Chapter 4: The Funeral

Stefano was still on one knee when he turned around and saw her.

He got up so fast he nearly fell over.

"Carina. It's not what it looks like."

"It looks like my husband proposing to my sister." Carina kept the phone steady. "At midnight. In a hotel."

"She called me here."

I looked at him.

He wouldn't look back.

"Did she?" Carina's voice climbed. "Did she call you, Vera? Couldn't wait until after the funeral?"

Across the hall, Hector's door opened.

He leaned in the frame in his undershirt, holding a cup of coffee.

"Everything all right, Underboss?"

"They were just leaving."

I stepped inside the suite.

Stefano put his hand on the door.

"Vera, please. Just take the ring."

"Give it to my mother," I said. "It was her mother's."

I shut the door in both their faces.

Through it, I heard Carina start screaming.

I heard the elevator ding.

Then I heard nothing, and I sat down on the floor with my back against the door until the sun came up.

Holy Name Cathedral was full by nine forty-five.

Every family in Chicago sent someone for Sal Lombardi.

I walked up the center aisle at five to ten with eight kids in borrowed black.

Hector had found a store open at seven. Tomás wore a tie for the first time in his life and kept pulling at it.

The front pew on the left was full.

My mother. Lorenzo. Carina and Stefano. Two aunts I hadn't seen since I was a girl.

There was no room.

I stood at the end of the pew and waited.

Carina didn't move.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Mafia Bride They Rejected Became an Underboss from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.