HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KING

HAUNTED BY THE MAFIA KING

By Ann E.

Chapter 1: The Candle Nobody Saw

Lila POV 

The kitchen was dark and smelled of lemon polish, and I was crouched in front of the third cupboard like a thief.

Behind the flour tins, where the housekeeper never looked, sat a single cupcake in a paper case. I'd bought it yesterday from the bakery on Aldrich Street, paid in coins, and hidden it before anyone could ask what it was for. I set it on the counter, pushed one candle into the frosting, and struck a match.

The flame shook, then steadied.

Five-forty in the morning. Twenty-two years old.

I closed my eyes. I'd made the same wish for as long as I could remember, and it embarrassed me how simple it still was.

*Let them see me.*

I blew out the candle. Smoke curled up, thin and grey, and the kitchen went dark again.

I ate the cupcake standing up and washed the plate before anyone came down.

By breakfast the dining room had been dressed for a party. Ribbons on the chair backs. A banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VANESSA in silver letters, and beneath it, smaller, in a different font, as if someone had remembered later: *& LILA*.

"There they are," Dad said, rising from the head of the table. "The birthday girls."

He kissed Vanessa on the forehead. Mum squeezed her hand. I hovered in the doorway, waiting to see which way the warmth would travel, then took the chair nearest the door.

"Happy birthday, darling," Mum said to Vanessa.

"Happy birthday, sweetheart," Dad said to Vanessa.

"Happy birthday," I said to the table, and they smiled at me the way people smile at an echo.

The present came out with the toast. A long black case, opened with a flourish. Inside lay a diamond necklace, coiled like something alive. Vanessa put both hands to her mouth.

"Dad."

"Only the best."

I watched her stand so Mum could fasten the clasp. Mum's fingers were careful. She smoothed a strand of hair away from the chain and murmured something that made Vanessa laugh. I could not remember her ever touching me like that, with that much attention to a single strand of hair. I noticed the thought and put it away.

I reached into my bag and set a small box on the tablecloth.

"I got you something too."

Vanessa glanced at it. "Oh. Thanks, Lila. Can I look later? I want to see this in the mirror."

"Sure."

The box stayed beside the butter dish while the necklace went to the hall mirror, then to a phone camera, then to a video call with her friends. Somewhere in there someone moved the butter, and the box slid to the edge of the cloth.

I didn't touch it. I buttered my toast very slowly and listened to myself chew.

At six that evening the house filled with people in good clothes.

I moved among them in the blue dress I'd owned for two years, carrying a tray of canapés nobody had asked me to carry. I'd walked into the kitchen, seen the caterer's assistant wrestling three platters at once, and picked one up. It was easier than standing in the drawing room with empty hands.

"Smoked salmon or goat's cheese?"

"Whichever you recommend." A man in a grey suit took two of each, then peered at me. "You're the McCann girl."

"One of them."

"The birthday twins, isn't that right? Same day." He chuckled. "Isn't that something?"

"Every year," I said.

Across the room, Mum had turned her head. Not toward the man. Toward me. Something crossed her face, a stillness, a tightening around the mouth, and it landed on me like a cold hand on the back of my neck. I had no word for it. It had happened before, at other parties, whenever someone said *same day*. I had never worked out why.

Then someone touched her arm, and she smiled at them, and whatever it had been was gone.

My fingers had gone tight on the tray. I loosened them one by one.

The candles came out at eight. One cake, two names in pink icing. VANESSA on the left in tall, curling letters, with sugar roses beneath. LILA on the right, shorter, where the icing had begun to slide.

The room sang. I sang with it, quietly, and watched the flames lean.

When the song ended I drew a breath, and Vanessa laughed and blew out all twenty-two candles at once.

"Oops," she said. "Got carried away."

Everyone laughed. I stood there with my lips still parted, a half-second late, my breath wasted on nothing.

"Photographs!" Dad called. "Before the light goes."

The photographer had set up on the staircase. Lamps, a white backdrop pinned to the banister, a chair for the elderly aunt.

"Lila." Dad pressed a phone into my hand. "Would you take a few of us? Marcus is bringing the cars round, and I want some on my own phone."

