Seven Days Before the Mafia Princess Died novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Dead Walk

It was forty steps from the car to the grave.

I counted them, because counting was the only thing keeping my knees under me.

Ciro's arm was solid as a rail.

On my other side the pole with the saline bag rolled over the grass, one of his men pushing it.

The first to see us were the wives at the back.

One of them said "Madonna" and crossed herself, and the sound moved forward through the crowd like wind through wheat.

Heads turned.

The Don was still speaking.

"In the end we are all..." he said, and then he saw where the heads were turned.

He stopped.

I was thirty steps away, in black lace, leaning on the arm of a man he had sworn to bury.

I put my free hand up and lifted the veil back off my face.

The sun hit me.

It was the first time in weeks I had stood in it.

The Don's mouth opened, and nothing came out.

Somewhere ahead of me a woman made a noise I had never heard a person make.

It was a low, torn sound.

My mother had turned around.

She stood at the graveside with one hand on the lid of the coffin, and she looked at me.

Then her knees went.

She didn't faint.

She knelt on the grass in her washed black dress with her hands still reaching for me across all those yards, and the people around her moved back to give her room.

"Serafina," she said.

It didn't carry.

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