The Revenge of Don’s Secret Heiress

The sun was sliding down. The clouds along the horizon had gone deep red.

But the dockyard at Porto Scuro was lit up like noon. Dozens of torches turned the stretch of pavement bright as day.

A few hundred people, torches and crowbars and chains and fishing gaffs, packed in around the four of us.

The air had a weight to it that made it hard to breathe.

Rosa was clutching Giulia, both of them shivering, neither daring to make a sound. Marco was propped against a rusted iron anchor, gray-faced, his chest spasming with every breath.

Don Salvo had climbed up onto the warehouse steps, holding a fat book he called the "Town Code" — really just a private compendium of the punishments the local underworld families had decided on, year by year. He looked down at us from up there.

"Marco Conti broke town rules. He let his wife pull a knife on locals. Disrespect to his elders. Sentence — both legs broken, expelled from Porto Scuro, forbidden to return. As for that shrew Sofia — three days on display in the dock square. Conti family warehouse and dock share, confiscated. Property of the Dockworkers' Association."

The crowd cheered. The greed in their eyes wasn't even hidden anymore.

Esposito's wife jumped highest of all, jabbing a finger at me.

"Yes. Do it. See if she's still got that mouth on her after that. Sell her off to a farm in Sicily. Let her sweat for a change."

I looked around at all those greedy, ugly faces, and started to laugh. The sound carried in the night.

So this was the place I'd hidden my whole self in for three years, for love. The old saying held — backwater breeds bastards. They wore the face of decent folk and underneath there was nothing but calculation and grasping.

I gripped the stiletto. My nails were cutting into my palm. Threads of blood worked out between my fingers.

"Salvo. What are you, exactly, that you think you can hold a kangaroo court? You think Porto Scuro is some independent kingdom? There are still laws in this country. This is murder."

Don Salvo found this funny. He threw his head back and laughed.

"Laws. In Porto Scuro, I am the law. The capital is far away and the king doesn't care. We kill you tonight, push you into the sea, who's going to find anything? Get on with it. Get the woman."

A dozen heavy-set men closed in, rubbing their hands, looking me up and down without bothering to hide it.

Marco let out a despairing sound and tried to lift the fishing knife — choked on his own blood and started coughing it up.

"Don't move." I forced him back, planted myself between him and them.

I licked my dry lips. Something old and dark was rising behind my eyes.

"Whoever steps forward, I put ten holes in him. Anybody not afraid to die, you're welcome to try."

I dragged the blade across my own forearm. My blood ran down the steel and dripped on the stones.

That stopped them. The crazy kind of move stops people every time.

Nobody wanted to be the first man through the door. They were here to watch a show and pick at the carcass after — none of them was looking to die for it.

Bruno panicked. He hopped out of the line, snarling.

"Useless cowards. She's one woman. All of you, together. Two thousand euros to the first man who lays a hand on her."

Two thousand euros, in this town, was more than a season's catch.

The men looked at each other. The greed lit up. They lifted their sticks and chains together and brought them down.

Nowhere to go. I took it.

Two heavy thuds.

A chain caught me across the back. The pain went through me like a hot wire — I felt it in my organs.

Something coppery came up my throat. I swallowed it down, used the momentum to drive the stiletto into the next man's thigh.

Another scream went up.

But two fists can't fight four. The sticks kept coming.

Marco shoved me hard and put his back between me and them.

"Sofia, run. Don't worry about me. Go. Just go."

His voice was thinning out. His back was already a mess of broken skin and blood, soaking the stones.

"Marco—" I screamed it. Tears blurring everything. My chest splitting.

Bruno had gotten close in the chaos. He was holding an old revolver — the kind that gets passed around the Porto Scuro black market, no serial number, no paper trail.

The black hole of the muzzle was an inch from Marco's head.

"Die, dog. Be smarter next time around."

His finger was tightening on the trigger.

My head went white. Whatever was left of reason was gone.

My father had taught me, when I was small: if a man's coming for your life, you go for his whole family first. With evil men you have to be worse than they are.

I lunged at Bruno.

I kicked the torch stand on the way. A burning piece of pinewood came down across his shoulders.

The revolver fired.

The crack was deafening, and my ears rang.

The bullet skimmed past Marco's scalp and smashed into an old wooden plaque on the warehouse wall. Splinters everywhere.