The Veto：My Mafia Family Faked My Mother's DeathChapter 1

The Marchettis have a rule.

Every blood relative gets one veto. One word out of any of them, and whatever's coming next gets pushed a full year.

I've been engaged to Rafael Costa for five years.

My wedding's been vetoed five times.

Dad said I was too young.

Mom said marriage was serious business.

Then both of my brothers took their turn.

Year six, there's nobody left who can stop me.

Three days before the wedding, my mother drops dead.

The whole family says the same thing. You can't throw a wedding ten days after you bury your mother. Not in this family. Not in the North End. People talk.

So the wedding gets pushed. Again.

I sit up with her all night at the house.

The next morning I'm walking past my father's study when I hear Dante through the door.

"We're out of vetoes for the year. A funeral buys us one more."

Luca, lower. "She stays gone 'til Sienna's got her name on the paper."

I stop in the hallway.

Then Rafe speaks.

"Vivi doesn't hear a word of it. Not from you. Not from Luca. Not from my mother."

"The papers are signed. The kid gets my name. That's how it works."

"She waits. She's always waited."

So the mother I just spent all night mourning isn't dead.

She's halfway across the country. Holding the baby my best friend just had with my fiancé.

I don't move for a long time.

Then I slide the ring off my finger.

Six years of wearing it. There's a pale band of skin underneath, like something's been buried there.

Fine.

If everybody in this house is this scared of me marrying Rafael Costa, they don't have to waste another veto on it.

I'll call the wedding off myself.

...

I don't push the door open. They're still talking.

Dante lets out a breath.

"She was up all night, this one. You think she holds?"

"She's cried through five weddings." Dad. "She'll cry through this one too."

Then Rafe. Quiet. Tired. The voice of a man who's done this before.

"Vivi doesn't hear a word of it. Not from you. Not from Luca. Not from my mother."

"The papers are signed. The kid gets my name. That's how it works."

"She waits. She's always waited."

Dad's voice is heavy.

"Sienna's father took a bullet for me. If his grandkid doesn't end up on this family's paper, every capo in the North End starts asking what else we cut corners on."

Then Dante. "Her father's people still run the docks. You want them loyal? The kid goes in the will."

Nobody says anything about Vivi.

That's the part that stays with me.

My fingertips go cold, one knuckle at a time.

Sienna Moreau moved in with us when she was sixteen.

Her dad was one of ours.

Took a bullet meant for mine. Right there on Hanover Street.

Two years later her mom was gone too. Breast cancer.

After that, Dad said it at every holiday. The Marchettis owe that girl a life.

Mom treated her like a second daughter.

Anything my brothers brought home, Sienna got first.

Her birthday, the whole house started planning a month out.

She got the flu, Dante would blow off a sit-down to sit with her all night.

She said thunderstorms scared her, Luca drove two hours in the middle of the night just so she wouldn't be alone when it started.

I never thought twice about any of it.

I was the one who took Rafe's hand and said it out loud. Sienna doesn't have anyone. We should look out for her too.

I just didn't think "looking out for her" meant handing her my fiancé.

My wedding.

My mother.

I didn't think, in their heads, my mom dying and my wedding falling apart were just a few more days of me crying it out.

I walk back into the parlor.

Mom's photograph sits between the candles.

Pearls. The smile she only used for Christmas cards.

The day she "died," Dad said the body was too far gone. I couldn't see her. I begged. I cried until my voice went out. Dante stood in the doorway and wouldn't move.

"Your mother was vain, Vivi. You know that. She wouldn't want you remembering her like that."

So I stayed up all night in front of a closed casket and cried until my chest hurt.

Now I know.

She was never inside it.

She's halfway across the country rocking Rafael Costa's son to sleep.

"Vivi."

I didn't hear him come in.

He drapes his jacket over my shoulders and crouches down next to my chair, reaching for my hands. They're ice. He wraps them in his, like he's always done.

"Don't do this to yourself. Mom wouldn't want it."

He says it like it costs him nothing.

I almost laugh out loud.

Six years ago, when he proposed, he was down on one knee just like this.

"Every time they say no, I wait another year. Vivi, there's no one else. There was never going to be anyone else."

Year one, Dad said no, and I waited.

Year two, Mom.

Year three, Dante.

Year four, Luca.

Year five, somebody came up with a new reason.

Every time I cried till I couldn't breathe, Rafe would pull me against his chest and say the same line.

"Just a little longer, Vivi."

"It's gonna be you. It was always gonna be you."

He'd wipe my face with his thumb.

"Next year. Next year I'll make it up to you. Something bigger. Something better."

I'd push a smile out somehow. Okay. I'll wait.

And every time, I'd feel his shoulders drop.

My phone goes off in my lap.

The wedding planner.

"Miss Marchetti. Mr. Costa just called. He said we're pushing the date again."

"The flowers and the cake are nonrefundable, so he'd like us to ship the whole order overseas instead. That okay with you?"

She reads out an address.

I close my hand around the phone.

It's the town where Sienna had the baby.

Ten thousand white roses. Rafe and I spent three months picking them. He wanted me walking through a garden of them on our wedding day. Toward him.

There's no wedding.

But the flowers, apparently, still have somewhere to be.

I keep my voice flat. "Cancel it."

A pause on the other end. "I'm sorry?"

"The flowers. The cake. All of it. Whatever you can pull back, pull it back."

I hang up and call my attorney before I lose the nerve.

"I need the paperwork to break the engagement. And I want the townhouse on Beacon Hill listed. Today, if you can."

Silence on the line. "Miss Marchetti. Should I run this past Mr. Costa first..."

"No."

Across the room, Rafe is lighting a fresh candle in front of my mother's picture, head bowed, playing the grieving son-in-law for anyone who happens to be watching.

I almost smile at the back of his neck.

"It's my house. It's my engagement. I don't need anyone's permission."