The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Two Years of Listening

In whispers Marcello tells her what he's heard for two years and they make a deal; by morning she hears Tiziana order a double dose so the bride will see him seize and sign.

I didn't scream.

I put my free hand over my own mouth and nodded.

His fingers slid off my wrist and dropped to the sheet.

That small grip had cost him everything he had.

I leaned in close, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek.

"Can you hear me?"

"Two years," he whispered. "I've heard everything."

His voice was a scrape.

"Vittoria," he said.

I stared at him.

"The priest said it," he whispered. "Three times. I counted."

Out in the hall, the clock ticked.

I knelt by the bed so my head was level with his.

"Who's doing this to you?"

"You saw her."

"What's in the bag?"

"Don't know. Something that puts the lights out." He swallowed, and it took a while. "At eleven it comes. By midnight I'm gone. In the day I hear. I can't move."

"Not even your eyes?"

"Not until tonight."

He looked at me.

I had a hundred questions.

I asked the one that mattered.

"Why?"

He closed his eyes for a second, and I panicked that he was going back under.

He opened them again.

"She talks in here," he said. "She thinks I'm furniture."

Then, a few words at a time, he told me.

Tiziana made her phone calls in his room because no one else came in.

She called a bank in the Cayman Islands every Friday.

She moved money through a shipping company with Fabrizio's name on it.

She talked about ports and cranes and accounts.

And twice a month, she said the same thing to her son.

"After the old man."

"After the old man, what?" I asked.

"After the old man, me," Marcello whispered. "A wife signs. Nobody fights a wife."

My stomach turned over.

I thought of the gold pen.

The blank date.

"I didn't sign it," I said.

"I know." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "The rented bride reads."

I almost laughed.

I pressed my lips together hard.

"You heard that?"

"I heard my father laugh," he said. "First time in a year."

We made the deal at four in the morning, on our knees and on our backs, a foot apart.

I would keep the bag out of his arm.

He would keep his eyes shut and his body limp whenever the door opened.

Nobody else would know until we chose who.

"And when I'm free," he whispered, "your father's debt is paid. All of it."

"I don't need you to pay me to keep you alive."

"You married me for it."

"I married you for a roof," I said. "This is different."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"What do you do?" he asked. "I heard 'undertaker.' I thought I misheard."

"Funeral director. South 9th Street. Three generations."

"So you're the one they paid for my casket."

"Mahogany," I said. "Brass handles. Very handsome."

His shoulders shook once under the sheet.

It might have been the closest thing to a laugh he could manage.

The clock struck five.

His eyes started to drift.

"Sleep," I said. "The real kind."

"Wake me if she comes."

"She won't need to wake you," I said. "You're asleep."

At eight, the door banged open.

I was in the armchair by the window with my shoes off and a magazine I wasn't reading.

Fabrizio walked in eating an apple.

Two of his men stayed in the doorway.

"Morning, Mrs. Brancato." He said it like a dirty joke. "How was the honeymoon?"

I didn't answer.

He stood over Marcello's bed and took a big bite.

"Look at him," he said to his men. "Two years, and he still gets the nicer room."

They laughed.

Fabrizio leaned down and patted Marcello's cheek.

Then he slapped it, light and quick.

"Hey, little brother. Your wife's here. Say thank you."

Marcello didn't move.

Not his eyelids.

Not his mouth.

I watched his hand lie open on the sheet and I knew exactly what it cost him to leave it there.

"Don't touch him," I said.

Fabrizio turned around slowly, still chewing.

"Or what? You'll embalm me?"

"I'd do a very nice job."

His men stopped laughing.

Fabrizio smiled with half his mouth.

"The vegetable got a guard dog." He tossed the apple core onto Marcello's chest. "Rented, but still."

He walked out.

His men followed.

I picked the core off my husband's shirt and threw it in the wastebasket.

Then I bent down and pretended to fix his pillow.

"I'm going to kill him," Marcello breathed, without moving his lips.

"Get in line," I said.

At noon I went down the back stairs to find coffee.

The kitchen was empty.

Through the half-open door of the pantry, I heard Tiziana's voice.

I stopped.

"The girl didn't sign," she said. "So she needs to see it."

Another woman answered, low. It was the night nurse, who slept in the house by day.

"See what, ma'am?"

"Double the dose tonight," Tiziana said. "Let her watch him seize. A girl like that signs anything once she's scared."

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