My Don Faked His Death to Test Me, So I Died Haunting Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate Was Chained
A messenger says the men are dead, the women arm themselves and die together, and Rosalia hears through the door that it was a loyalty test.
The messenger fell to his knees in the middle of the courtyard, in front of every woman in the house.
We had been hanging lanterns for the dinner that night.
My husband, the Don of our family, was due home from the city by dark.
The messenger was his driver. There was blood on his sleeve and gravel in his palms.
"Donna," he said to me. "The Don is dead."
I let go of the ladder I was holding. My mother caught it before it fell.
"They put your father in an oil drum and lit it," he said. "Your brothers were cut apart on the road. I was shot getting away."
Then he put his face in his hands and shook.
Outside the wall, engines started. Trucks pulled up one after another along the whole length of the estate.
A voice came through a loudspeaker at the gate.
"Every man in your family is finished. By Sunday every woman in it will be on a plane to the brothels in Manila."
Nobody screamed. Nobody in my mother's house had ever been allowed to.
My mother ordered the guards to chain the gate and stay outside the great hall.
She marched all of us in, twelve women, six children, and barred the doors from the inside.
Then she opened the armory case under the stairs. A soldier had restocked it that morning.
She laid twelve pistols on the dining table, one in front of every woman.
"Our men died for the name of this house," she said. "We will not hand those animals a single one of us alive."
Her voice did not shake.
"No woman of this family kneels. We go out on our feet."
My sisters-in-law were crying, but they picked up their guns.
My mother took Mina out of my arms.
Mina was four. She had her bear under her chin and she was looking at me.
I let my mother take her.
That is the thing I will never be able to put down. I let her.
My mother carried the children into the back parlor one at a time. She shut the door.
Six shots.
When she came out, she walked to the head of the table alone and picked up her own gun.
The other eleven women did it together, on her word. I stood with my gun at my side and watched them go.
Eleven shots, and then the hall was quiet.
I walked from woman to woman and checked each one. My sisters-in-law. My aunts. My cousin, who was nineteen.
I knelt beside my mother last. Her hand was still warm.
None of them was breathing.
Only then did I pull the chain off my neck.
Eight years ago, a bullet went into my husband's shoulder, and everyone said it was meant for me.
His name is Alessio Duranti. I am Rosalia, his wife.
My father, Tullio Basile, told that story at every dinner after. Alessio always got up to refill the glasses while he told it.
The doctor dug the bullet out. Alessio had it set into a pendant and put it on me himself.
I never took it off.
I thumbed the bullet into my pistol. I wanted the last thing in my heart to be his.
I put the barrel against my chest and fired.
It did not kill me at once.
I lay on the cold floor beside my mother and heard boots outside the hall door.
"Miss Colombo set the whole thing up with the Don," a soldier said. "She even had hot coffee sent out to us at the gate."
"What test?" said another.
"The Donna and the rest of them are locked in there for one night. She wants to see if they fall apart without their men."
The first one laughed. "So they have a bad night. Tomorrow the Don walks in and says it was a loyalty test, and everybody has a drink."
I could not make a sound.
"It's too quiet in there," the second one said. "Nobody is even crying."
"Miss Colombo said guard the door. Nobody goes in."
"That's the Donna in there."
"The Don hasn't thought about his Donna in days. He's busy with Miss Colombo."
My father was alive. My brothers were alive.
Alessio was alive and having dinner.
Six children and eleven women were dead over a game, and I had let my own daughter go first.
I wanted to scream at the door. I wanted to scream until they broke it down.
I had no breath left to do it with.
I lay with my eyes open, and they stayed on the gate through the high window.
I died hating him.
Then I stood up, and nobody in the room moved.
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