Chapter 3 Chapter 3 — The Dead Man on the Table

The reading of the will took place three days later, and I arrived with Ferreira’s medallion in my pocket and the stranger’s two phrases stuck in my head.

They want to kill him. On the highway. An accident.

And if they fail, they’ll use the heiress.

I could have ignored her. I could have told myself she was just a crazy woman from the docks whose fear had made up a story. But I’d been surviving for years precisely by not ignoring people who tremble when they speak. The one who trembles doesn’t lie. The one who lies smiles.

So I didn’t go to the reading as the docile heir they were expecting. I went prepared, with Emilio and two of my men stationed throughout the room, and with the certainty of one thing: someone in that room wanted me dead that day. I didn’t know who.

That was the problem. The stranger gave me the plan, but she gave me nothing more—she didn’t give me a name. So I walked into that room, looking at them all the same.

The entire Circle around the long table. The port partners—the ones who’d spent decades dividing up what was now mine—dressed in mourning, with their hands clasped and their faces impassive. The lawyer sweating at the head of the table. And in the chairs, one by one, the owners of the port’s houses, any one of whom could have been the one who’d ordered the shot.

I looked at them slowly, one by one, not knowing which one it was. And I decided that if I didn’t know who my enemy was, I was going to speak to all of them as if they were.

“Let’s proceed,” said the lawyer.

I signed what needed to be signed. The pier, the warehouses, the routes, the ships. Everything was transferred to my name with the tip of a pen, and with every signature I felt more eyes on me, more silence, more partners calculating how long the boy—whom none of them knew by sight—would last.

I finished signing. I set down the pen. And I waited.

It didn’t take long.

It was one of the waitstaff. A waiter who’d spent the entire meeting pressed against the wall, silent, clutching a tray he wouldn’t let go of. He approached me from behind to take my glass, and in the reflection of the large window, I saw him slip his hand under his jacket.

I was expecting it.

I grabbed his wrist before he could pull out the gun, twisted it upward, and the shot went into the ceiling. Plaster fell onto the table. The partners scrambled back, screaming, knocking over chairs, but Emilio was already coming from the other side, and between the two of us we pinned him against the long table, face down, with his arm broken at an unnatural angle.

“Let me go,” he gasped. “I was just…”

“You’re not doing anything.”

I took the gun from his broken hand. And without raising my voice, without rushing, with the whole table watching me, I pressed the barrel against the back of his neck.

“Who sent you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

I pulled the trigger.

The blast filled the room. The body went limp on the long table, on top of the papers I’d just signed, and the blood slowly spread across the wood to the edge, dripping onto the floor.

Silence.

The Circle’s members stood speechless, pale, clinging to their chairs. None of them moved. They had just watched the boy they’d thought would be easy to take down blow a man’s head off right on top of his own inheritance without so much as a twitch of his facial muscles.

I left the body there. I didn’t cover it up. I didn’t order anyone to take it away. I left it bleeding on the table, in plain sight, so the image would be etched into their minds.

“One of you sent this man to kill me today,” I said, slowly wiping the barrel with a handkerchief. “First on the highway. Then, when you realized you weren’t going to catch me that easily, right here.”

I scanned them with my gaze, one by one. I saw faces of fear. I saw faces of disgust. I saw faces that feigned both. And I didn’t know which was which. Because the one who had given the order was a good one, and a good one doesn’t give himself away with his face.

“I don’t know which one of you it was,” I continued—and that was the truth, though I didn’t intend to let it show as a sign of weakness—“Not yet. But I’m going to find out. And the day I do, no table, no Circle, and no mourning will save you.”

No one spoke.

I walked around the table, passing behind each of those men, and I felt their backs tense as I passed. None of them turned to look at me. That, too, told me something, even though I didn’t know what yet.

“I was raised far from this port,” I said. “It’s true. My father sent me away when I was a boy, and you never knew me, so you got confused—you thought that being far away meant I was soft.”

I stopped at the head of the table, where the old boss had been sitting.

“My father killed an entire family because of this port. Every last one of them. And you were afraid of him your whole lives. I learned from him, even though I was raised far away. With one difference.” I holstered my gun. “Killing cost him something. It doesn’t cost me anything.”

One of the partners—the oldest of them all—swallowed slowly.

“Pick this up,” I said at last, and only then did my men come in to take the body away.

I had just taken over the port. Not with the company. With the dead man.

It took them a while to pull themselves together. They poured themselves drinks with trembling hands, spoke among themselves in hushed tones, and little by little returned to what they were: vultures, calculating once more—this time with me on the upper hand.

It was the oldest one who spoke for them all. He approached, leaning on his cane, looked me up and down, and instead of fear, there was now something else on his face. Calculation.

“You’re your father’s son,” he said. “More so than your father, perhaps. Good. The port needs a firm hand.”

“The port already has an owner.”

“An owner, yes.” He tapped the floor with his cane. “But an owner isn’t the same as a boss, kid. You’ve got the papers. You’ve got the dock. You’ve just shown us you’ve got what it takes. But you don’t have a single house in this port on your side, and a man alone—no matter how much blood he spills—doesn’t call the shots. They’ll devour him.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m setting you straight.” He laughed dryly. “Today you killed the one they sent. Tomorrow they’ll send another, because they know you’re alone. A man without allies is a man they’d do well to kill. But a man married to the daughter of one of these houses, with the Circle bound to his blood… you can’t touch him without starting a war. And no one starts a war on a whim.”

I clenched my jaw. I hated that he was right.

“Get married,” he continued. “To one of our own. Every house at this table has a daughter, a niece, a cousin of marriageable age. Choose. Bind us to you. And then, yes, no one in this port will ever send a waiter with a gun after you again, because doing so would be a declaration of war against half the table.”

I scanned the faces again. Each of those partners, with his chair and his last name, had women at home who would want to get into my bed to get their hands on my port. Any one of those families could be the enemy’s. And any one of those families could also be where they were holding Ferreira captive.

And then it occurred to me.

Because I didn’t just need a wife. I needed to bring to me—without raiding anything, without arousing suspicion—a faceless, nameless servant girl who knew where the heiress was.

“All right,” I said slowly. “I’ll get married. But on my terms.”

The old man raised an eyebrow.

“Let me be introduced to every single unmarried woman in every house in this port,” I said. “Not just one. All of them. Without missing a single one. Daughters, nieces, cousins, foster children—whatever they have under their roof.”

“That’s a lot of women for one man.”

“I’ll choose one. But I want to see them all.” I tucked the medal deeper into my pocket. “Anyone who hides a woman from me in their house is hiding her for a reason. And you’ve already seen today what happens when someone in this port hides something from me.”

The old man stared at me for a long time. Then he smiled, with that vulture’s smile that recognizes another vulture.

“Ambitious. I like that.” He turned away, leaning on his cane. “I’ll make arrangements with the houses. All the single women in the port, right in front of you. Let the parade begin.”

He left.

And I was left alone in the parlor, with the stained table and the medal burning on my chest.

All the women in the port were going to parade before me. All the brothels, forced to bring even their lowest-ranking girls—the ones scrubbing pots—to the parade.

And in one of those lines, scared to death, not knowing that I was already waiting for her, would be the stranger from the pier.

The one who knew where Ferreira was.

The one who kicked me in the balls.