The Barren Wife He Buried Came Back With The Donna Crown Chapter 06
Into the Ocean
Atlantic City burned that night.
The Moretti Crew was wiped out. Every last one. Bodies in the ballroom, in the parking lot, in the alley behind the venue.
The blast site was scorched black. Divers went in at midnight. They came back with pieces of chandelier, pieces of the stage, pieces of dresses. They didn’t come back with me.
Luca stood behind the police tape. He wasn’t moving.
“Keep diving. Search again. Find her. Alive or dead, whatever. Just find her.”
No one had the balls to tell him the truth.
At the center of that blast, nothing survived.
The Atlantic Ledger ran a headline that even the tabloids kept polite.
[TERROR AT FUSELLI ENGAGEMENT. MRS. FUSELLI MISSING. FEARED DEAD.]
Cara was at the hospital. Screaming. Crying. Throwing water glasses. Yelling loud enough for the whole hallway to hear.
“This baby is a Fuselli! You leave me alone here, you’re leaving your own son!”
The nurses couldn’t hold her down. A doctor tried, gently. “Miss Vane. Please. This kind of stress isn’t good for the baby. Family should be with you.”
His consigliere called him. Low voice. “Boss. About Cara…”
Luca pressed his palm into his eye socket.
“I’m at the water. I can’t leave. Tell the doctors to handle her.”
Cara ripped the phone from his hand. “Boss. Boss, please. Every time I close my eyes I see the fire. I can’t sleep. Come sit with me. Your baby wants his father.”
Luca stared at the black ocean.
For the first time, her voice grated on him like nails.
He snapped. “You scared? You’re not the one who’s dead. Shut up and lie down. Don’t call me again tonight.”
Silence on the line.
Then, small and wounded, “Boss, how can you talk to me like that. You said I was the one you loved most.”
He hung up on her.
…
The search dragged into the small hours of the morning.
The wind off the Atlantic got colder. Luca’s fingers went white on the railing.
He stared into the dark.
He was waiting for a verdict.
Somewhere in the back of his head, a voice started telling him she was gone. Making him accept the fact.
He couldn’t stand up straight when it did.
Memories he hadn’t touched in a decade came rushing.
The first place we’d rented in Atlantic City. A studio above a laundry. One mattress on the floor. Me curled against his chest like a stray cat, my whole body fitting in the crook of his arm, because a single bed couldn’t hold two.
Every time he took a hit at some Family dinner, and I stepped in front of the glass. My face going gray from the pain. Me smiling anyway, whispering, “I’m okay, baby.”
He’d been lost too long. He’d never once looked back at the road we’d walked together.
He’d always thought I’d stay in place. Wait him out. Let him get bored. Come home to him eventually. Grow old with him.
Now, all at once, he understood.
If I was in that black water, there’d never be another woman on this earth who loved him like that.
His chest caved. He couldn’t breathe.
For the first time, Luca Fuselli was afraid.
His consigliere came stumbling across the dock.
Face white as paper.
“Boss. We got a problem.”
Luca whipped around. Kicked him in the leg.
“What problem. What problem is bigger than my wife being missing.”
The man staggered. Held out his phone with a shaking hand.
The screen was open to The Atlantic Ledger. An alert posted ten minutes ago.
A single line of black bold letters.
[BREAKING: MRS. FUSELLI RETURNS TO CHICAGO. NAMED FALCONE HEIR. COMMISSION TO AUDIT DON FUSELLI.]
Luca’s vision blacked at the edges.
“Bullshit. Some rag chasing clicks the night my wife dies?”
He turned on his consigliere. Voice raw. “Find that paper. Burn it to the ground. Every reporter. Every editor. Break their hands.”
The consigliere didn’t move.
His phone buzzed again in his other hand.
He looked up at Luca. Voice shaking.
“Boss. It’s not the tabloid making it up. Donna filed divorce papers last night. Expedited. The court dissolved the marriage forty minutes ago.”