He Faked My Death, So I Let My Family Bury Me novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Wreath

A funeral wreath with her name arrives at breakfast, and she tells her mother and her father two different escape doors to see who talks.

The wreath arrived while Gaspare and I were eating breakfast.

Six days to the banquet.

We sat at opposite ends of the long table, and neither of us had said a word since the coffee came.

Two guards carried the wreath into the dining room and set it on the sideboard.

It was made of white lilies, and the black ribbon across it read: Rosaria Lanzetta, beloved wife.

The cook dropped a spoon in the kitchen.

Gaspare put down his cup.

"Who brought it?"

"A delivery boy, Don Lanzetta. We're holding him in the courtyard."

He stood and walked out without looking at me.

I followed him.

The boy was nineteen at most, kneeling on the gravel with a guard on each arm.

He was shaking so hard his teeth clicked.

"Who sent you?" Gaspare asked.

"A man paid me at the station. I never saw his face, I swear on my mother."

"What did he tell you to say?"

The boy swallowed.

"He said, 'Tell the Don the flowers are early, but the Ficarra Family likes to be on time.'"

Gaspare nodded once.

He took the boy's right hand and bent it back until the wrist broke.

The boy screamed, and the guards let him fall.

Gaspare wiped his palm on a handkerchief.

"Take him to a doctor. Then take him to the station, and let him show you the man who paid him."

Nobody in the courtyard looked at me.

Nobody ever did when he did these things.

I stepped forward into the sudden quiet.

"Do I get a say in how this ends?"

Forty men heard me ask it.

Gaspare turned his grey eyes on me.

"No."

It was the plainest answer he had ever given me.

I nodded.

"Then I won't ask again."

I saw something move in his face, and then it was gone.

He walked back into the house and I stayed in the courtyard, watching the boy being helped into a car.

Nella found me there.

"Signora, that was a lot of men to say it in front of."

"That was the point."

If I was going to leave, I wanted them to remember I had asked.

She looked at me closely.

"You've gone quiet. You have a plan."

"I have a test."

Over the last week I had gone through everyone who knew about the banquet.

Gaspare. Nella. My parents. Venera.

Ficarra had known our Family's business for months before the shooting, and he knew the date of the banquet too.

The wreath proved it.

Someone had told him where to strike, and someone could tell him where I would run.

I did not want to think it was one of mine.

So I decided to find out, in a way that could not hurt anyone if I was wrong.

My parents came for lunch at one.

My mother brought a tray of cannoli for Venera, who was upstairs with her two guards.

My father brought his loud laugh, which filled every room he entered.

He kissed me on both cheeks.

"My strong girl. You look tired."

"I'm fine, Papa."

Gaspare ate with us for ten minutes and left for a meeting at the port.

He did not touch his wine.

The moment his car passed the gate, my mother set down her fork.

"Rosaria, I want to ask you something and I want you to be honest."

"Of course."

"Will you be safe? On that night? Your father and I can't sleep."

Her eyes were wet.

I held her hand.

"Gaspare told me not to say where I'm going. But I trust you, Mama."

I looked around the empty dining room and lowered my voice.

"I leave through the chapel door, by the old bell tower."

She squeezed my fingers.

"The chapel door," she repeated. "Thank God."

I let her hug me.

Her perfume was the same as always, and I hated that I was counting how well she remembered.

Later my father walked me out to the terrace.

He lit a cigar and leaned on the rail, watching the garden.

"Your mother worries, but she is soft," he said. "I'm the one who has to think straight. Which door?"

"Papa, I told you. Gaspare said not to."

"Gaspare is not your father."

He said it gently, and he smiled when he said it.

I looked down at my hands.

"The north gate on the dock," I said quietly. "Just the dock side. Please don't tell anyone, Papa."

His cigar stopped halfway to his mouth.

"The north gate. On the dock."

"Yes."

He lowered his cigar.

"Good girl," he said. "Good."

I leaned against his arm so he wouldn't see my face.

Venera had asked me nothing.

She had stayed upstairs all through lunch, eating cannoli with her two guards at the door.

She hadn't come down once to hear where her sister would be on the last night.

I told myself that meant she didn't care to know.

My father stayed on the terrace until the end of his cigar.

Then he took my face in both hands and asked a last time.

"North gate. You're certain?"

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