Chapter 2 Chapter 2 — The One Who Knows
It knocked me off my feet.
There, standing among the dumpsters, gasping for breath and with pain shooting from my stomach to my ears, it took me a long moment to straighten up. That savage woman had knocked me out with her knee and had run off before I could grab her by the hair.
“Bitch,” I said into the air, because there was no one else to say it to.
I leaned against the cold metal until the pain subsided to a bearable level. Her footsteps were no longer audible. She’d been swallowed up by the maze of dumpsters, and I was in no condition to run after anyone.
I crouched down to pick up the hat I’d dropped during the struggle, and there, on the wet floor, was something else.
A broken chain. With a little medallion hanging from it.
She’d dropped it. I knew it right away, because I didn’t carry anything like that, and because it was still warm from having been against her skin. I picked it up with two fingers.
A tiny silver virgin, worn smooth from being touched so often. I turned it over to see if there was anything on the back, and there was. Engraved in fine lettering—the kind you have custom-made—was a last name.
Ferreira.
My hand froze in midair.
I clenched my fist around the medallion and stood still, listening to the water lapping against the pilings, my head spinning faster than my stomach.
Ferreira.
I had come to this port because of that name. Just because of that name.
My father didn’t die peacefully. No one in my family dies peacefully, but he least of all. He had me come when he could no longer even lift his head off the pillow—me, who had been away for years, sent by his own hand to run the legitimate businesses—the ones that pay taxes—to keep me away from the port and its secrets.
When I arrived, he was no longer speaking. He left me only a letter, written in shaky handwriting—one of the last things he did with that hand.
I read it just once and memorized it.
I took the port with bloodshed. I killed every last one of the Ferreiras, because there’s no room for two in this port. But I made a mistake about one thing, and I’m leaving that thing to you, because I no longer have time to fix it.
The Ferreiras had a daughter. A newborn. The night I finished them off, the child disappeared. I never found her. I searched for her for years and never knew if she died in the fire or if someone took her away.
If that girl is alive, she’s a woman now. And as long as she breathes, there’s someone with a greater claim to this port than you. Someone any enemy can use to take everything away from you with the law on their side.
Find her. And finish what I left unfinished.
That’s why I arrived the way I did. Unannounced, nameless, infiltrating the wake like any other mourner. Because if I was coming to hunt down the last Ferreira, I couldn’t give anyone time to hide her. No one in this port knew that the heir was already among them.
I came to find a woman I didn’t even know existed. A shadow. A rumor of a baby lost in a fire years ago.
And on my first night, at the pier, a stranger bumps right into me, scared out of her mind, and blurts out that there’s an heiress. That they’re keeping her hidden. That they’re going to use her.
And then she pisses me off and disappears with the only clue I’ve ever had in my life hanging around her neck.
“So that crazy woman on the pier knows where Ferreira is,” Emilio said the next morning in the office, looking at the medallion I’d left on the desk. “And why didn’t you grab her?”
“Because she kicked me right where you’d expect and ran off.”
Emilio burst out laughing. It went on way too long.
“Laugh,” I told him. “Laugh all you want.”
“Sorry, Max, sorry. It’s just…” He wiped his face, still choking on his laughter. “The most feared man in the port, taken down by a maid. It’s poetic.”
“I don’t know if she’s a maid.” I picked up the medal and spun it between my fingers. “She was dressed like a maid. She spoke like a maid. But she was wearing this around her neck.”
Emilio stopped laughing.
“Wait. Did she have the Ferreira medal?”
“The chain broke when we collided. It’s hers.”
He fell silent, piecing together the same puzzle I’d spent the whole night putting together and taking apart.
“Then she doesn’t know where the heiress is,” he said slowly. “She knows the heiress. She lives nearby. Or she works where they’re keeping her.” He looked up. “A servant who wears a Ferreira medallion. Max, that woman is in this up to her neck. Either she serves her, or she protects her, or…”
“Or something.” I didn’t want to think about the “or something” just yet. “What matters is that she’s the thread. I pull on her, and I’ll get to the heiress.”
Because that was the only thing that was clear. The woman at the dock knew. She’d said so herself, trembling, before she realized she’d said too much. They’re going to use the heiress. She knew she existed, she knew they were keeping her hidden, and she probably knew where.
I’d find the woman at the pier, and she’d lead me to Ferreira.
“And how are you going to find her?” Emilio said. “You didn’t see her face. It’s nighttime, it’s a pier—it could have been anyone.”
He was right. I didn’t see her face. I didn’t recognize her voice. In that darkness, she was nothing more than a shadow that was trembling and kicking.
But there was something about her.
“She was at the wake,” I said. “She ran out of the house, from the side of the cellar, just as I was coming down the stairs. From the bathroom. And she found out about all this somewhere in that house tonight, because her fear was fresh—it was the fear of having just heard something that split her in two.”
“That’s practically a wake, Max.”
“No.” I clenched the medallion in my fist. “Find out who was on duty last night. Every female staff member who entered that house. And above all, find out which ones acted strangely. Which one went missing, which one got sick, which one left early. Fear is hard to hide. Someone saw her acting strange.”
Emilio took notes, but he was shaking his head.
“That’s a lot of people. It’ll take them a while.”
“Let them take their time.” I stood up. “That woman knows where the only thing in the world that can take my port away is. I’ll find her, I’ll pressure her, and she’ll lead me to the heiress. And when I have the heiress in front of me, I’ll finish what my father left unfinished.”
Emilio put away his notebook. He paused at the door.
“What if the woman at the pier and the heiress are the same person?”
I stared at him.
He hadn’t said it out loud. He hadn’t let me. Because a nameless servant, with a Ferreira medallion around her neck, scared out of her wits, talking about an heiress they “have locked away”…
“No,” I said. “She was talking about the heiress as if she were someone else. ‘They’re going to use her.’ She wasn’t talking about herself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
I wasn’t sure of anything.
But I preferred to believe that the woman who’d driven me crazy was just the thread, and not the whole ball of yarn. Because if that wretched woman at the dock was the last Ferreira, then I’d had in my hands—by law and by blood—the true owner of my port.
I’d had her by both arms.
And I let her go.
