The Don's Son Drowned Me, So I Came Back to Sink His Family novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Third Section

Zuza takes Tomo's hand on the stair, calls the guests to the upper deck with their phones, and turns her weight as Paola reaches for her wrist.

Zuza's POV

At ten o'clock I found the head deckhand by the galley door.

He was fifty, he had worked for my father for twenty years, and he did not ask me why my hands were shaking.

"I need a favor," I said, and told him what I needed in six sentences.

The band leader would announce the cake at five minutes to eleven. The cake would be cut on the upper deck, under the lights.

Every guest would go up the stairs. Every guest would bring a phone.

His crew would stand on the lower deck at the stern with a ring buoy and a boat hook, and nobody would ask why.

"Somebody falling in?" he said.

"Somebody might," I said.

He looked at my face for a long time. Then he nodded once and went to find his men.

At half past ten I went to the ladies' room, and I heard Paola.

She stood in the mirror light with three Bloomfield wives, fixing her lipstick, and her voice was light and pleased.

"Those river girls from the Rocks," she said. "They live their whole lives on the water and never learn to swim."

The wives laughed.

"Slovak girls don't swim," Paola said. "They sink. It's a charming old family tradition."

I stood behind a stall door with my hand over my mouth.

I had heard that exact sentence once before, and I had forgotten it until now.

At ten fifty, I went up the stairs. Tomo was waiting on the second step, with his back to the wall.

The stairs were narrow and steep, and my knees did not want to carry me up them.

I had climbed these steps once. My body remembered what came at the top.

I stopped. I could not make the next foot go.

Tomo did not touch me. He did not say anything.

He had kept his hands at his sides since the stern deck. He had not once reached for me.

I understood that this was on purpose.

So I took his hand myself.

His palm was rough with rope and cold from the glass, and his fingers lay open and still until I closed mine.

Then they closed, too, and held on.

"Third section from the stairs," he said quietly. "I'll be at the top."

"Don't come near her," I said. "I want her to think I'm alone."

"I'll be where I was last time," Tomo said. "Only this time I'll move."

I let go of his hand. My palm stayed warm.

The upper deck was cold and dark and smelled of river.

Strings of white bulbs hung along the roof, and the city lay across the water in gold.

The third rail section was where it had always been.

I looked at the bolts. Two of them were bright, with fresh scratches around the heads.

She had done the work early, as I said she would.

"Zuza."

Paola stood at the rail, ivory silk to her ankles, pearls at her throat.

She had her arm out, with the gentle smile of a woman inviting a friend to look at the lights.

"Come and see," she said. "The bridge is lovely from here."

"Dominic said you'd been wandering the boat," she added. "I wanted to be sure you were all right."

"That's kind," I said.

I walked toward her slowly, so that I would be on her left.

I could hear the first guests on the stairs, laughing, and the band leader's microphone announcing the cake.

Paola heard it, too. Her smile did not change, but her eyes went to the stairs and then back.

She was out of time, and she knew it.

"Give me your hand," she said, and her fingers closed on my wrist.

They were strong. They were exactly as I remembered them.

I did not pull away. I stepped in, turned my hip under her arm and put all my weight into the turn.

For a moment we traded places.

Paola's heel came down on the third rail section.

The bolts she had scratched let go, and the rail swung out into the dark.

She did not scream. She said my name once, in a small, offended voice.

Then the ivory silk went over the side.

Forty guests came up the stairs with their phones in their hands.

They stopped on the top step and saw it: the broken rail, the open dark and Dominic's sister going down toward the black water.

I stood at the edge with the rail gone and the river wind in my face.

The words came out clear and calm.

"Swim, Paola," I said. "You told everyone Slovak girls don't."

The splash came a moment later, and then the head deckhand's voice, below, shouting for the buoy.

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