The Don Played Broke to Test Me, So I Left With His Baby novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Maria Santangelo

Cesare's POV

Joanna went to see the boy at dawn, and I went with her as far as the nursery door.

She asked me to wait in the hall.

I waited.

A while later she came out with her face white and her jaw set.

"Orazio keeps a boat," she said. "It's called the Maria Santangelo, after his mother. It's tied at the north dock behind the cold-storage sheds. He's been taking your sister's son there to play."

"The boy told you that?"

"He thought it was a game. He said Orazio keeps a bag on the boat, with money and a passport, and a gun in a drawer under the wheel."

I stood very still.

"I'm going to the dock," I said.

"I'm coming."

"Jo."

"Rule three."

"You're thirteen weeks pregnant and a man has just tried to take you out of a flower shop."

"And your men stand across the street," she said. "That was the deal."

I looked at her, and I could not find an argument that did not break one of her rules.

"Across the street," I said. "Not one step closer."

"Fine."

"Tillie?"

"Surgery's done. She'll keep the wrist. She asked me for a window."

I almost smiled.

Before I left the house I stopped at my sister's door.

Two of my men stood outside it.

I had put her in her old bedroom after the council, with her own books and the window locked.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, with her hair pinned.

"You have a cut on your lip," she said. "And you haven't slept."

"I'm going to the dock."

"Is Orazio there?"

"You tell me."

Her eyes went to my face and stayed there.

"I could help you," she said. "I have something you'd want."

I said nothing.

"The last route list. Every shipment schedule that Orazio never got. Three hundred stops, the whole north corridor. I kept it back. It's the only copy."

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