Page 24 of Desperate Measures

The Port of New York and New Jersey is the third-largest port in the U.S. by volume, behind the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. One of the top ten container ports in the entire fucking world. And the Vipers owned it.

Any importers of consumer goods, industrial materials, or food products had to go through them. In terms of global trade, the Vipers had control of the primary gateway for every fucking import coming from Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world.

I needed to maintain my connection with Nico Fury and his lethal partners, Luc Battiste and Angel Fury.

That port was essential for the logistics of my company. I needed to bring my tech into the states with as little fuss as possible.

Corporate espionage was alive and well, and there were plenty of motherfuckers out there who wanted what I was building.

Sure, I’d been pissed at my sister for dropping me in the lap of those scary motherfuckers when I’d been still wet behind the ears. But the shit I’ve learned from the Vipers and the Volkovs was priceless.

And I wasn’t finished yet.

Not by a mile.

I needed to make the name O’Doyle Industries synonymous with power.

Yeah, I’d made some money.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, which was nothing to scoff at. But that was mine, not hers. It was hard-earned by me alone.

I paid Maggie.

She was the head of the family, and it was tradition.

But the rest of it was mine.

I had my own security team, and a wealth of men and women—lawyers, scientists, all of them—working for me in China and right there in New York City.

ODI was mine in every sense.

I was the one who took every cent I could muster and pouring it all into nano-engineering to make better batteries for the future.

The kind used in electric cars and public transportation, cell phones, and anything else they could dream of.

The kind that might eventually save the planet from what we were doing to so rapidly destroy it.

Right now, I was a silent partner in several mines and factories where lithium iron phosphate electrodes were manufactured in Gansu, China.

But my power was being tested, and I needed more muscle than the O’Doyles currently possessed.

I needed help.

But who wanted to aid the son of a dead mafia boss who was a bigger prick than I cared to admit?

Gun running was the most vanilla of the O’Doyle family’s activities.

Ties to IRA bombings were a little uglier.

Then there were the accusations of prostitution rings, pornography, and human trafficking that made me want to puke.

My family name was shit.

I knew it.

Maggie knew it.

But still, we tried to erase the stain of our father’s past.