Chapter 16: The Trade

Santino's POV

My gate keeps a log, and I read it with Gemma's seven captains arguing in the next room.

Every truck that enters Port Newark through my gate is written down by the guard, with the plate and the hour.

At 6:40 that morning a gray van had come through under Balestra Freight.

It had gone to Warehouse 9, the one Dario rents from me and thinks I have never opened.

I closed the book.

I had never lied to Gemma, not once.

I only left rooms.

I went out to the truck with the half deed in my pocket and the other half of the gate in my head, and I told myself I would be back before she woke.

She was waiting in the hall.

She stood in her father's old cardigan, with her arms crossed and her hair loose, and she looked at my keys.

"No," she said.

"I'm checking the log."

"You've checked it. I watched you read it."

"Gem."

"If you walk out that door alone, I will never forgive you."

"It's an hour."

"Santino."

I kissed her forehead, and she let me, and her hands closed on my jacket and held on.

Then I pulled out of them, and I went.

I told myself it was because of Nino.

It was not only Nino.

Under that was something older. I believed that when it came to blood against a dock man, a Don's wife went home.

Warehouse 9 stood at the far end of the yard, behind a chain-link fence that I had put up myself.

Two soldiers at the door pointed guns at me and then lowered them.

"The boss said you'd come," one of them said.

"Of course he did."

Inside, the warehouse smelled of diesel and wet cardboard.

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