Debris Line_Gibson Vaughn by Matthew FitzSimmons

Author:Matthew FitzSimmons [FitzSimmons, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503951648
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2018-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

João Luna stirred his coffee awkwardly with his right hand. Tapping the spoon on the brim of the cup, he laid it on the saucer. He was left-handed but had to keep it balled in a fist beneath the table to stop it from shaking. Only his left hand shook, not his right. He didn’t understand why. At least his head no longer felt stuffed with feathers. Whatever they’d given him felt like the anesthesia a dentist gave him to take out his wisdom teeth. With his right hand, he sipped his coffee and looked out at the ocean that he loved so much. What good was a man whose hands shook?

His body ached. When he exhaled, his breath whistled as though air was escaping through a leak somewhere inside him. His rib cage pinched like a suit he’d outgrown. There’d been no doubt in his mind that he would die. Sitting in that hotel room while that man punished him with his fists. Luisa Mata looking on with those cold, reptile eyes. Her little clock ticking off five minutes.

She had accused him of betraying her uncle, but João still didn’t know what she’d meant. He didn’t understand how he’d come to be in that hotel room in the first place. Or how he’d left it with his life. Two men had driven him into Faro and ordered him out of the car. Thrown his things on the sidewalk. Except his passport, which they’d kept. Acting like they had done him a favor. Which in a way, he supposed they had.

He could have called his father to pick him up, but João wasn’t ready to see him. Didn’t know what he would say when he did. He felt angry. Abandoned. And even though Luisa had let him go, he still feared that they would come back for him. For a moment, he felt proud that it had been him in that hotel room instead of his father. Maybe, he thought, this was what it meant to be a man.

Instead of calling his father, he’d taken the bus to Olhão and limped down to the harbor. When Luisa Mata had asked him if he had anything of value, he’d thought only of the Alexandria. The way Luisa had looked through him, he’d gotten it into his head that she knew everything there was to know about him. What if she’d done something to the boat? In truth, that would be worse than killing him. The Alexandria belonged to his family. It was his family in a way that neither he nor his father ever would be. Standing on her deck was the only way João would feel at ease again. Once he’d found the ship intact and checked every inch of her, he’d gone for a quiet cup of coffee so he could think.

The café sat at the corner of the old fish market. When João was a boy, his father had brought him here in the mornings after the boat had been squared away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.