He Faked My Death, So I Let My Family Bury Me novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Seven Days
Gaspare leaves a passport, an island and a new name on the study table; Rosaria hears how the war began and decides to disappear from everyone.
My husband set the folder on the study table and walked out without a word.
I stood over it for a long time before I opened it.
Inside was a new passport, a bank card, and photographs of an island.
The sea in the photographs was clear green.
A white house sat on a hill above a small beach, and there was no other roof anywhere.
The passport gave a new name, a widow of thirty-four with no children and no past here.
My assistant took the file from my hands and turned to the last page.
She had never once raised her voice at me.
"He picked your new name too," Nella said. "Elena Marchetti."
I closed the folder. "It's a better one than my mother gave me."
"Please don't joke, Signora."
Her eyes were red.
"You can't mean to go."
I didn't answer her.
The folder was thick for one woman's papers.
At the bottom lay a second envelope, sealed, with a thumbprint pressed into the wax.
Nella set it aside and said it was only the deed to the island.
In seven days there would be a banquet at the port hall.
The Ficarra Family planned to attack it, and Gaspare meant to let them.
He would make the attack look like my death.
His men had prepared a way out on the west side of the hall, and a car not registered to our Family would be waiting.
Three minutes after the blast it would take me away, and a helicopter would take me after that.
Then I would be Elena Marchetti, who had never set foot in Sicily.
He had planned every step.
The file even listed the coffee I liked, the dishes the island's cook knew, and how cool I kept my bedroom at night.
Gaspare had always known me that well.
In our first year of marriage, gunfire from the estate's training grounds woke me at night.
I complained once, over breakfast, without thinking.
By the next morning the whole training ground stood on the far side of the estate.
All of Sicily knew how cruel he was.
A capo who betrayed him could drink coffee at his table in the morning and be gone from the harbor by afternoon.
I was the one person he had never been cruel to.
So last night, while my parents begged me to accept this plan, I kept waiting for him to end it.
I thought he would say, "Enough. Rosaria doesn't have to go."
Instead he had quietly built me another life, one where I vanished from Sicily for good.
Footsteps came down the hall.
Nella had barely hidden the folder when my sister pushed the door open.
Two armed men followed Venera in.
They had been my security team until a week ago.
I looked at them, and Venera saw me do it.
"Gaspare says it isn't safe outside," she said quickly. "He wants them with me for now."
"All right."
She stood there, waiting for me to be angry.
When I wasn't, she grew more uncomfortable.
"Rosaria, I know what I did. I never wanted her dead."
I looked at her and kept my face still.
"Whose finger was on the trigger?"
Her face went white.
"She spoke first! She said Gaspare would never go to war over me, and that I should keep my voice down in her city."
"And you shot her."
She bit her lip.
"I wanted her quiet. I wanted her afraid."
The bullet hadn't cared what she wanted.
Tindaro Ficarra's wife died on the spot.
By morning, a Lanzetta dock was burning.
The next day a cargo ship was ambushed leaving the harbor.
On the third day both Families were made to sit at one table.
Ficarra asked for Venera.
My father refused, and my mother cried until she fainted in her chair.
In the end Ficarra turned his eyes to me.
"Then I will have to find another way," he said, and smiled. "I will make Gaspare learn what it is to lose a wife."
That same night, Gaspare's people learned the Ficarras would strike the port banquet.
Gaspare decided to turn their plan against them and let the whole city watch me die in it.
Venera stepped closer.
"I'm sorry," she said.
I studied her.
"If Gaspare asked you to fake your death," I said, "would you agree?"
She froze.
"Rosaria."
My mother stood in the doorway, and my father, Placido, stood behind her.
She had heard me. She hurried in and pulled Venera behind her.
"She has learned her lesson. Leave her alone."
I almost laughed.
"I'm the one pushing her?"
"Venera has never gone without anything," my mother said. "Put her on a plane alone and she won't last a month."
"You're the strong one, Rosaria. You always were. You'll manage."
I had heard those words my whole life.
Because I could look after myself, I was the one who could be sent away.
My father leaned past her shoulder. "Which door will you use at the banquet?"
"Gaspare told me not to say."
He asked again anyway, and I gave him the same answer.
That night Gaspare came home and found me drinking on the balcony.
He took the glass out of my hand.
"You haven't eaten since this morning."
My eyes filled.
"You're sending me away anyway."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I'm sending you where nobody can reach you."
"I didn't ask where."
He said nothing.
I didn't need him to.
I had already made my own decision.
In seven days I would take his gift and disappear from him, and from my parents' lives, forever.
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