Why Cry When You Made Me Leave? novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Docks at Night

Corrado wanted to walk me in, and I wouldn't let him.

"You told me you wouldn't decide what I can take," I said.

"I'm not deciding," he said.

"I'm asking to stand at the end of Pier Eight with a rifle."

"Not a step closer unless you call my name," he said.

I looked at him for a long time.

Then I nodded once, and he nodded back.

The grain warehouse on Pier Nine stood black against a sky with no stars.

One lamp burned inside.

I walked in through the loading door at midnight with the cook's old pen in my fist.

The old lawyer sat in a chair in front of a wall of grain sacks, gagged, his gray hair wet with sweat.

Tancredi stood behind him with a pistol in one hand and a typed page in the other.

He had not shaved.

His shirt was the same one he had worn at the yard, stiff with dried blood.

"Alone," he said.

"As ordered."

"Shut the door."

I shut it.

"Give me the pen."

"Read me the page first," I said.

"I'd like to know what I'm giving up."

He liked that.

I saw it in his face, the old appetite for being asked.

"It says that you, Emanuela Cardinale, daughter of Baldassare, give up all claim to the Quay docks and to every property in Brogary, now and forever."

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