The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Everything He Owned
Niko's POV
On the night of the fifth I signed the Harbormaster's seat and the Blair lease away.
I did it at the steel desk in the glass room above the freezers.
A lawyer I had known twenty years stood at my elbow, and a notary from the harbor office did not know where to look.
It was ten at night, and the tugs were out on the bay with their running lights red and green.
The lawyer laid the papers out in a row.
"You understand what this does," he said.
"It does what I tell it to do," I said.
"It transfers the Blair Waterway lease to the port district for a dollar," he said.
"It dissolves the Harbormaster's standing as a family office.
"It releases every verbal arrangement the Matkovic name has ever held on this bay.
"Nobody will owe you a tug or a favor or a berth.
"You will own a cold-storage warehouse and a crab-pot yard and a name."
"A name is enough," I said.
"Six winters I have been careful with it.
"I have a mother and a brother and a woman to feed.
"I do not need a bay."
He looked at me over his glasses.
"May I ask why?"
"Because tomorrow she will stand in a room and read what a man did with a harbor," I said.
"I will not sit beside her holding one."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Tideflats King Claimed the Surveyor Who Trusts No One, and My Signature Was His Brother's Alibi are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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