Chapter 1
“Tell me who ordered my funeral. You only get one chance.”
Owen stopped breathing.
My portrait stared up at me from inside the second casket.
Someone had chosen one from three years earlier—black suit, family ring visible, expression deliberately severe. Not a random photograph.
A leadership portrait.
Behind me, my mother gripped the back of a padded chair.
“Bianca…”
“I’m here.”
Owen slowly pushed himself away from the collapsed flower stand.
“This isn’t what you think.”
I looked at the two caskets.
One prepared for Agnes Rinaldi.
One prepared for Bianca Rinaldi.
“Then improve my imagination.”
Corinne reached toward her purse.
My guard caught her wrist before she touched it.
A phone slipped from inside.
The screen was already lit.
One unsent message.
FIRST ONE REFUSED TO STAY DOWN. BIANCA ARRIVED EARLY.
I took the phone.
No recipient name.
Only initials.
L.R.
My stomach tightened.
There were several Rinaldis with those initials.
Only one mattered immediately.
Luca Rinaldi.
My twenty-six-year-old nephew.
Owen’s son.
The young man I had been preparing for senior command.
I looked at Owen.
His expression answered before his mouth could.
“No.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t make assumptions.”
“Your wife was about to report my arrival to L.R.”
“Corinne isn’t my wife.”
Wrong thing to correct.
Then Agnes spoke.
“Lorenzo.”
Everyone turned.
My mother’s face had gone pale.
I walked to her.
“Who?”
She swallowed.
“Lorenzo Rinaldi.”
My father’s younger brother.
Dead for eleven years.
The founder of the branch my mother had spent three decades refusing to discuss.
I stared at her.
“He’s dead.”
Agnes looked toward my portrait inside the casket.
“No.”
Her voice trembled.
“That’s what we told everyone.”
The chapel became silent.
I looked at the message again.
May you like
L.R.
My funeral had apparently been ordered by a dead man who had never died.
