The office of Cornelia Davies was less a room than a declaration of war.
Ronan Kent assessed it with a practiced eye as he was ushered in by a severe-looking secretary.
It sat at the apex of the main administrative building, a glass-and-steel eyrie overlooking the sprawling chaos of the Davies Naval Shipyard.
Below, tiny figures of men swarmed over the skeletal hulls of ships, and the air hummed with the discordant symphony of industry: the clang of hammers, the shriek of saws, the percussive roar of the rivet guns.
The office itself was a study in controlled force.
A massive desk of polished mahogany, bare save for a single leather-bound ledger and a brass inkwell, dominated the space.
One wall was a floor-to-ceiling map of global shipping lanes, marked with pins like a general’s campaign strategy. There were no family portraits, no sentimental trinkets.
Only power, distilled and displayed.
And then there was the woman behind the desk.
Cornelia “Nell” Davies rose as he entered. She was taller than he’d expected, her mourning-black dress tailored to accentuate a formidable silhouette rather than soften it.
Her dark hair was swept up in a severe but elegant arrangement that exposed the sharp line of her jaw and the pale column of her throat.
But it was her eyes—a startling, intelligent gray—that held him. They were the color of a winter sea, and they appraised him with an unnerving lack of warmth.
“Mr. Kent,” she said, her voice a low, smooth contralto. It held no welcome, only acknowledgement. “Thank you for your punctuality.”
“Mrs. Davies,” Ronan replied, offering a smile he hoped was more disarming than it felt. “The pleasure is all mine. A profile in the New York Chronicle can do wonders for a company’s reputation.”
He let the faint insinuation hang in the air.
She did not take the bait. Instead, she gestured to a stiff-backed leather chair opposite her desk. “Please. I have a limited amount of time.”
The game began.
Ronan settled into the chair, pulling out his notebook but relying on his memory. He started with soft, predictable questions, lulling her into a rhythm.
He asked about the shipyard’s founding, her late husband’s vision, the economic forecast for the shipping industry.
Nell answered with a precision that was almost metallic, her responses concise, polished, and utterly devoid of personal revelation.
She spoke of profit margins and production schedules, not of passion or ambition. It was like interviewing a well-oiled machine.
“Your success has been meteoric since you took the helm,” Ronan observed, shifting his line of inquiry. “Some might say… aggressive.”
A flicker in those gray eyes. The first sign of life.
“Industry is not a pastime for the timid, Mr. Kent. It rewards boldness and punishes hesitation. I am merely a student of its nature,” she explained.
“A student who has outmaneuvered competitors twice her age,” he pressed gently. “To what do you attribute that keen instinct? Is it a talent for business, or a talent for… identifying weakness in others?”
Her lips, which had been a severe, straight line, curved into something that was not quite a smile.
It was colder. “I attribute it to a talent for recognizing opportunity. And a refusal to be intimidated by those who believe my gender is a weakness.”
She had neatly deflected, turning his probe into a commentary on societal prejudice.
She was good. Better than he’d anticipated.
He felt a frustrating stab of admiration, which he quickly smothered.
She was still just another tycoon, cloaking her avarice in the armor of female empowerment.
He decided to aim closer to the bone, referencing the equipment failure from the day before.
“Of course, running an operation of this scale comes with its challenges. I heard there was a minor disruption on the line yesterday. A winch failure?”
Her posture, already ramrod straight, became infinitesimally stiffer. “We operate heavy machinery, Mr. Kent. Mechanical faults are a statistical inevitability. The issue was resolved within the hour with no injury to any of my men.”
Her use of “my men” was deliberate, a subtle assertion of ownership and protection.
“Still, whispers of worker discontent are common in industries like this,” Ronan said, feigning casual curiosity.
“Long hours, demanding quotas. How do you maintain morale and loyalty when pushing for such ambitious deadlines, especially with the naval contract on the line?”
This was the heart of his editor’s angle: the ruthless “robber baroness” who squeezed her laborers for every last drop of sweat.
He watched her for a crack, a sign of defensiveness.
Instead, she leaned forward slightly, the intensity in her gaze sharpening to a fine point. “You speak of loyalty as if it were a commodity to be purchased. It is not. It is earned,” she stated.
“I pay the highest wages on the waterfront, I provide housing for families, and I demand a standard of excellence that ensures my men are the safest and most skilled in this city.
“They are loyal because they are respected, and because they know that their hard work builds something that lasts.
“You will not find a more dedicated workforce in all of New York,” she said.
The speech was flawless, a perfectly constructed shield.
But it was the quiet fire behind her words that caught him off guard.
For a split second, he almost believed her.
He saw not a callous capitalist, but a fierce matriarch defending her clan. The thought was so professionally inconvenient that it irritated him.
He found his eyes drawn to the way the light from the vast window caught the stray wisps of hair at her temple, a small, human imperfection in her otherwise flawless composure.
