Chapter 16: The Quay

The square had gone quiet enough to hear the pigeons.

My father stood three steps below me with his two fingers still raised.

Behind him, the Sciarras were watching.

Saverio stood by the open door of his car with Graziella, and he didn't get in.

"All right," I said.

My father blinked.

He had expected me to cry.

"Then I'll go home to my grandmother's quay," I said. "She left it to me, Papa. Not to you."

Something went across his face.

It wasn't anger.

He turned away first.

My mother looked at me over his shoulder, and then she followed him down the steps.

Corrado drove me to Trapani that night.

The quay office was above the main warehouse, up an iron stair that rang under every step.

My grandmother's desk was still there.

So was her calendar, open to the month she died.

Corrado's men slept in the car.

Corrado slept in a chair by the door with his jacket over him.

I lay on the old leather sofa and watched the harbor lights through the window.

There was no dome.

I could see the stars anyway.

At seven in the morning, someone banged on the door at the bottom of the stair.

It was the dock foreman.

He'd worked for my grandmother for thirty years, and he still called me signorina.

"They're at the gate," he said. "Sciarra men. Four cars."

"Who's with them?"

"Nobody from the Family. Just the men. They have papers."

I put on the canvas shoes Corrado had brought me.

"Stay here," I said to Corrado.

He looked at me.

"It's my quay," I said. "If you walk down there with me, it's a war between Catania and Palermo."

"And if you go alone?"

"Then it's a lawyer and a piece of paper."

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