He Faked My Death, So I Let My Family Bury Me novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Dead Woman

The room over the bakery had a single bed, a gas ring, and a window that looked onto a wall.

Nella slept in a chair with her coat over her knees.

I did not sleep.

At six, the smell of baking bread came up through the floorboards, and downstairs a woman I had never met began singing.

I sat on the edge of the bed in a borrowed cotton nightgown and listened to her.

Nobody in Kalsa knew who I was.

For the first time in nine years, no one was guarding my door.

Nella woke and rubbed her neck.

"Signora. You haven't moved."

"Turn on the television."

She did.

The small set on the dresser flickered and found the morning news.

A woman in a red jacket stood in front of the burned port hall with a microphone, and behind her the roof had fallen in.

"Eleven dead, and thirty-two injured," she said. "Among the dead, according to sources, is Rosaria Lanzetta, wife of Gaspare Lanzetta, who was seated at the head table when the blast occurred."

Nella reached for the remote.

"Leave it."

"Remains have not yet been recovered," the woman went on. "Police say the fire was too intense."

They showed a photograph of me.

I was smiling in it, at a charity lunch six years ago, in a hat.

I had not known they kept that picture.

The camera cut to the street outside the hall.

Gaspare stood on the pavement at dawn with soot on his collar.

Three men stood around him, and he did not seem to hear any of them.

He was staring at the cameras with his grey eyes wide and red, and I thought, he has not slept.

He did not look like a man who had written the plan himself.

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