The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Between the Rifle and the Don

Joanna's POV

The car door slammed behind me before I knew I had opened it.

"Ma'am!" my driver shouted. "Stay in the car!"

"Cesare!"

He did not turn.

He walked down the dock with his hands open, and a man on a boat pointed a rifle at his chest.

I ran.

I ran as well as a woman three months pregnant can run, with one hand under my stomach, between the stacks of containers and the shed wall.

The old capo grabbed my sleeve as I passed his crate.

"Girl, you'll be killed."

"Then he'll be killed first," I said, and pulled free.

By the time I reached the end of the containers, more men had come out of the sheds.

Twenty of them, in dark coats.

They were Santangelo's crew.

I knew the old man from the card table at the club, and I knew the three who had stood up with pistols that night.

None of them had a gun out now.

They stood at the foot of the berth and watched.

Orazio saw them, and his face changed.

"Boys," he called from the deck. "Good. Take the Don. He walked right in."

Nobody moved.

"Did you hear me?"

"We heard you," the old man from the card table said.

"Then do it."

"You took a check meant for eleven widows," the old man said. "You gave it to a woman. And now you hold a rifle on a man who knelt to you last night to get a boy back."

"He's a Lombardi!"

"He knelt," said the old man. "You took the dock and the money and you spat on the kneeling. I'll not be your man for that."

Orazio's gaze went around the dock, from face to face.

He found no help.

Then he did what a man like that does.

He swung the rifle toward me.

"You," he said. "Ms. Mercer. Take one more step and I put one through the child."

Cesare stopped.

I stopped too.

My legs were shaking so hard I could hardly stand.

"Orazio," Cesare said. His voice was very quiet. "Point it at me."

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