Page 105 of Collateral Love
Not because I couldn’t.
But because I wanted him to feel what it was like to lose everything he thought was his… one pressure point at a time.
Not to piss. Not to eat. Not to check on Kenya, even though every instinct in my body kept pulling me toward wherever they had her laid up and stitched together.
I trusted the doctors. I trusted the guards. What I didn’t trust was time. Time was how men like Charles survived.
So I stayed planted at the table, elbows on cold concrete, watching the city bleed in increments so small the average person wouldn’t feel it until they tried to breathe.
Joel ran the first wave.
A logistics company, Charles, used for “import-export consulting,” suddenly couldn’t access its operating accounts. A shipping container sat untouched at the port because the manifest was flagged incorrectly. A landlord got a call aboutunpaid property taxes on a warehouse that had always been magically current.
Money doesn’t scream when it’s hurt.
It stutters.
Phones rang off the hook in the room, but none of them were for me. I’d given strict instructions: I wasn’t answering anything that sounded like panic. Panic didn’t deserve my voice.
Xavier stood at the back wall, hoodie up, arms crossed, eyes locked on a grid of faces cycling through security footage. He hadn’t spoken in a while, which meant his brain was chewing on something sharp.
Channy sat at the far end of the table, laptop open, legal pads stacked beside her like armor. Her leg bounced once, then stopped. She was already disciplining herself into stillness.
Miles moved between us like a liaison. Answering questions. Making calls. Offering suggestions that sounded useful enough to accept without question.
That’s what made him dangerous.
“You’ll want to stagger the freezes,” Miles said at one point, leaning in toward me. “If you hit everything at once, it looks coordinated. That brings eyes.”
I studied him. “What do you suggest?”
“Delay the west accounts. Let him think he’s stabilizing,” he said. “False recovery builds confidence.”
I nodded slowly. “Do that.”
Xavier’s eyes flicked to me.
He typed something into his tablet without breaking eye contact with the screen.
That was our language now—decisions spoken, variables checked silently.
An hour later, the first proxy arrest came through.
Not Charles.
It was one of his second-tier guys. Old warrant. Unrelated charge. Picked up during a traffic stop that had nothing to do with us and everything to do with patience.
Then another.
Then a third.
None of them is high-ranking enough to make the news.
But all of them were close enough to him that their absence would echo.
Joel glanced up from his tablet. “We got chatter. He’s making calls. Asking questions.”
“Good,” I said. “That means he’s off balance.”
