My father was one of the first dons to rise out of the Naples mob. My mother was an iron-fisted businesswoman with a reputation that made grown men flinch.

When I was ten, somebody had the nerve to hijack one of my father's freight ships. He had the man's arms and legs broken with a crowbar, then stuffed a handful of gold rings down his throat — told him to count his money while he crawled.

When I was fifteen, some scheming woman tried to get her claws into my father. My mother hired the filthiest pimps off the docks, shipped her down to a back-alley bar in Marseille, and told her to make her own way.

And me — I grew up running the streets of Naples like I owned them. The sons of every other family knew to call me Miss Ferrante and keep their hands to themselves.

Then I met him. A rough, quiet man fresh out of the army. For him I put down the knives, traded the silk for plain cotton, and followed him back to that little nothing of a coastal town, Porto Scuro.

Today my mother-in-law and my husband went down to the dock warehouses to settle a dispute. They held her face down in a barrel of rotting fish guts. They kicked in three of his ribs.

I stared at the salt fish I'd been slicing on the kitchen board, let out a cold laugh, and brought the knife down so hard the oak split in half.

Then I dialed my father's private line.

The phone rang in the empty office. There was something almost funny about it — the Don of Naples, working as my switchboard.

The line connected.

"Yeah." My father Enzo Ferrante's low voice came through, glasses clinking faintly in the background — somewhere a private club was running a big deal.

"Dad. It's me. Sofia."

The line went dead silent. Then a crash — a table flipped, glass shattering on the floor.

"Baby. Finally. That hick soldier laid hands on you, didn't he? I'll have him gutted before sundown."

"Bring everyone. Porto Scuro, on the bay. Bring your best surgeon. Bring whatever else you need to bring." I stared at the stiletto in my hand. My knuckles had gone white. My voice was flat.

"Someone broke your son-in-law's ribs. They held my mother-in-law down in a barrel of rotting fish."

A sharp intake of breath on the other end. Then a roar of pure rage.

"They've lost their fucking minds. Touching anyone who belongs to Enzo Ferrante. You hold tight. I'll have that miserable little town flattened before sunrise."

Click.

I hung up and kicked the mayor's door off its hinges. Heavy oak, gone in one shot, kicking up a cloud of dust on the way down.

Outside, the sun was blinding. Hot wind off the sea, thick with salt and the smell of fish.

I tucked the stiletto back into my sleeve and walked east, fast, toward the Esposito warehouse.

Three years. Three years I'd packed away the Ferrante temper for Marco. Cotton skirts. Lighting the stove, learning to make a decent plate of pasta. Counting coins like any other fisherman's wife.

I thought stepping back would buy us peace. What it bought was these Porto Scuro snakes thinking they could walk on us.

They really thought Sofia Ferrante was something they could push around.

There was already a crowd outside the Esposito warehouse, nudging each other and pointing. Nobody stepping in. A few of them looked entertained.

I shoved through. My pupils contracted. Something cracked open in my chest.

In the middle of the yard, two women had my mother-in-law Rosa pinned to the ground, half her body shoved down into a barrel of rotting fish guts. Filthy water dripped from her gray hair. Flies circled her head. The old woman was past begging — she could only retch, weakly.

Beside her, my sister-in-law Giulia knelt on the stones. Her forehead was split open. Blood and tears smeared her face. She was sobbing so hard she could barely get the words out.

"Please. Please let her go. Take the warehouse. Take all of it. Just let her go."

Luca Esposito hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat it on the ground. Then he kicked Giulia in the shoulder.

"Spinster bitch. Squatting on my family's warehouse and acting like you've got rights. Sign the transfer today, or I'm gonna make this old hag lick the bottom of that barrel clean before she goes home. You can't even pop out a kid. You don't get to negotiate."

Across the yard, Marco was lying in a pool of blood.

His back, normally straight as a rod, was curled in on itself from the pain. His white shirt had gone red. Bloody foam was bubbling at the corners of his mouth.

Bruno Sacco — the local thug — stood over him in a loud checked shirt, one boot pressed flat on Marco's chest. He was hefting a chunk of broken brick, slick with blood.

"Veteran, my ass. In Porto Scuro, I'm the law. You came to the Esposito yard asking for justice? I'll end you right here. You think your bones are tough? Let's find out — your skull or my brick."

Bruno raised the brick over Marco's head, ready to drive it down.

Something inside me snapped. Every wire in my brain went hot.

"You're dead."

I roared it and went straight at him.

Bruno didn't even have time to turn his head. My foot caught him square in the face.

Crack.

His nose went, clean. He screamed and went over backward, blood pouring out, the brick dropping out of his hand and landing on his own foot. He howled like a stuck pig.

The crowd took a step back as one. A wave of sucked-in breath.

I dropped to my knees and gathered Marco's head in my hands.

His face was the color of paper. Cold sweat had soaked through his hair. Every breath he took whistled through his chest.

"Sofia. Get out of here. Too many of them." Marco grabbed my wrist hard, his eyes already losing focus, still trying to push me away.

My eyes burned. The tears came in fat drops, falling on his face.

Three years married, and he'd never raised his voice at me once. In winter he'd go out fishing in the dead of night, worried I'd be cold, and bring back the best of the catch for my soup. He took every hard chore in the house. He treated me like something precious.

And now he was lying under some thug's boot, his ribs in pieces, one foot in the grave.

I set his head down gently and stood up. My eyes moved slowly across every face in the yard.

Luca Esposito blinked, then snatched up a rusty shovel and pointed it at me.

"Bitch, you hit Bruno? I'll bury all four of you. Nobody walks out of this yard tonight. Nobody."

He swung the shovel at my head. I could hear the air whistle.

I twisted out of the way. Flicked my wrist. The stiletto dropped into my palm from inside my sleeve.

The blade caught the sun.

A wet sound.

The point went into the meat of his thigh, all the way through, and the blood came after.

"AAAAH—"

Luca dropped the shovel and went down clutching his leg, screaming, rolling on the stones.

The two women holding Rosa let go and scrambled backward, eyes huge, staring at me like I was something out of a story.

I walked over and grabbed Esposito's wife by the hair, lifted her clean off the ground.

"Who told you it was safe to lay a finger on a Ferrante."

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."

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.