His Test Was Fake, But My Death Was Real novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bridge
Maeve climbs the rail to follow her dead fiancé and the whole Family cheers. She hands back the ring and walks away, then collapses in the road.
Six days before our wedding, they told me Stefano Carrano was dead.
His SUV had been run off the Lakeside Highway and into the lake, the family's adviser said.
The search crews dragged the water all night.
By morning they had found one thing, his watch, with blood on the glass.
The whole Carrano Family blamed me.
"He only left the safe road to get your grandmother's ring out of the vault," a lieutenant said. "That was your ring."
"Your parents died on that same highway," his aunt said. "Now him. Everyone who protects you ends up dead."
Nobody stopped her.
Camille Torrisi played me Stefano's last voice message in the mourning hall.
"Don't follow me, Maeve. Promise me you'll live a good life."
Camille was the daughter of our allied Family, and Stefano's friend since they were children.
She was the only one who stayed.
For three nights she sat beside me and poured tea I never drank.
She kept her phone propped against the teapot, and I was too tired to ask why.
For three days I knelt in front of his photograph and held his watch against my chest.
On the fourth morning, before anyone was awake, I went to the gardener's shed.
I drank a cup of the concentrated weed killer, and I did not stop until it was empty.
I had not kept breakfast down all week, and I thought that was only grief.
Then I put on the white dress I was going to marry him in and walked to the bridge at the edge of the estate.
The lake was grey below it.
At the far end of the bridge a black sedan sat with its engine running.
I climbed over the guardrail.
"Stefano," I whispered. "I'm coming to you."
Behind me, someone started clapping.
Then a whole crowd of people was clapping and laughing, and a woman was crying with laughter.
I turned.
Camille stood in the middle of the bridge, bent over, wiping her eyes.
"I won!" she shouted. "I told you she'd come!"
Lieutenants I had served dinner to for six years were lined up along the rail with their phones out.
Then Stefano walked out from between them.
He wore a white shirt, no blood on him, and he carried a bouquet of white roses.
He looked at Camille first.
"Happy now?" he said, gently. "Don't fake a Family death for a game again."
She waved his hand off her arm.
"But it solved your biggest problem," she said. "Doesn't that earn me something?"
"It does."
He turned to me and held the roses out across the rail.
"You always loved the signet ring in the vault," he said. "You can wear it until the wedding."
"Surprised?" he added, smiling at me. "The elders never trusted an outsider with the Family's secrets. Camille said we should stage an attack."
"If you went to the police, or told one soul about the safe road, the wedding was off."
"If you kept quiet, my father would vouch for you himself."
"You passed. Every man here just watched you not betray me. Come down. We marry in three days."
I understood it all at once.
The ambush, the watch, the last message, and the three days of tea had all been one plan.
Stefano needed his men to see I would hold the secret.
Camille needed to see how much power over him she really held.
And both of them wanted to know how far I would go.
My stomach twisted.
I held on to the rail and tasted blood at the back of my throat.
I shook my head.
"Forget it," I said.
"Maeve, come down."
"I can't go back."
The smile left his face.
"What does that mean?"
Pain cramped low in my belly, sharp enough to bend me.
"It means exactly what it sounds like," I said.
Camille tilted her head at me.
"You're not really angry, are you? We only needed to know if you loved Stefano or the title."
"Now we know. You love him enough to die for him."
She laughed again.
Then the men along the rail started to jeer.
"Look at her face," one of them called. "She thought he was really gone."
"Don't be a sore loser, bride-to-be!"
Camille's father was the man the lieutenants listened to, and no one on that bridge was going to say a word against her.
I climbed down on my own.
"Where were you these three days?" I asked Stefano.
"At the lakeside hotel," he said. "The mourning hall cameras only caught a silhouette. I told you, nothing could go wrong."
He said it lightly, and he waited for me to be glad.
"Your mother fainted," I said. "She sobbed on the floor in front of the whole house."
"She wasn't in on it. She'll forgive us."
"I knelt in front of your photograph until my forehead split."
"I know. I was watching."
He had sat in a hotel room and watched me on a screen, waiting for me to break.
I took the engagement ring off my finger.
I set it among the white roses and left them in his hands.
"Congratulations," I said. "You passed, too."
"Maeve."
"I'm not coming back."
I walked down the bridge, past the men with their phones.
Nobody moved to stop me.
Behind me, Stefano said, "She'll be back by morning."
Halfway down the highway the cramps came again, so hard that I went down on my knees on the asphalt.
Something warm ran down the inside of my legs.
When I looked, the white dress was red.
Footsteps came across the road, fast.
The sedan door slammed.
A man I had never met caught me before I hit the ground, and he said my name before I had told him anything.
"Maeve," he said. "Stay with me."
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