The Boss

Dockside smoke still clings to Michael Regan’s fists as he converts a thousand blood-slick dollars into a riverside gin-mill and a half-rotten wharf company; from sawdust to empire he carves a vertical city of grain chutes and ledger ink, undercutting the gentry by paying his stevedores in hunger wages. James Griswold—once silk-hatted prince of clipper fortunes—watches his silos empty while his daughter Emily, corseted in mourning, becomes the final negotiable note. Regan bargains marriage as collateral, swearing love through clenched teeth; Emily answers with a vow as frigid as winter grain. Yet the strike sparked by Griswold’s feckless heir ignites a brick hurled by Porkey McCoy—friend, fool, fuse—sending Regan to a stone cell where property and pride are signed away. Emily, now heiress to ruin, refuses the signed divorce, discovering that frost can thaw into fierce loyalty. Released into dawn fog, Regan finds Emily waiting with a new covenant: not merger but mercy, and a cradle for the McCoy child they will raise together, godparents to a future unburdened by the tally of sacks or scars.