My Mafia Husband Never Filed Our Marriage, So I Walked Out Pregnant novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: What He Gave Up
Damian Karras sat in the back room of the restaurant on Second Avenue and waited for twenty-two men to stop talking.
It took a while.
They had come because he had asked them to, and every one of them thought he knew why.
The captain with the white mustache stood first.
"The chair is yours," he said. "We voted on it. Nobody has changed his mind."
"I know."
"Then take it. Say what you want done."
Damian looked at the long table.
He had grown up under these men.
He had sat on their knees at christenings, and he had learned the docks from them one cargo at a time.
He had also watched them stand to be counted against a page in a book.
"I don't want the chair," he said.
The room went still.
"Papou built this family to hold other men's secrets," he said. "A chair like that is only worth sitting in if you keep the book.
"I burned the book. I won't write another."
"Then who leads?" the old captain said.
"You do. All of you. A council, one vote each, and nobody keeps a page on anyone."
"A council doesn't run docks."
"It ran them for forty years before my grandfather. You'll find out how." Damian put a folded paper on the table. "This is the lease on the Brooklyn piers, in my name. It goes to the council.
"The restaurants stay with the families who work in them. Pappas gets his share of the pier fees, in writing, and so does every man at this table."
"And you?"
"I keep the name. I'm done with the rest."
He had thought it would feel like a loss.
He felt lighter than he had in years.
Nobody spoke for a time.
Then the captain with the mustache reached across the table, took the paper and put his own signature under Damian's.
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