Chapter 3
Nobody stood up for Sera.
She noted it, filed it, and walked the length of the table to the empty chair on Rafe's left, which was hers, and sat down in it.
"Sera." Livia's voice was wrecked. She'd been screaming at some point in the last twenty hours and you could hear it. "I'm sorry about yesterday."
"Are you."
"Yes." She looked straight at her, which was new. "I'd have died in that yard. They'd have filmed it and sent it to my uncles, and by Friday half this family would be flying a different flag."
"So no, I'm not sorry he came," Livia said. "But I'm sorry it was your day."
That was the trouble with Livia Cardone.
She didn't lie. She'd never had to.
"The ring," Sera said.
Livia's hand went still on the table.
"That was mine to give," Rafe said. "Not hers to take. I put it on her Tuesday and it stays there until the Cardone side stops asking questions."
"It's a piece of metal, Sera."
"It's a signal. That's the entire job of a ring in this house." She reached for the coffee. "You're telling forty men the old man's daughter is under your hand. That's a good move. I'd have made it too."
Her uncle cleared his throat. "Sera"
"I'm going to say something now, and I'd like the table to hear it. So nobody has to hear it secondhand and get it wrong."
The room went quiet.
"There's no wedding. Not moved. Not postponed. There isn't one."
She put the cup down.
"I'll finish out the quarter and close the books. Then I'm done with the clean side. Whoever you want it handed to, I'll spend six weeks teaching them."
The bottom of the table came apart.
Rafe didn't move at all. He waited until it died, which took about forty seconds.
Then he said one word.
"No."
"It's not a request."
"It's not yours to request." He turned his head and looked at her properly for the first time since the church. "You don't get to quit this family."
Nobody at that table breathed.
"Then let me be clear about what I actually do," Sera said, "so everyone here knows what they're voting on."
She counted it off on the tablecloth.
"Eleven bank accounts. My name on every one. My face at every desk. Nine years of paperwork that holds up because I built it that way."
"The marina. The truck yard. Both restaurants. The auction rooms. The parking company."
"Every dollar that comes off that water and turns into something a lawyer can say out loud goes through a door I made, and I'm the only one holding a key."
She looked down the table.
"So take it off me and tell me what happens next. Vince. You're the lawyer. Go ahead."
Vince wouldn't look up from his plate.
"Nothing happens," Sera said. "That's the answer."
"The money doesn't blow up. It just sits in a hole and rots. And in ninety days the men in this room start asking why they're getting paid out of a bag like it's 1978."
She stood.
"So I'm not quitting. I'm giving notice. That's a courtesy, and I'm the only person at this table who's given anyone one this week."
She got as far as the door.
"Sera."
She stopped.
"Sit down," Rafe said. "Please."
The please landed in that room like a dropped plate. Half the table looked at him.
She didn't turn around.
"Why?"
"Because you're right about the money, and I'd like ten minutes."
"You had a year of ten minutes."
She went out through the kitchen, past Nella, who wouldn't meet her eyes, and got in her car.
Her hands didn't start shaking until she was through the gate.
She pulled over two miles down the river road, put the flashers on, and sat there breathing until it stopped.
Then she called Nadia.
"Where are you?" Her assistant sounded like she'd been up all night, because she had. "The whole city is calling this office. Somebody sold the church footage to the paper, Sera. There's a photograph of your veil on the steps."
"Nadia. Listen." Sera watched a ship come down the channel. "Pull the marina file. The third page."
"Which marina file?"
"Just read it and call me back."
Eleven minutes later Nadia called back, and her voice had changed.
"Sera, we don't own the water."
"Say that again."
"The boats are ours. The docks are ours. The water underneath them belongs to somebody else and we pay him for it every year."
"Pay who?"
"That's the part." Nadia's voice went thin. "Whoever he is, he can put us off that water with three months' notice, and he doesn't have to give a reason. It's one sentence. It's the shortest sentence on the page."
"Who holds it?"
Silence.
"Nadia."
"A company called North Basin," Nadia said. "And North Basin is Devane."
Sera sat in her car on the river road and started, very slowly, to smile.
He hadn't offered to help her. He hadn't told her he'd wait.
He'd shown her the knife he was already holding against her family's throat.
And then he'd let her out of the car.
Her phone buzzed. A number she didn't have.
[You read it.]
She typed: [You've had that four months. Why show me now?]
The answer took a while.
[Because until yesterday you weren't for sale.]