Seven Days Before the Mafia Princess Died novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Plot Under the Cypress
Serafina is refused her own grave for a dead dog, and a stranger at the gate asks for her last seven days.
The ninety-ninth thing my adopted sister took from me was a grave on a hill.
I stood in the office at Saint Agnes with the deposit receipt in my hand and watched the manager not look at me.
"Miss Barsanti, I'm very sorry. The plot under the cypress isn't available."
"I paid four thousand dollars for it on Monday."
"Yes, and I'll refund it today." He pushed a check across the desk. "Your sister called this morning. She wants that spot for her dog."
I looked at the check.
The oncologist had given me a week, maybe ten days, and I had spent one of them picking where to lie down.
The cypress was the only shade on the whole hill.
"Her dog died on Thursday," the manager said, as if that settled it.
"I'm dying on Sunday," I said. "Maybe Monday."
He looked at the desk again.
My family had been telling me for a year that my stomach pain was a trick to get attention.
I called my mother from the doorway.
She picked up on the fourth ring. "Serafina, are you still doing the cancer?"
"I'm at the cemetery, Mamma. Bianca is taking my plot."
"Bianca just lost her dog." Her voice went flat and cool. "She has suffered enough. Stop trying to take things from her."
I called my father next.
The phone rang twice, and then the screen said call declined.
I called Carlo.
He answered over the sound of a saw, at the stone mason's, where he was helping Bianca choose a headstone for a dog.
"Sera, I can't do this today. Stop buying graves to scare us. Does it kill you to let her have one good thing?"
"It's the last thing I'm asking for."
"You said that about the car," he said, and hung up.
I walked out onto the hill.
The gravediggers had already opened the ground under the cypress.
It was a small square hole, neat as a drawer.
Ten minutes later two black cars came up the lane.
Carlo got out of the first one, and a guard carried a white box from the second.
Bianca climbed out after him in a black dress, with her hair loose and her eyes red from crying.
She ran straight to me and put both arms around me.
"Sera, I didn't know it was you," she said. "I swear I didn't know. I'm so sorry."
She was crying into my shoulder.
I could feel her heart going fast.
She touched the little silver bird she wore on a chain at her throat, the way she did when she was upset, and she held on a moment longer.
"Is that the report?" she whispered. "Let me see it. Maybe I can help."
I had carried the oncologist's envelope against my ribs for three days.
I gave it to her.
She took it and stepped back to wipe her face, and it slid out of her fingers.
It went over the edge of the hole and fell onto the dirt at the bottom.
"Oh no," Bianca said. "Oh, Sera, I'll get it."
"Leave it," said Carlo, and he caught her arm.
He looked down at the envelope, and then at me.
"Another prop," he said. "You think a piece of paper gets you a hill?"
The manager studied his shoes.
The two gravediggers leaned on their shovels.
A family at a headstone thirty feet away stopped talking to watch.
Nobody climbed down to get my report.
I looked at my brother, who used to carry me on his back through the sprinklers.
I looked at the white box in the guard's arms and the hole waiting for it.
I was done asking.
"Keep it," I said. "Bury your dog in it."
Bianca's face crumpled again. "Sera, you don't have to."
"I know," I said.
I turned and walked down the lane toward the gate.
My knees shook and my stomach turned over, and I did not slow down.
There was a gray car parked outside the cemetery gate with the door open, and a man was standing beside it.
He was tall, in a dark coat, with a scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
He held a flat brown envelope in one hand, and I saw that the corner was stained with grave dirt.
In the other hand he was turning a key ring over and over, and on the ring was a tiny silver bird.
"This fell in the hole," he said. "I got down and got it. Nobody else wanted to."
I took it from him.
I had not seen him on the hill.
"You heard all that," I said.
"I heard enough." He nodded at the envelope. "That says days."
"It says a week."
"Then I want a week." His voice was low and very calm. "Give me your seven days, Serafina Barsanti, and I will put your father on his knees."
Behind us, up on the hill, a shovel hit dirt.
I looked back at the cypress, and at the small white box going down into my grave.
Then I looked at the stranger.
"Yes," I said.
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