My Mother’s Dying Wish Was My Happiness,Not Your Ring

My mother sat thirty hours on a cramped bus to get here, all so she could see me married into the Falcone Family beside Lorenzo.

I knelt ten hours outside the Estate gates, clutching her medical records, before he finally agreed to play along with the union.

But when the moment came, I screamed myself hoarse, and never once saw him cross the threshold.

My mother breathed her last the instant she stepped into the banquet hall. My wedding became her wake.

At midnight, after I'd finished arranging her affairs, I saw that Lorenzo's courier had posted something: