Mom Married the Don for Peace, So I Made His Son Kneel novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Pier

Riccardo's POV

The Fox Point pier was a gray finger of planks and pilings, with two fish houses at the root.

The dawn was coming up pink over the water.

Forty men stood on it, in two crowds, with ten feet of boards between them.

My cousin was on his knees by a bollard with his hand over his mouth and blood between his fingers.

One of the Rebelo deckhands sat against a stack of crates with his nose broken.

Another stood over him holding a gaff handle.

Madalena had driven us there at a captain's speed, and she was out of my car before it stopped.

I caught her up at the head of the pier.

She had put the ring back on, I noticed, and it lay outside her sweater on its chain.

Every Portuguese eye on the planks went to it.

"Enough," she said.

Nobody answered.

"Who started it?"

"Heard him," a young deckhand said, and pointed at my cousin. "He said the captain's girl keeps a rich man's dog."

My cousin spat red on the planks.

"They said he kneels like a dog," he said thickly. "They've been saying it a month."

"The heir who kneels," somebody on the Portuguese side muttered, and a few men laughed.

An Italian man hit a piling with his fist.

Madalena stepped between the crowds.

She stood alone in the open boards, with her back to the water, and looked at one side and then the other.

"You want to fight about him?" she said. "Fight about me, then."

"Menina," an old man began.

"He's my business."

I walked out and stood beside her.

I felt the Rebelo captains' eyes on me, and the Iannotti men's, and my cousin's.

I heard my own voice before I had decided to speak.

"Listen to me," I said.

It was quiet except for the gulls.

"At the wedding Joaquim Tavares dared me to kneel to Vítor Rebelo's daughter. I did. I knelt in front of three hundred of you."

Nobody moved.

"Somebody says I did it like a dog. I did it because I wanted to."

A deckhand shifted his feet.

"Nobody ordered me. Nobody could have. I'd do it tomorrow, in front of all of you, with my hands open."

I felt her go still beside me.

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