A strange, unwelcome heat stirred in his chest. Chemistry. It was a weapon in his trade, something to be exploited, but with her, it felt like a liability.
As if he were the one being disarmed.
He pushed the feeling away and reloaded. “A noble sentiment. But your rivals would say you run your shipyard like a fortress, and your workers like a private army. That you demand more than loyalty. You demand fealty.”
The air in the room crackled. He had finally landed a blow. Her control was still absolute, but a dangerous glint had entered her eyes.
“My rivals,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper, “run operations that leak money, ships that leak water, and spill rumors like cheap gin. I run a tight ship, Mr. Kent. It is why I am poised to win the largest naval contract in American history, and they are not. If they mistake competence for tyranny, that is a failure of their imagination, not a flaw in my character.”
She rose then, a clear signal that the interview was over. “I believe you have enough for your ‘general business profile’.”
Ronan stood as well, the strange current still humming between them.
Standing, she was even more imposing, her gaze meeting his directly. He saw the intelligence, the steel, but also something else flickering in the depths—a deep, unyielding weariness, swiftly concealed.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Davies,” he said, his professional mask firmly back in place. “It’s been… illuminating.”
“I’m sure it has,” she replied, her tone leaving no doubt that she knew exactly what kind of story he intended to write. Her hand did not offer to shake his.
She simply watched as he was escorted from her fortress, her gray eyes following him until the heavy oak door closed, shutting him out.
***
As soon as the latch clicked shut behind Ronan Kent, Nell’s rigid control dissolved.
She walked to the window, her knuckles white as she gripped the cold sill. The reporter had unsettled her more than the winch failure itself.
The mechanical fault was a problem to be solved; Ronan Kent was a threat to be managed, and a far more insidious one. His questions were too precise, his gaze too perceptive.
He hadn’t been searching for a story; he had been searching for a weapon.
The memory of his eyes, a deep, probing blue that seemed to see past the facade she had so carefully constructed, sent a shiver of pure annoyance through her.
And beneath it, something else she refused to name. A flicker of awareness. A spark in the cold machinery of her life.
She crushed it without a second thought. Vulnerability was a luxury she could not afford.
The winch. Kent’s questions about worker discontent. It was all circling the same drain.
Coincidence was a fool’s comfort.
She strode back to her desk, her movements sharp and decisive. She scribbled a name on a piece of paper and handed it to her waiting secretary.
“Send a message to this address,” she commanded. “Tell Mr. Croft I require his services. Immediately.”
Less than an hour later, another man was shown into her office.
This one was the antithesis of Ronan Kent.
Where Kent was bold and handsome, with an easy charisma that was its own kind of weapon, Silas Croft was utterly forgettable. He was of average height and build, dressed in a plain, gray suit that seemed to absorb the light around him.
His face was unremarkable, his eyes a placid brown. He was the kind of man who could stand in a room for an hour and leave without anyone remembering he had been there. He was, in short, perfect.
“Mrs. Davies,” he said, his voice as nondescript as the rest of him. He removed his hat, holding it at his side.
“Mr. Croft. Thank you for coming so promptly.” She did not ask him to sit.
This was not a negotiation; it was an instruction. “I have a situation requiring discretion and efficiency. I’m told the Pinkerton Agency provides both.”
“We endeavor to, ma’am.”
“Yesterday morning, a gear in a primary loading winch sheared off. My foreman insists it was a clean break. Too clean. It halted production on the naval prototype for three hours.”
She paused, her gaze steady. “This morning, I was interviewed by a reporter from the *Chronicle* who seemed remarkably well-informed about ‘worker discontent’ in my yard.”
Croft listened, his expression unchanging. He was a blank slate, absorbing the details without judgment.
“I do not believe in coincidence, Mr. Croft. I want to know if that winch was faulty, or if it was sabotaged. I want to know if there is a viper in my shipyard. I need you to find it before it strikes again.”
“You suspect one of your workers?”
“I suspect everyone and no one,” she corrected him sharply. “That is why I am hiring you. You will have full access, under the guise of an independent efficiency expert. Speak to whomever you need to. Look at whatever you must. But you will be invisible, and you will report only to me.”
Silas Croft gave a single, curt nod. “My rates are on the card I sent.”
“They are acceptable,” Nell said, dismissing the triviality of money. “Find me the truth, Mr. Croft. That is all I require.”
He nodded again, placed his hat back on his head, and turned to leave.
He was gone as quietly as he had arrived, a ghost slipping back into the city’s shadows.
Nell stood alone in her office, the silence ringing in her ears. The war had begun.
A battle for public opinion waged by a handsome journalist with knowing eyes, and a shadow war in the grimy depths of her own shipyard, to be fought by a man with no face.
She was besieged on two fronts, and for the first time in a long time, Cornelia Davies felt the cold, sharp thrill of a worthy fight.