Chapter 5 - The Shipyard
Thirty-six hours later, the humidity was different. It did not smell of salt spray and expensive suntan lotion; it smelled of rusted iron, sulfuric marsh mud, and stagnant diesel oil.
Julian Vance stepped off the Greyhound bus in Port Arthur, Texas. His light blue designer shirt was stained with sweat and grime from two days of sleepless travel. He had pawned his platinum wedding band—the one he had bought in anticipation of proposing to Brianna—at a dingy pawn shop near the Miami bus depot for eight hundred dollars. Seven hundred of that had gone to bus tickets, greasy diner meals, and cheap burner phone minutes.
He held a crumpled paper deed in his pocket. It was the only document his father’s old probate attorney had agreed to release to him without Eleanor’s signature.
Vance Marine Salvage & Drydock No. 4.
Julian walked down the cracked asphalt of Industrial Parkway, dragging his scuffed dress shoes through gravel. Massive container cranes loomed in the distance like skeletal dinosaurs against the gray Gulf sky. At the end of a dead-end road choked with overgrown weeds stood a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A faded, rusted metal sign hung askew from the gate: VANCE SALVAGE - PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Julian pushed open the unlocked pedestrian gate. The hinges screamed with rust.
Before him lay a three-acre graveyard of industrial decay. Rusted ship hulls lay half-submerged in a murky canal. Piles of scrap steel, discarded anchor chains, and decaying wooden shipping pallets littered the dirt. In the center of the yard sat a corrugated steel warehouse with shattered skylights and a single flickering floodlight over an aluminum door.
"Looking for someone, boy?"
Julian jumped. From the shadow of a rusted shipping container stepped an older man wearing grease-stained denim overalls and a faded baseball cap. He carried an iron spanner in one hand and chewed on an unlit cigar. His face was weathered like old boot leather, his gray beard trimmed close.
"I... I'm Julian Vance," Julian stammered, holding up the crumpled deed like a shield. "This property belongs to me."
The old man stopped. He took the cigar from his mouth, looked Julian up and down—from his ruined Italian loafers to his dirt-streaked designer collar—and let out a dry, hacking laugh.
"Julian? Arthur’s boy?" The man spat into the dirt. "Arthur Vance’s boy on a municipal bus, smelling like cheap fast food and desperation. Well, I’ll be damned."
"Who are you?" Julian demanded, trying to summon a shred of the arrogance he had possessed in the Miami penthouse. "I own this yard. What are you doing here?"
"Name's Hank," the old man said, turning back toward the warehouse. "I was your daddy’s head mechanic before he got too rich to remember where his first dollar came from. And as for owning this yard... you don't own much, son. Just sixty tons of scrap metal, three code violations from the county, and a tax lien due in thirty days."
"What tax lien?" Julian's voice cracked.
Hank paused at the warehouse door and looked over his shoulder. "One hundred and forty thousand dollars in delinquent property taxes. If you don't pay by the end of the month, the state auctions the land off. And guess who holds the first right of refusal on the auction block?"
May you like
Julian felt his knees weaken. "My mother."
"No," Hank chuckled darkly. "Not your mother. Your mother sold that tax debt two days ago to a firm called Sterling Capital."
