Mafia Boss & His White Rose novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Widows

Six women in black cardigans sat around Nonna Lina's kitchen table with a coffee pot, a bottle of anisette and a stack of Mass cards.

I knew every one of them.

I had done their husbands' flowers, one funeral at a time, over seven years.

"Sit," said Nonna, and shut the door.

I sat.

"My husband was number nine on that waiting list when he died," said the widow across from me.

She turned a thimble of anisette on the oilcloth.

"A boy came to the house in August," she said. "He said for forty thousand dollars he could jump to three."

"Your husband said no," said the widow beside her. "He said a man doesn't buy his own breath off another man's back."

"He died in September."

"And the man behind him on the list?" I said.

"Paid." She set down the glass.

"The boy who took the envelope drives a gray Buick," she said. "He parks behind the funeral home on Tasker and waits for the families after the viewing."

The others nodded, one by one.

Each of them had a husband, a son or a brother in her story.

Every story had the same boy and the same gray Buick in it.

I took the order pad out of my bag, the one with the shop's name across the top, and began to write.

A name, a month, an amount.

Another name.

When I got to the sixth, one of the widows put her finger on the page and kept it there.

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