This Time I Choose Mr. Mafia novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Dead on My Feet

I didn't answer Rhett.

I took out my own phone, filmed his screen for five seconds with his face reflected in the glass, and walked away.

At 12:01 a.m. Danielle posted it.

Praying for my sister. Please respect our family's privacy at this painful time.

By six in the morning it had two million views.

By seven there were three news vans on Oakley Avenue.

I stood at the front window in my robe and watched them.

Bruna stood beside me eating cereal out of the box.

"You could stay inside," she said. "Let it blow over. I'll send letters. I write beautiful letters. People cry."

"In my experience," I said, "it doesn't blow over. It hardens."

"In your experience." She looked at me sideways. "You're twenty-six."

"I'm an old twenty-six."

Damiano came down the stairs knotting a tie, which I had never seen him wear.

It was dark green.

Exactly the green of my birthday dress.

"You're going out there," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"Then I'm going with you."

"They'll say I'm hiding behind a gangster."

"Then hide in front of one," he said. "I'll stand at the back and look bored."

I wore the black dress with the high neck, and my mother's pearls.

I put on red lipstick, the kind Danielle always said was too much on me.

When I opened the front door, the reporters surged up the walk until they saw Damiano behind me.

Then they stopped at the bottom step, all of them.

"Mrs. Bastiani..."

"Ms. Kinnear," I said pleasantly. "I kept my name. My husband's very modern."

Somebody laughed.

"Ms. Kinnear, the video. You told your birthday guests you'd died. Are you receiving treatment?"

I let the question sit in the morning air for a second.

Then I laughed.

Not a nervous laugh.

A real one, the kind you can't fake on camera.

"I'd been standing in four-inch heels for six hours," I said.

"Ask any woman what she says at hour six. 'I'm dead' is the polite version."

Three of the women with microphones laughed out loud.

One of the cameramen grinned behind his lens.

"So you deny any mental health..."

"I deny that a clip with sad piano under it is a diagnosis," I said.

"And I'd like to know who added the piano. Very professional."

I looked straight into the Channel Five camera.

"Danielle, if you're watching, I'm fine. Thank you for praying. Pray quieter."

Behind me, I heard Bruna choke on her cereal in the doorway.

"One more thing," I said. "My late mother left me ten percent of Kinnear Shipping and a board seat."

"I never took it. I'm taking it today."

The reporters went quiet and started writing.

"My first question as a director will be about vendor accounts," I said. "Every dollar, two years back."

I didn't say whose department that was.

Everyone in that business knew.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

I looked at the screen and held it up so the cameras could see who it was, then answered on speaker.

"Dad."

"I'm watching you on Channel Five from a hospital bed," my father said, hoarse and clear.

"Tell them my daughter speaks for this family. All of it."

"You can tell them yourself," I said. "They can hear you."

There was a pause.

"Good," my father said, and hung up.

I thanked the reporters, turned around and walked back up the steps.

Damiano held the door.

He'd been standing at the back looking bored, exactly as promised, and every camera had caught him doing it.

He shut the door behind us and the noise of the street cut off.

"Pray quieter," he said.

"Too much?"

"Bruna's crying."

"I'm not crying," Bruna called from the kitchen. "I inhaled a Cheerio. I'm proud of you. Shut up."

By noon the clip had a new top comment.

Somebody had cut my laugh onto the end of Danielle's sad piano, and it had four million views.

By three, Danielle's post was gone.

That night Damiano came home late from a meeting he didn't explain.

I was waiting on the stairs in the black dress.

I'd taken my shoes off and left the pearls on.

He stopped in the front hall and looked up at me with his coat half off.

"You should be asleep," he said.

"You wore my color today."

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