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I swallow air. I'm not sure what to make of this yet, but I already know what this means.
“What is wrong with her?” Cesare barks, and the crowd around disperses, letting him approach the scene.
“Is she alright?” Sofia asks, kneeling beside me. Her voice is as low as it can be, making me strain to hear her amidst all the chaos.
“Stop the damn music,” Pietro hollers at the disc jockey, and the music immediately stops.
Pietro lowers himself on Barbara’s other side, in front of me, and I ponder how to break the news to everyone.
My bride is dead. On our wedding day.
“Does she have any health complications I wasn’t aware of?” I dart between Pietro and Sofia, deliberately avoiding the brooding Cesare.
“Here,” Liam, my cousin, underboss and a plague, stretches a glass of water to me, then takes off his charcoal suit with his free hand to kneel beside me. “What’s the situation? I called 911.” I shake my head at him and meet his hazel eyes, communicating silently the hopelessness of the situation.
Liam runs a hand through his hair and slips to sit on the floor, going into a trance.
“Why are they taking so long to get here?” Sofia shrieks, her nervousness slipping in. “Why is there no doctor to help?” She stands, spinning, and searches amongst the crowd for anyone who can do something.
“She is breathing, right?” Pietro lowers his voice as if he knows she is not.
“She is…” I clear my throat and suck it up. I have lost my father, and I wasn’t this moved by his death, and that is not because I did not care about him, but because certain don’t really move me.
This is different.
Barbara’s death complicates things for me. It puts me in a spot I do not want to be in with her family. It brings up so many questions I doubt they would give me answers to.
“She is dead, isn’t she?” It is Cesare's cold voice that booms as the messenger of doom.
The hall goes silent.
Everyone is waiting for me to confirm. Everybody’s eyes are on me and on Barbara’s lifeless body resting on my lap.
“Dad, she cannot be…” Sofia stands, goes over to her father, and then comes back to me. “Is she…” She goes to her brother. “Pietro, do you think…” Her voice cracks now, and Pietro holds her even as he is trembling and breaking apart.
“Answer me, Ronan,” Cesare clicks his teeth.
“Big brother,” Riley comes to my side and throws her arm across my chest, trying to be the one person who cares enough to think this might be affecting me deeply. “Is she dead?” She whispers.
“Ronan,” My mother’s voice slinks in, and I nod once.
“She is dead,” I nod again.
Soft gasps and fill the atmosphere. Then, some people start to step back as if they cannot stand to watch anymore, while others stick around as if they cannot get their fill.
“No, please, no,” Sofia crawls to Barbara’s body still on my thigh. “No,” she shakes her head. “She can’t be dead,” she takes Barbara’s body from me and hugs her. “My sister cannot die, not today, not like that…”
As she clamps Barbara to her chest and I tilt my eyes to meet my sister’s, I catch what might have been the cause of Barbara’s death.
I saw Olivia rushing towards her and stepped back when her eyes spotted something.
I see the frosting on Barbara’s fingers now and a stain at the corner of her mouth that I must have missed.
This can’t be fucking happening.
It can’t be real.
Olivia is incapable of murder. I mean, I haven’t seen her in years…
