, her voice climbing. “No, you weren’t. Don’t lie to me. I know when you’re lying.”
The TV screamed behind her, speakers distorting from the volume.
“Mom,” he said carefully, setting his keys down with deliberate precision. “What happened?”
“They were here,” she said. “You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
His chest tightened. “No one was here, Mom.”
“You think I’m stupid?” She moved toward him too fast. The slap cracked across his face before he could process the shift. A flash burst across his vision as his head snapped sideways, heat exploding across his cheekbone.
His jaw locked, hands flexing at his sides.
For the briefest moment, he wanted to hit her back.
The thought died just as fast. He would never raise a hand to his mother.
She wouldn’t be doing this if she were well.
That truth cooled him faster than anything else could.
It had been months since she’d spiraled like this.
The last time had been right after his father died.
“You don’t get to lie to me,” she hissed.
He looked at her. Really looked—at the trembling hands, the unhinged shine in her eyes, the way fear had twisted her features. She was drowning. She was always drowning, and he was so tired of being the thing she grabbed for when the water rose.
Hours ago, he’d been standing in a port yard calculating millions of pills. And now here he was, getting slapped in a two-bedroom apartment that smelled like burned toast and panic.
Something inside him went very still. “I’m not lying,” he said.
She shoved him this time, fingers bunching in his shirt. “You’re disappearing,” she cried. “You think I don’t know when someone is taking my son away from me?”
His mind flashed to Dominic without permission.
He pried her hands off gently at first, more firmly when she started clawing.
“You’re scaring me,” she said, tears streaking down her face. The hysteria broke into something almost childlike. “Don’t leave me.”
He stepped back.
He didn’t know how to be two versions of himself. The one who stood in Dominic’s world—feeling more awake than he had in years. And this one. The exhausted son holding something together that kept breaking anyway.
She swung at him again. Weaker now. More desperate than angry. Her nails scraped his jaw and a sting followed.
The TV kept shouting about discounts and miracle products, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe in there. “I’ll be back,” he said, already moving.
“Don’t you walk away from me—”
He was already out the door, down the stairs, and outside before he’d consciously decided to keep going. He pressed his fingers to his cheek and felt the swelling blooming beneath the skin. It throbbed in time with his pulse.
He walked without direction at first, just needing distance. His head buzzed with too many things stacked on top of each other.
God.
He stopped under a flickering streetlight and leaned against a brick wall.
He should call someone. Tara, maybe. She’d listen; she’d tell him to come over; she’d say all the right things about mental illness being hard and none of this being his fault.
Or he could call one of the guys. A beer, something easy, something that required nothing from him.
He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over Tara’s name.
He imagined explaining the last forty-eight hours.
The Port. Six point six million pills. The way he’d gotten on his knees and stayed there.
The way his body had betrayed him. The way he’d felt more alive in Dominic’s world.
He couldn’t picture the words coming out of his mouth without sounding insane.
His thumb drifted. He didn’t mean to stop on Dominic’s name. He stared at it for a moment; the number stared back at him like a dare.
His cheek throbbed and his chest felt hollowed out. His life had been running on fumes for so long, he’d forgotten what full felt like. And suddenly these last few weeks had been full of color.
Completely wrong in every way that mattered. But real in a way almost nothing else had been in years.
His finger moved and the phone started to ring.
Once.
Twice.
By the third ring his heart was pounding hard enough to make him lightheaded, and he still had absolutely no idea what he was going to say. He didn’t even know why he’d called. He only knew he didn’t want to be alone with the silence anymore.
“Yeah.”
Knox’s throat went dry. What the hell am I doing? For a second he just listened to Dominic’s breathing on the other end.
“You usually call people and say nothing?” Dominic asked.
Knox swallowed. “I didn’t mean to call.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who does things by accident.”
His fingers pressed harder against his cheek, the pain anchoring him. He didn’t know how to explain the apartment. The slap. The way everything inside him felt stretched past the point it was designed to hold. “I just—” He stopped. “Am I disturbing you?”
A small pause. “No.”
He leaned back against the brick wall and closed his eyes.
“You sound different,” Dominic said.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
One word. It landed heavier than it had any right to.
“My mom’s having a bad night,” Knox said finally, the words coming out thinner than he intended. “I needed air.”
“Are you okay?”
Knox hesitated a fraction too long.
“Knox.”
The way he said his name did something complicated to his chest. “I’m fine.”
Silence. Heavier than the last one.
“Where are you?” Dominic asked.
“Outside.”
“You alone?”
A car drove past, headlights washing over him briefly before sliding on. “Yeah.”
“I can send someone,” Dominic said.
Knox’s pulse jumped. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
He thought about calling Tara again. About sitting in her kitchen with a cup of tea while she said all the right things in the right order.
She’d mean it, and by the time he left her kitchen he’d feel vaguely guilty for not feeling better.
He needed someone who wouldn’t try to make it smaller.
Someone who already knew the world was exactly as bad as it was and hadn’t flinched.
“Why’d you really call?” Dominic asked.
Because everything else feels small now. Because I’m tired of pretending to be fine. Because you’re the only thing that makes sense today.
He said none of it. “I don’t know,” he said instead.
“Yeah,” Dominic said quietly. “You do.”
Knox felt it then—the pull. The same one he’d felt every time he was in Dominic’s orbit. He’d meant to call someone safe. He’d dialed the most dangerous man he knew instead, and some part of him had known exactly what he was doing.
“Give me an address,” Dominic said. Not an invitation. An order.
Knox didn’t hang up.
And when he spoke, his voice didn’t waver.