The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Wedding at the Deathbed
Vittoria marries the comatose heir at his dying father's bed, refuses Tiziana's second paper, and shuts off the bag at eleven; Marcello opens his eyes and tells her not to scream.
Everyone said the man I was marrying was brain-dead.
I said my vows to him anyway, standing between two hospital beds in a dying man's bedroom.
One bed held my groom.
The other held his father, the Don of Philadelphia, who had asked for this wedding as his last wish.
Out in the hall, a grandfather clock ticked so loud I could hear it over the priest.
Marcello Brancato lay on his back with his eyes shut and a tube taped inside his elbow.
Someone had shaved him and buttoned him into a white shirt for the occasion.
His dark hair was too long and curled against the pillow.
He was thirty-one, and he had not opened his eyes in two years.
"Do you, Vittoria, take Marcello to be your lawful husband?"
"I do," I said.
Nobody asked Marcello.
Six old men in dark suits stood along the wall as witnesses.
Not one of them looked at the groom.
They looked at me, the undertaker's girl in an ivory dress.
That was close enough to true.
My father had borrowed four hundred and ten thousand dollars from this family for a roof and a second chapel.
Then he died and left me the roof, the chapel and the debt.
Three weeks ago, the Don's wife had called it in.
Thirty days, or the Brancatos took Guarino & Sons, the funeral home my grandfather built.
My grandmother Amalia, who still did the hair on our dead, had called it robbery with a nice handbag.
Or I could marry her stepson, and the debt would disappear.
Tiziana Brancato stood at the foot of Marcello's bed in a cream suit and pearls.
She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and didn't smudge her mascara at all.
Nine days ago she had sat across my desk and paid cash for two mahogany caskets.
One for the Don.
One for the man I was marrying.
I'd written up the contract myself.
The priest blessed the rings.
I lifted Marcello's left hand.
It was warm and heavy.
I slid the ring over his knuckle.
"You may kiss the bride," the priest said, and then went red, because there was no one to do it.
Tiziana's son laughed out loud.
Fabrizio Balducci leaned on the dresser with a gold watch on his wrist and a toothpick in his mouth.
"Go on, kiss him," he said. "He won't complain. First man in years who won't."
A couple of the capos chuckled.
I bent down and kissed my husband on the forehead.
His skin smelled like hospital soap.
Then I went to his father, because that was what a bride did.
Ambrogio Brancato was seventy-three and looked a hundred.
When I leaned down to kiss his cheek, his hand shot out and closed on my wrist.
It was the strongest thing in the room.
His lips touched my ear.
"He isn't sick," he whispered. "She does it at night."
Then he let go and turned his face to the wall.
I straightened up with my heart slamming.
Tiziana was already at my elbow with a leather folder.
"Just the paperwork, dear."
The marriage license was on top.
I signed it.
Under it was the waiver I'd signed on Monday, giving up every claim on a Brancato dollar.
Under that was a third sheet.
"Spousal authorization," Tiziana said. "So you can make decisions for him. God forbid."
I've buried a lot of people.
You learn to read every paper they hand you.
It was an order to withdraw life support.
The date line was blank.
The Don's name had been typed in the box for "consent of parent," with a line through it.
Tiziana held out a gold pen.
"Sign at the bottom, Vittoria. We'll take care of the rest."
I didn't take the pen.
"I'll sign the marriage license," I said, loud enough for the wall of old men. "I don't sign anything with a blank date."
The room went quiet.
Tiziana's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"It's a formality."
"Then it can wait."
Fabrizio pushed off the dresser.
"The rented bride has opinions."
"The rented bride reads," I said.
From the other bed came a dry, rattling sound.
It took me a second to understand the Don was laughing.
Tiziana closed the folder very gently.
"Of course," she said. "You've had a long day."
That night she put me in Marcello's room.
"A wife sleeps beside her husband," she said. "People talk."
I sat on it in my wedding dress and watched the man I'd married breathe.
At eleven, the clock in the hall chimed.
On the last stroke, the door opened.
Tiziana came in alone, in a silk robe, carrying a small clear bag with no label.
She didn't look at me.
She hung it on the pole beside his bed, threaded its line into the port on his arm and rolled the little wheel open with her thumb.
Drip.
Drip.
"Sleep well, Mrs. Brancato," she said, and shut the door behind her.
I listened to her heels go down the hall.
I'd taken a hundred IV lines out of the dead.
I knew what a roller clamp was.
I crossed the room and rolled the wheel shut.
The drip stopped.
I pulled the line out of the port, took the bag off the pole and wrapped it in my wedding shawl.
I zipped it into the bottom of my overnight bag.
Then I sat on the floor beside his bed, where I could see his face, and waited.
Midnight.
One o'clock.
At two, his fingers moved against the sheet.
At three, the clock struck, and Marcello Brancato opened his eyes.
They were dark and wet and looking straight at me.
I opened my mouth.
His hand found my wrist, weak as paper.
"Don't scream," he whispered. "She listens at the door."
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