My Don Faked His Death to Test Me, So I Died Haunting Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Line Went Dead

On the terrace Alessio admits he lied to his wife, Gemma calls Rosalia too perfect, and the line to the estate goes dead as Rosalia learns to find his dreams.

An hour later the dinner broke up. The maid slipped out first.

She went down the back stair toward the servants' wing, her phone already at her ear.

I wanted to follow her.

But Alessio was the one who would sleep and dream of me.

So I followed him out onto the second-floor terrace.

Gemma came with him. She carried a fresh glass of wine.

She leaned on the stone railing, and he stood beside her with his tie pulled loose.

Below us the river was black. On the far bank I could see the lights of my house, small and steady.

I looked at those lights and thought of the great hall, and of the back parlor.

"You are very quiet tonight," Gemma said.

Alessio pulled the tie off his neck and wound it around his fist.

"I broke my vows," he said. "I lied to my wife."

"It is one night, Alessio. It is a game."

"It has been three hours and I have not heard a sound from the house."

Gemma laughed. "What did you expect? Screaming? Her fists on the door?"

She turned around and put her back to the railing so she faced him.

"Do you know what I think? I think Rosalia is too perfect. I think she is so perfect it suffocates you."

I waited for him to say no.

He did not say anything for a long moment.

"She has done a great deal for me," he said at last. "I owe her more than she will ever know."

"For the bullet."

"Yes."

Gemma smiled and touched his sleeve. "Then you can afford one night of fun."

I stepped between them. I put both hands flat on his chest, and I pushed.

He did not move. I did not feel him either.

"Look at me," I said. "Look at me, Alessio."

He looked straight through me, at the river and the lights.

Gemma took his glass and set it on the railing.

"Give me your phone," she said.

"Why?"

"Because you have checked it constantly since the roast. If you keep doing it, the whole night is wasted."

He hesitated. Then he handed it over.

She held it up between two fingers and dropped it into her own bag.

"I am keeping it until breakfast," she said.

"There," she said. "If the house burns down, I will tell you in the morning."

He laughed, because she had made it a joke.

I could not tell him that the house had not burned down. The women in it had.

A soldier came out onto the terrace and said something low to Alessio.

"The satellite line to the estate is down," the soldier said. "We lost it about an hour ago."

"The storm?"

"There is no storm, boss."

I thought of the maid with the phone at her ear, and of the clock she had watched.

Alessio looked at Gemma.

Her smile was gone for the first time that night. "Maybe the guards pulled the cable by accident," she said. "Or someone is making sure nobody cheats."

"Who would cheat?"

"I told the soldiers not to let anyone in or out. Maybe they cut everything off to make it real."

Alessio took his phone back from her hand.

He dialed the estate and held it to his ear.

I heard it too, standing right beside him: a long flat tone, and then nothing at all.

He dialed again.

"Rosalia," he said to the empty line. "Pick up."

For a moment his voice cracked on my name, and I held onto that crack with everything I had left.

I was crying, and I could not wipe my face, because I had no hands.

Gemma took his arm and steered him back inside.

I stood alone on the terrace and looked at the lights across the water.

The dead cannot touch or be heard. I had learned that much in a few hours.

I had learned one other thing. Where something of mine lay close, a door stood open in the sleeping.

This castle was bought in my name, and my name was on its deed.

Sooner or later he would sleep under my roof.

When he did, I would be waiting there.

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