Sacrificed To The Don They Now Regret novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Dock Books

Ilaria's doctor came at seven and shone a light into her eyes.

He shone it into the right one for a long time.

"The nerve is waking up," he said at last. "It will be slow, and it may stop."

"Will I see him?" Ilaria asked.

"Shapes. Maybe more."

"Shapes are enough to criticize his tie."

Lorenzo turned his face to the window, and I saw his jaw work.

I kissed his cheek in front of the doctor and the maid and the guard, and nobody said a word.

Then I went to the docks.

The Santoro crew met in the old hall behind the fish market, as they had every first Saturday since my grandfather.

There were forty men in the room, in work boots and canvas jackets, and none of them were smiling.

I carried two ledgers, my father's and mine, under my arm.

Lorenzo had driven me to the corner and stopped.

"I won't come in," he had said. "You asked me not to."

"They'd stop looking at me and start looking at you."

"I know."

"Then wait here."

"I'll wait."

He did.

I heard the car door close behind me, and I walked in alone.

The hall went silent.

I laid the ledgers on the long table, and the foreman, a gray man with a missing finger, looked at them and then at me.

"Livia," he said. "Your brother's in jail."

"I know."

"They're saying he shot your father."

"He did."

A sound went through the room.

I had thought about this on the drive, about whether to soften it, and I had decided they would smell a softened thing from across the harbor.

"Paolo shot my father, on my mother's order, to stop him confessing something she did," I said. "It's in a police report as of yesterday. I'm telling you before you read it in the paper."

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