You May Kiss Someone Else

My husband was supposed to be dead when his enemy came through the chapel door. I fought. I screamed for the guards. No one came. Afterward, I sat beneath Vincent Moretti's memorial photograph with a broken silver hairpin clenched in my hand. There were bruises around my throat. I couldn't make my fingers stop shaking. I had already taken something I shouldn't have when I heard the house manager outside. “The boss is coming home tomorrow. The operation's finished. One night thinking she's lost him, and she'll stop objecting to Bianca.” Another voice laughed quietly. “She's always insisting on being his only woman. Now she'll just be grateful he's alive.” Alive. My husband was alive. The black ribbons, the closed coffin, my mother holding me while I cried—every part of it had been arranged. I tried to move toward the door. My legs wouldn't hold me. Nobody checked the chapel. When I opened my eyes again, I was looking down at my own body. For a moment I couldn't understand why the woman on the floor was wearing my dress. Then I saw the hairpin. The voices outside moved away. I followed them without knowing how, through walls and locked doors, toward the guest house at the far end of the estate. Vincent sat at a candlelit table, peeling a shrimp for Bianca Costa. His mother was there. So were my parents and my older brother. My father raised his glass. “The rival crew has exposed itself. Your father's plan worked beautifully. And tomorrow Nora will finally appreciate what she has.” My mother dabbed her eyes. “We indulged her too much. She thinks a marriage is just about being in love.” Bianca leaned against Vincent. Her brother, one of his captains, had died protecting him. “What if she still won't let me stay?” Vincent stroked her waist. “She'll be fine. She needed a little perspective.” They toasted his return. Across the estate, my body lay beneath a photograph of the man they were celebrating.