They Left Me to Die, So I Came Home Undefeated novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Which One Came First
Mirella's POV
Thirty people stood up.
Chairs scraped, silk rustled, and a glass rang against a plate.
Nobody sat until the old man lifted two fingers from the blanket.
My grandfather looked down the table at the heads of the six dock families.
He knew every one of them by name, and he had buried their fathers.
"I am dying," he said. "You all know it. The doctor says I should be in a bed, and I told him there is a bed for me in the ground and I will use it soon enough."
Nobody laughed.
"Tonight I name who holds the Montanari docks. My wife left the company to the first-born granddaughter of the line on her eighteenth birthday, with my blessing, and nobody else. You have all heard the terms."
The heads of the families nodded one by one.
"Two girls were born to my son. Both are eighteen as of this week. Both are here."
He turned the wheelchair a few inches with his good hand, so that he faced Gaspare.
"Before you, before God, and before my wife's name," he said. "Which of them was born first?"
My father rose from his seat, slowly and without a word.
I watched his hands.
They were perfectly steady.
"Cosima," he said.
A murmur went round the table.
"At six forty-one in the morning, at Saint Barnabas. Mirella followed nine minutes later." He turned and looked at the sideboard. "The family's own register is there for any man to see."
A guard stepped forward from the wall.
He carried a thick book bound in green leather, with the Montanari crest stamped in gold on the cover.
He laid it down in front of my grandfather and opened it to a marked page.
My grandfather did not look at the page.
He looked at the heads of the families.
"Read it," he said to the oldest of the family heads.
The old man at the right of the table put on a pair of reading glasses, bent over the book, and read aloud in a flat, careful voice.
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