Chapter 18: The Warehouse

I went alone, as I'd been told, and Rocco let me.

It was the worst thing I have ever asked of him.

He did it with his jaw shut and his hand pressed flat on the roof of my car.

"Four minutes," he said. "Then I come in."

"Ten."

"Seven."

I kissed him once, hard, in front of the whole yard, and drove to Dock Street.

The cold storage was a long concrete shed with a steel door.

When I pulled it open, the cold came out and took my breath.

Meat hooks hung from rails in the ceiling.

Frost furred the walls.

Nunzio stood in the middle of the floor in his camel coat with his hands in his pockets.

Two men with guns stood behind him.

Aurelio sat roped to a metal chair, with a split lip and his glasses gone.

Sabrina sat tied on the floor beside him, in her pink coat, and she wouldn't look at me.

"Gemma," Nunzio said warmly. "Thank you. You're punctual, like your father."

"Let them go."

"The key first."

I took it from around my neck and held it out on its chain.

One of his men took it from me, searched me from collar to ankles, and found nothing.

My phone was in the car.

Nunzio turned the key over in his fingers, small and black.

"All these years," he said. "Such a small thing."

He weighed it in his palm.

"Your father told the box clerk it was a spare. I had the clerk's family looked after for it."

"You've got it. Now what?"

"Now I would like a signature."

He took a folded paper from inside his coat.

I didn't read it.

"It's very simple," he said. "A transfer of the Rinaldi seat and the port company to a family trust. Nothing you'll miss."

"No."

"Gemma."

"No."

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