Chapter 20: The Docks

Santo's POV

I had wanted Giacomo Ferraro dead for five years.

I stood in my front hall with the car keys in my hand and let myself think it once, plainly, before I moved.

Moira stood on the stairs with Daisy against her shoulder.

"You don't have to go," she said.

"I know."

"He took my daughter out of a bassinet."

"I know that too."

"Then why are you going?"

"Because you told a room full of capos nobody gets hurt in her name," I said. "And you meant it. I'd like to be a man you can say that to."

She came down two steps and stopped.

"Come back."

"I'll come back."

My consigliere drove, and four of my men followed in the second car.

We found the van behind a shuttered boathouse on the Seekonk, where the river was black and the pier ran thirty feet out over the water.

Three of Pellegrini's last men stood at the end of it.

Giacomo knelt between them with his hands tied behind his back and a cinderblock chained to his ankle.

His lip was split, and one eye was swollen shut.

He saw me walk down the pier, and he laughed, wetly.

"Of course," he said. "Of course it's you."

"Stay back, Rinaldi," the biggest of the three said. He had a pistol in his hand. "This is Pellegrini business. The old man wants him gone."

"The old man left the state this morning with his money."

"He left us orders."

"And did he leave you pay?"

The man didn't answer.

I stopped ten feet away.

Then I took the gun out of my waistband, slowly, and laid it on the planks.

I took the knife from my boot and laid it beside it.

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