My Fiancé Sacrificed Me for My Sister's Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Signed
Nerina's sister collapses at the engagement dinner, and Nerina overhears that her heart is the one they plan to cut out. She signs the waiver to buy time.
My sister Costanza collapsed at the head of our table, and forty guests watched my fiancé catch her.
Her water glass hit the marble and broke.
My father's chair scraped back so hard it fell over.
"Doctor!" my father shouted. "Get the doctor now!"
The family doctor ran in from the kitchen with his bag already open.
Fabrizio carried her out of the dining room in his arms.
He did not look at me once.
It was our engagement dinner. He had proposed three days earlier, out of nowhere, and I was still wearing the ring.
I have seen the numbers since I was a child.
Every person has one floating over their head, and it is the age they will die.
I never told anyone, because I knew how it would sound.
Costanza's number read 24.
She was twenty-four years old.
Her heart had been failing all her life, and her number said it would end this year.
Mine had read 87 since I was a little girl.
I used to look at it in mirrors and feel safe.
I followed the doctor into the hall. A tablet buzzed in his hand.
He read the screen, went pale, and walked straight into my father's study.
My mother went in after him. The door stayed open a hand's width.
I looked up at the big mirror in the hall, the way I always did.
The number over my head was 22.
It had been 87 a minute ago.
I put my palm flat on the wall so I would not fall.
I could not make my feet move for a moment. Then I crept to the study door and listened.
"It's a match," the doctor said. "A perfect one. Nerina's heart will take in Costanza's chest."
"Good," my father said.
My mother's voice came soft. "Will she suspect anything?"
"No. Fabrizio will handle her."
"The waiver has to be signed freely," the doctor said. "Blood relatives are protected. If she gives that up, no one can say we forced it."
"Within three days she'll sign," my father said. "Without a blood daughter's heart, there's no Costanza, and without Costanza there's no succession."
My mother sighed. "Be gentler with Nerina these next few days, Ettore. Think of it as compensation."
"Understood, Ilaria."
"And Costanza must never know where the heart comes from," my mother said. "She thinks it's a stranger off the waiting list. Keep it that way."
I stood outside that door with tears running down my face.
It all made sense now.
Fabrizio's sudden proposal. My mother stroking my hair at breakfast. My father asking me, for the first time, how I was feeling.
They had not been looking at me.
They had been looking at my heart.
For years I had told myself I was just the quiet daughter.
At the Albertini table, the seat beside the don belonged to Costanza. When the capos came through, they asked her about her health and me about the weather.
I had told myself that was how families were.
I had thought my mother was finally seeing me.
Now I understood she had been measuring me.
I went up to my room and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling light until it hurt.
I thought about running right then.
But the house was full of my father's men, and the gate was never left open.
Someone knocked, and the door opened before I answered.
Fabrizio walked in with a black folder under his arm.
"Nerina," he said, in the voice I had loved. "I brought you something."
He was the underboss. He sat across from men who wanted him dead and made them smile.
Tonight he sat down on the edge of my bed and held the folder out to me.
I opened it.
The first pages were wedding plans.
The old church on Halsted Street, the string quartet, the guest list, the wine, the flowers.
Behind them lay the restoration drawings for the church, the ones I had made during my year at the architecture firm.
He had kept them.
I had told him once that I wanted to be married there. I had not thought he was listening.
I turned the last page, and my hands stopped.
It was not about a wedding.
It was a legal paper in the Family's own language. It said I gave up the Albertini protection of my own free will, and that I agreed to the removal of my heart at the private clinic.
At the bottom was a blank line.
A tear fell onto the paper and soaked in at once.
I understood what it was. It was my death warrant.
"It's only a formality," Fabrizio said. "Costanza is dying, Nerina. You would want to help her."
"Yes," I said.
I took a long breath.
If I fought him, they would lock my door tonight. If I signed, they would stop watching me.
So I signed.
The black pen was heavy. I wrote my whole name in a steady hand and smiled at him.
His shoulders came down. He kissed my forehead.
"Good girl," he said. "I knew you loved her."
He stood and took the folder. I saw his smile in the glass of the window as he went.
I looked past him at the mirror over my dresser.
The number over my head still read 22.
On Saturday I would turn twenty-two.
Three days from now, I would be wheeled into an operating room.
At the door, Fabrizio turned back to wish me goodnight, and I raised my eyes to his head.
His number read 31.
He was thirty years old.
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