My Mafia Husband Regretted Everything But I Left Chapter 06
Only a little more than a dozen people came to my mother’s memorial.
They were all people she had helped over the years in that old Brooklyn neighborhood—an Italian baker, a Ukrainian immigrant, a retired nurse, an elderly woman who lived alone.
Someone brought a bag of green apples.
Someone else left a pair of gloves my mother had knitted for him years ago, back when she was helping mediate his divorce.
Dante stood outside the funeral room holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.
The attendant at the door stopped him.
“The family left instructions. You’re not permitted inside.”
“I just want to pay my respects.”
“I’m sorry.”
Through the glass door, he watched me adjust the blue scarf around my mother.
It had been her favorite. The edges were worn and slightly pilled.
Dante called me.
I didn’t answer.
A moment later, messages appeared.
Let me in.
I sat with her when she was hospitalized before. I celebrated her birthdays with you.
Selene, I’m not a stranger.
I read them and turned off the screen.
Once, that had been true.
My mother remembered that Dante hated cilantro.
Every time he came over for dinner, she made one dish without it just for him.
His stomach was sensitive, so she had spent weeks learning how to make mild soups he could tolerate.
The night he proposed, she hid in the kitchen and cried for a long time.
She had believed I had finally found someone I could trust with the rest of my life.
When the service ended, Dante was still outside.
The wind had disturbed the white chrysanthemums in his hands.
“I looked into it,” he said, stepping in front of me at the bottom of the stairs.
“St. Michael’s never refused emergency care. They were treating her the entire time. The delay was in transferring her to the cerebrovascular center.”
“Forty-seven minutes.”
I stopped.
“So?”
“I’m not trying to avoid responsibility.”
“I just need to know whether those forty-seven minutes directly caused—”
He couldn’t finish.
Ezra stared at him coldly.
“Don Marchetti wants to know whether he killed her.”
Dante’s face went white.
“I’ll hire the best specialists to review everything.”
“If this was my fault, I’ll take responsibility.”
I looked at him.
“And if the specialists say there was no direct causal link, will you sleep better?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“It is.”
I held out the private-bank restriction record.
“You gave the order.”
“You ignored the calls.”
“You handed over the recording.”
“Whether my mother died from the hemorrhage itself or whether those forty-seven minutes made the outcome worse doesn’t change anything for me.”
Dante’s eyes turned red.
“Give me a chance to make this right.”
“The restrictions are gone. I transferred ten million dollars into your accounts.”
“I haven’t touched it.”
“The apartment. Shares in the family trust. Anything you want.”
“I want my mother.”
His throat worked.
I walked past him.
Dante suddenly caught the sleeve of my coat.
His grip was barely there, as if he thought I might break.
“Selene. Yesterday was supposed to be the day we got married at City Hall.”
I turned around.
“Then you should be grateful.”
“Grateful for what?”
“That my mother’s life bought me the truth about you before I became Mrs. Marchetti.”
His fingers loosened one by one.
Ezra opened the car door for me.
We had driven several blocks before I looked in the rearview mirror.
Dante was still standing on the steps.
The bouquet of white chrysanthemums had fallen to the ground.
He bent to gather them, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t put them back the way they had been.