The hook came down too fast.
"Ethan, move!"
He didn't think. He just threw himself sideways, shoulder smashing into another body as the container swung past where his head had been a heartbeat ago and slammed into the steel support with a shriek.
The dock lights flickered. Rain needled sideways off the harbour, the whole place stinking of diesel, salt, and rot. The crane above them groaned like it might just give up and fall into the water with everything else.
The guy he'd bodyslammed—skinny, maybe twenty, eyes wide as a terrified dog, stared at the dented metal box dangling over the slick concrete.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "You almost—"
"Yeah," Ethan grunted, rolling off him. "You're welcome."
He got to his feet, ribs complaining. Somewhere up in the crane cab, a foreman was yelling through a blown‑out speaker, static chopping the words up.
"Get that shit under control!" somebody barked.
Nobody said thanks. Nobody asked if Ethan was okay. The line of dock workers just looked annoyed at the delay and went back to doing what they always did—hauling, stacking, pretending the wind wasn't cutting right through their cheap jackets.
Ethan wiped rain and sweat off his face with the back of his glove. His hands already ached from the shift before this one. His back burned in a straight line where an old injury flared every time he lifted something heavier than his pride.
"Cole!"
He turned. The foreman—Harris, fat gut under a neon vest, orange cigarette ember glowing at his lip despite the rain—was glaring down from the catwalk.
"You wanna play hero, do it on your own time," Harris shouted. "We're two containers behind schedule. Move your ass."
"Got it," Ethan muttered.
He bent, grabbed the nearest pallet jack, and shoved. The weight of it bit into his already wrecked shoulders. The harbour stretched out in front of him, a black mouth lined with container teeth. Lights from the city blinked weakly across the water like they were apologising for existing.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, a short, insistent buzz against wet denim.
He checked nobody was looking at him, then ducked behind a stack of containers marked MORETTI IMPORTS and fished it out.
Sam.
He didn't need to see the name to know. Only one person texted him during graveyard shifts with that kind of desperation.
Sam: u free??
Sam: they called again
Sam: ethan plz
His throat went tight. He typed one-handed, keeping an ear out for Harris's voice.
Ethan: I'm at work. What happened?
The reply came almost instantly, like Sam had been clutching the phone, waiting.
Sam: hospital called. bill's overdue again. they're talking about dropping my meds if we don't sort it this week
Sam: i'm sorry
A gust of wind shoved rain straight into his face. He blinked it away.
Ethan: how much.?
There was a pause, then:
Sam: a lot
Sam: they said they can't keep making "exceptions"
Sam: i don't know what to do
Ethan swallowed. He could almost see Sam: hunched on that crappy secondhand couch in their shoebox apartment, feet pulled up under too‑thin legs, hospital bracelet still on because they never remembered to cut it off.
He checked the time. Half the shift still to go. Over time, tomorrow, if he could snag it. Pay in two weeks if Harris didn't "lose" his hours again.
Useless.
Ethan: I'll handle it.
Sam: we don't have it
Ethan: I said I'll handle it
He added a second text before Sam could spiral:
Ethan: get some sleep. I'll call you in the morning
Three dots blinked. Then:
Sam: ok
Sam: Love you
He stared at the screen for a second longer than he should have, then shoved the phone back into his pocket like it had bitten him.
"COLE!"
Right. Work.
He pushed the pallet jack back into the lane, falling into the rhythm his body knew too well. Hook down, load up, roll, stack, repeat. The dock was a machine, and he was one of the cheap parts you replaced when it snapped.
By the time the storm really opened up, his hoodie was soaked through, and his boots squelched. The front of his hi‑vis vest was streaked with grease and something he hoped was just seawater.
He barely noticed the guy who sidled up next to him until the man spoke.
"Rough night, Cole?"
Ethan glanced sideways. Rico. Always hanging at the edges of the crew, never quite working as hard as everyone else, always a little too clean. Expensive watch under his sleeve, even if the rest of him looked like any other dock rat.
"Same as every other night," Ethan said.
Rico's smile was small and sharp. "Storm's a bitch. Bad things happen when the manifest gets messy."
He flicked his chin toward a stack of containers they'd just moved, the Moretti logo barely visible under rust.
"Those go missing," Rico said, "Mr. Moretti gets real unhappy. And you don't want to be near unhappy, yeah?"
Ethan snorted. "You volunteering to cheer him up?"
Rico's smile didn't reach his eyes. "I'm just saying… if the numbers don't add up at the end of the night, somebody's gonna have to explain it. And Harris hates explaining things."
He clapped Ethan lightly on the shoulder and peeled away, whistling off‑key.
Ethan watched him go. The name on the sides of the containers—MORETTI IMPORTS—seemed brighter now, like it knew he was looking.
"Break's over, Cole!" Harris's voice boomed from somewhere above. "Clock says you're still on my time."
"Yeah, yeah," Ethan muttered, dragging the pallet jack toward the next stack.
By the time the shift whistle finally screamed, his muscles felt like they'd been replaced with wet cement. Men shuffled toward the locker room, cigarettes already between their lips, shoulders hunched against the rain.
Ethan changed out of his soaked vest, pulled on a jacket that wasn't much drier, and checked his phone.
No new messages from Sam. Good. Or bad. He couldn't tell anymore.
"Cole!"
He turned. Harris stood in the doorway to the little prefab office stuck to the side of the warehouse, neon vest half‑unzipped, cigarette down to the filter.
"Office. Now."
Ethan's stomach dropped. End-of-shift meetings never meant overtime.
He stepped inside. The air was stale with old coffee and cheap smoke. A cracked fan moved the smell around without doing anything useful.
Harris wasn't alone.
Two men sat in the plastic visitor chairs, and they were very obviously not dock workers.
Expensive wool coats, dry despite the weather. Shoes that had never seen actual labour. One of them was big, thick‑necked, with a shaved head and a nose that had been broken more than once. The other was leaner, dark hair slicked back, smile too polite to be real.
They both looked up when Ethan entered.
Harris cleared his throat. "Mr Cole," he said, suddenly formal. "These gentlemen are here about a little… accounting issue."
The slick‑haired man stood, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from his coat. His eyes ran over Ethan like he was measuring a piece of meat.
"Evening," he said, voice smooth as the coat. "Ethan Cole, right?"
Ethan didn't answer.
The man's smile widened just a fraction, all teeth and no warmth.
"Mr Cole," he said, "you seem to have misplaced something that belongs to Mr Moretti."