Chapter 162: Pier NineMarried to the Devil of ValtieriPier Nine stood at the far end of the Genoese container port, where thelights ran out.It was a long concrete finger thrust into black water, lined withrusting cranes and stacked with steel boxes the color of old blood. Asingle sodium lamp burned at the landward end. A thin cold rain wasfalling. The wind smelled of diesel and brine, and somewhere out inthe dark a ship's horn gave a long low groan, like an animal in pain.Isla walked down the length of it alone.She carried the second Book in a canvas satchel on her shoulder.She wore a plain dark coat, and flat shoes, and her hair tied back witha piece of string. She did not look to left or right. Her heart wasbeating very slowly, and very hard, with a heaviness that sherecognized from twelve years of audits: the strange, flat calm thatcomes in the last minute before a ledger either balances or does not.At the end of the pier, under a gantry, the ship was waiting.She w
Last Updated : 2026-11-13
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