Chapter 13: Signed in Panic

Nolan's back was warm against my shoulder, and eight guns were pointed at the middle of it.

"Put them down," he told his father.

"Step aside, boy," old Askew said.

"No."

"She's not even the one we were promised. She's a smuggler's pet with a Dunleavy face."

"She's the one who just told two hundred people the truth," Nolan said. "You'd have to shoot through me to answer it."

The ballroom had gone silent, except for a woman crying near the fountain.

I looked past Nolan's shoulder and counted.

Eight men on the wall, two on the stairs, and my father frozen at the champagne fountain with his mouth open.

The gun that mattered was the one in the old man's own hand, shaking at his side.

He would not fire on his son.

His men did not know that yet.

"Mr. Askew," I said, loud enough for the back row. "Your contract says the Dunleavy docks go to you if the blood daughter doesn't marry."

"They do."

"Then the docks have to belong to somebody who can lose them. Right now they belong to my father, and he's hiding behind a fountain."

A few people laughed, nervously.

My father went red.

"Gerard," I said. "Come up here."

"Rosalind, please."

"Come up here, or I'll play the rest of the recording."

He walked up the steps one at a time.

The lawyer from the wedding paperwork was standing in the third row with a leather folder against his chest.

"You," I said, and pointed. "You brought the Saturday papers. Which page moves the shares?"

He looked at my father, then at the guns, and then he opened the folder.

"Page nine," he said. "A transfer of the Dunleavy dock company to the bride on the day of the wedding."

"Hand me a pen."

"The day of the wedding," the lawyer said. "It isn't valid until then."

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