My Father Sold Me at Eighteen, but the Mafia Lord Was the One in Debt to Me novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Payday
Graciela's POV
I woke in my own bed to Luca's voice in the hall, low and urgent, and I knew from the first word it was bad.
He was in the doorway when I opened my eyes, with the phone against his chest and his face drawn.
"The dock," he said.
"Two hundred men and no pay."
"Then give them pay."
"I can't," he said.
"The account is frozen until a judge says otherwise, and the only judge who would say so is the one who froze it.
"I can move cash out of the warehouse safe.
"It's maybe sixty thousand.
"It's one week of wages for forty men."
I sat up with the sheet around me.
"How long until they walk?" I said.
"An hour.
"They'll stand there, and the ship will sit, and by tomorrow the shipping line will take its business to Jacksonville.
"That's what Ottavio wants.
"He wants the docks stopped before Saturday so that by the time you read your note there's nothing left to call."
I thought about it.
I thought about two hundred men on a pier at six in the morning, and about a ledger on my knee in a factory, and about the way a room can be made to hold still for three minutes if the right voice says the right number.
"Take me there," I said.
"Gracie, it's a dock.
"It's men who are angry."
"It's men who are owed money," I said.
"I know how to talk to those."
He looked at me.
I saw him decide.
He didn't say it was too dangerous.
He took my dress down off the hook, and handed it to me, and went to get the car.
We reached Channelside at a quarter to seven.
The sun was a red line over the bay, and the cranes stood black against it.
Two hundred men stood on the concrete apron in work boots and orange vests, with their arms folded.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Sold Me at Eighteen, but the Mafia Lord Was the One in Debt to Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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