"Of course."

They arranged themselves in about four seconds. Dad on the left, Mum on the right, Vanessa in the middle with the necklace throwing sparks across her collarbone. They looked like something painted.

I raised the phone.

"One, two, three."

Click.

"Another," Dad said. "Look at me, Van."

Click.

Between the third and the fourth, I lowered it an inch. My heart was going hard.

"I'd like to be in one."

Nobody heard. The photographer was adjusting a lamp. Vanessa was tilting her chin.

"I'd like to be in one of them," I said, louder.

The staircase went quiet.

"Darling," Mum said, in the bright voice she kept for guests, "this is a *family* portrait. Perhaps you could hold the lamp?"

"I'm family."

It came out steadier than I expected. In the silence afterward I heard a glass clink somewhere in the hall, the party carrying on without me.

Dad exhaled through his nose. "Fine. Let her stand on the end. For goodness' sake."

I handed the phone to the photographer. He took it, met my eyes for half a second, and looked away. I climbed two steps and stood at the very edge of the group, half a pace behind Mum's shoulder. My face felt hot.

"Lovely. On three."

As he counted, I glanced left.

Mum wasn't looking at the camera. She was looking at the two of us side by side, me at the edge and Vanessa in the centre, and the colour had drained from her face. Her hand tightened on Vanessa's waist, hard enough that I saw her knuckles whiten.

*What are you afraid of?* The thought came so suddenly that I nearly said it aloud.

The shutter went. Mum turned, and she was smiling again, as if it had only been the lamps.

The guests thinned out around ten. The staff began collecting glasses. Mum had gone upstairs with a headache, and from the sitting room came the sound of Dad and Vanessa going through the photographs together.

I walked the length of the dining room, past the ruined cake and the crushed ribbon, trailing my fingers along the chair backs.

At the end of the table, half-buried in a sheet of tissue paper, something small flashed in the chandelier light.

I stopped.

The hairpin lay curled in its nest of white, the tiny gold veins catching the glow. The box I'd wrapped had been opened, emptied, and left. It had cost me nearly two weeks of tips from the bookshop. It had taken a whole Saturday of standing outside a boutique window, doing sums.

"Sorry, miss." A woman in a black apron reached past me. "I'll just clear this."

"That's fine," I said. "Not that, though."

I lifted the hairpin out of the tissue and closed my fingers around it. It was still cool from the room.

It wasn't to punish anyone. I'd have given it again, if Vanessa had wanted it. I just couldn't leave it there with the champagne corks and the napkins. Not something I'd chosen so carefully.

From the sitting room Dad's voice carried, easy and warm. "Oh, Lila can clear up, Van. She likes to feel useful."

I put the hairpin in my pocket.

Then I walked out of the dining room, past the staff, past the closed door with my family's laughter behind it, and up the stairs. I did not go back down to see what else needed doing. My legs were shaking by the landing.

My bedroom was cold. I sat on the edge of the bed without turning on the lamp, and my phone lit in my hand.

**Jason:** Sorry baby, something's come up. Can't do tonight. Tomorrow?

I read it twice. Earlier, while I was carrying canapés, I'd watched the little dots appear and vanish and appear again, and I'd told myself he was only deciding how to word a surprise.

*I understand,* I typed, and sent it.

No reply.

I put the phone face down on the duvet and took the hairpin from my pocket. It lay in my palm, small and bright and entirely mine.

I'd saved a second candle. I always did: one for the morning and one for the end of the day, in case the day turned out worse than the wish. It was in the drawer of my bedside table, a little bent. I stood it in an old teacup and struck a match.

Downstairs, Vanessa's laughter rose through the floorboards and fell away.

I looked at the flame.

Tonight I couldn't ask to be loved. I was too tired to ask for something that had never once been given. I thought instead of Mum's face on the staircase, white as paper, her knuckles pressed against Vanessa's dress. I thought of the look that came every time someone said *same day*.

*Why,* I thought. *Why do I always feel like the one who isn't allowed to stay?*

I closed my eyes.

*Let me know the truth.*

I blew out the candle, and the room went dark.