The Revenge of Don’s Secret Heiress

I had her hair half ripped out of her scalp. Her face twisted, her hands clawing at the air.

"Help! Murder! The Ferrante woman's gone crazy! Outsiders are coming after Porto Scuro folk, somebody help!"

I slapped her, hard. Her teeth rattled. Blood ran down from the corner of her mouth, and one side of her face puffed up red and shiny in seconds.

"Shut up. One more squawk and I cut your tongue out and feed it to the gulls."

I laid the cold flat of the stiletto against her cheek. She went silent. She started shaking. She didn't dare breathe.

Bruno had clawed his way back to his feet. His face was a mask of blood, his eyes full of hate.

"Sofia Ferrante. So you'll really pull a knife in Porto Scuro. Fine. None of you walks out tonight. What are you all standing around for? Beat her to death. Anything goes wrong, it's on me."

A dozen of Bruno's hangers-on grabbed up sticks and chains and closed around me, tightening the circle.

Giulia, just dragged out of the fish barrel, was clinging to her mother and shaking so hard she could barely speak.

"Sister, please, run. They'll really kill you. Don't worry about us."

I ran my tongue over my back teeth. Whatever I'd buried in Naples for three years was rising back up, all of it.

When I was ten years old I was running smuggled crates with my father in the Naples docks. I'd seen worse before breakfast. A handful of village punks were going to scare me?

I shoved Esposito's wife away, flipped the stiletto in my hand, reverse grip, and stepped forward instead of back.

The first one swung a stick at my shoulder.

I dropped under it, drove my heel into his kneecap — felt it give — and opened up his arm with the blade on the way past.

Less than a minute and there were three men on the ground rolling and screaming.

The rest looked at each other. Sticks shaking in their hands. Nobody wanted to be next.

That's when the whistles started outside the yard, sharp and shrill.

Mayor Don Salvo barreled in with a dozen town cops in tow, batons out, sweat running down his face.

"Stop. Everyone, stop. Sofia Ferrante, you've lost your mind. Pulling a knife on people in my town. Have you no respect for the law?"

Don Salvo had a belly on him. He jabbed a fat finger at me, spit flying with every word.

The mayor of Porto Scuro — Bruno Sacco's own uncle — was the man behind every dock buyout in town. In a town of two thousand people, "Don Salvo" really did call the shots: every fishing boat coming in had to grease his palm, every shipment going out paid him a cut, even the parish priest had to think twice before crossing him. Everyone in town knew the uncle and nephew were two snakes in one hole; they treated this little stretch of coast like their own private kingdom. Trouble was, his world had never extended past the Bay of Naples. He'd never had the imagination to picture the kind of people he absolutely should not touch.

I laughed, short and cold. A drop of blood rolled off the stiletto and landed on the stones, dark red.

"Salvo, if your eyes don't work, dig 'em out and use 'em as paperweights. Where were you when my husband took a boot to the ribs? Where were you when my mother-in-law was face-down in a fish barrel? Now you want to play the impartial mayor? You'd do well in Roman politics — that two-faced act is wasted out here."

His face went purple. He cleared his throat and tried for righteous indignation.

"Enough. Bruno and Luca are injured. There are witnesses, there's evidence. Officers, cuff her and take her to the city station. We don't keep dangerous types like this loose."

A couple of the cops moved toward me with handcuffs.

"Touch her and you're dead."

Weak voice. Iron behind it.

Marco had dragged himself up the wall, one hand braced against the brick, white-faced and shaking but on his feet.

He pulled a rusted fishing knife off the wall and stepped between me and them, unsteady, but planted.

"Sofia is my wife. Anyone touches a hair on her head, I'm Marco Conti, and I'll take you with me on the way out. Anybody not afraid to die, come ahead."

Every word brought up more bloody foam at his lips. But his eyes — his eyes were wolfish. He meant it.

The cops shrank back, glancing at each other, no one moving.

I locked my arms around his waist from behind. The tears finally came.

"Marco, are you stupid? Look at you. Sit down. Sit down."

Marco took my hand. His palm was ice cold, but the grip was steady. Absolute.

"Don't be afraid. As long as I'm breathing, no one touches you."

Don Salvo's face went a darker shade. Something mean flickered behind his eyes.

"Sweet little lovebirds. You won't take the easy road, fine. Bruno — go ring the bell at the church. I'm calling in every dock boss and every family elder in this town. Tonight we deal with these troublemakers by Porto Scuro rules. Let's see who tries to stop me."

Bruno gave a twisted grin and limped out.

A heavy bell started ringing across the rooftops, slow and deep, and you could feel it in your stomach.

This was the worst sentence Porto Scuro had. What Don Salvo called "the rules" was a mob court — not law, just the unwritten code the dock racket and the local strongmen had cooked up between them over the decades. Once they ruled on you, you didn't walk out the same.

Giulia slid down to the stones, the color gone from her face.

"It's over. Sister. Marco. We're dead. Nobody walks out of Porto Scuro after they ring that bell. Nobody."

I held Marco up. I looked at Don Salvo. There was nothing warm left in my face.

"Salvo. You'd better pray we die here tonight. Because if we don't, tomorrow your whole family is on their knees in front of me, and you're spending the rest of your life in a cell."

Don Salvo spat on the floor. The fat under his chin shook.

"Big words. Surround them. Move them down to the dock yards. Not one of them gets away."