He Faked His Death on Our Wedding Day. So I Faked Mine.

ROMINA

On our wedding day, Jovan Caruso—Don of the Caruso family, and the man I’d loved since I was eighteen—died in a car bomb on his way to the church.

Three weeks later, his estranged twin came home to take his place. Same eyes. Same voice. Same hands that used to hold mine.

Then I heard him through his mother’s door.

Jovan isn’t dead. He faked it—for another woman.

I only ever asked him for one thing. He broke it.

So I’m going to give him exactly what he gave me: a funeral.

——

On our wedding day, a car bomb killed Jovan Caruso four blocks from St. Anthony’s.

I was a widow before I was a wife. The baby inside me was fatherless before it was born.

After that, something in me broke. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. More than once, I stood at the edge of the bluff above the harbor, and every time someone pulled me back with the same four words: Live for the baby.

There was nothing left to bury. Althea had what remained cremated and kept the urn on her mantel. They lowered an empty casket under his name anyway. I wasn't allowed at the graveside.

Three weeks after the bomb, on the day of the memorial Mass, Jovan’s twin flew in from Lisbon with a wife nobody knew he had. Dempsey Caruso: four minutes older, ten years gone, a name no one had spoken since he walked out on their father.

I had never met him. But he has Jovan’s eyes, Jovan’s voice, Jovan’s hands, and he calls me Mina, a name only one man has ever called me. For fifteen days, I’ve told myself it’s just grief.

Tonight, thirty-six days after the bomb, I’m carrying Althea’s tea down the east corridor when I hear voices behind her door.

“You faked your own death and walked out on your wedding for her? That street runner?” Althea’s voice shakes. “Mina is carrying your child, Jovan. You staged this whole play just to bring that girl home?”

Silence. Then a voice I would know in my sleep.

“Tahlia's dying, Ma. Pancreatic cancer. Shaw gave her six months, and that was two months ago… I couldn’t cancel the wedding. Eamon would have had men on our docks by Friday. A dead man doesn’t start a war.” A pause. “In five months, Mina will be due, and I come back from the dead. Survived the hit, went under to catch the rat. Everything goes back where it belongs. Me, Mina, the baby. The three of us, a family.”

The cup rattles on its saucer. I set it on the floor.

Jovan isn’t dead. The man they call Dempsey is Jovan.

I steady my hands long enough to text my brother. Eamon runs the Falcone family from Palermo, six time zones away.

I need a plane. And I need to die.

He wants to play dead? I’ll show him how it’s done.

Behind the door, Althea isn’t finished.

“Is this fair to her? If it weren’t for the baby, she’d have followed you into the harbor weeks ago. She drifts around this house like a ghost. She won’t eat. It breaks my heart.”

A long sigh, the sound of a man rubbing his face.

“I know. Tahlia only has a few months left, Ma, and it’s the one thing she’s ever asked me for. I can’t let her down.” Another pause. “As for Mina, we have the rest of our lives. I’ll make it up to her. Don’t worry.”

One thing.

I only ever asked him for one thing too.

A fist closes around my heart. The pain races down every limb, and I can’t breathe. I stumble back to my room, and my knees give out on the carpet. That’s when my phone rings.

“Mina? What happened? Is Jovan... still alive?”

I try to answer. Tears come out instead.

In the world’s eyes, he is dead. I understand my brother’s confusion. Even I never imagined Jovan would fake his own death, and for another woman.

I say nothing, but Eamon seems to hear everything anyway. After a long silence, his voice comes low and steady. “Three days. A pilot and a boat. The rest is yours.”

The line goes dead. I’m still frozen on the floor, phone against my ear, when someone knocks. Two soft beats. Jovan’s knock.

Dempsey stands in the doorway holding a glass of warm milk. Or rather, Jovan stands in the doorway holding a glass of warm milk.

“Mina? Why are you on the floor? You’ve been crying. Missing Jovan again?”

Since he came home, Dempsey has been kinder than any brother-in-law has a right to be. Every time he’s gentle with me, I lose my footing. Althea blames it on grief.

I lock my phone and force a smile. “It’s nothing. My stomach cramped. I stood up too fast.”

His shoulders sag with relief. He sets the milk aside and lifts me carefully to my feet. “This little troublemaker. Wait till he’s born. His uncle will set him straight.”

He says it so warmly. He means it. That’s the worst part.

“Come on, drink your milk and get some sleep. Don’t think so much. If Jovan could see you like this, he wouldn’t rest.”

I can’t take it anymore. Hearing him say that name, I lift my head and look him dead in the eye.

“Are you really not Jovan?”