I Died the Year the Don Hated Me Most

Nine hours after I died, Vincent had my body sent to be cremated.No funeral, no priest.When the funeral home manager handed him the urn, the first snow of the year was falling on New York.Vincent wore a black overcoat, and his face showed nothing at all."Don Moretti, the Whitmore family would like to bury the Donna in their family plot.""She doesn't deserve it."Then my brother Arthur's voice came from outside the door."Vincent, give my sister back to me!"Arthur burst in and punched Vincent in the face.Vincent didn't dodge.His bodyguards had Arthur pinned to the floor in seconds.Six years ago, Arthur had been the heir to Whitmore Bank. He lived in a mansion beside Central Park, had a driver whenever he went out, and could spend an ordinary man's monthly salary on a single meal.Now Whitmore Bank was bankrupt.My father was dead, and Arthur was in prison for financial crimes. Today he had been escorted out to claim my body.And Vincent, whom Arthur had once looked down on, now

The first time I saw Vincent, he was sixteen.His mother, Maeve, waited tables in a bar. His real father was the head of the Moretti crime family, but he had never once acknowledged the boy.Vincent lived with his mother on the poorest street on Manhattan's West Side.He went to school by day and washed dishes at a restaurant by night.The school gave him a full scholarship, but the rich students still looked down on him. His uniform was secondhand, and his lunch was often nothing but a free apple.And I was the youngest daughter of the Whitmore family.My father ran a bank. My mother came from a Boston shipping family. I grew up in a mansion, learned to ride, and everyone around me told me I could only marry a man of the same standing.But I fell for Vincent.Every day I had the driver buy an extra breakfast, declared it tasted terrible, and tossed it to him.He couldn't afford a math tutor, so I pretended I couldn't do the problems, asked him to tutor me, and paid him the highest rat

When Luca was clearing out my dressing room, he found a wooden box under the floorboards."Throw it away," Vincent said.Luca didn't. He set the box on the desk instead.That night, Vincent opened it after all.Inside was a high school yearbook.I had folded down the corner of every page with a photograph of Vincent on it.Beneath it were a dozen receipts.The first was for his mother's surgery.Maeve had been diagnosed with kidney disease and needed an operation at once. Vincent couldn't borrow the money. I sold a diamond necklace and paid the whole bill in the name of a charity fund.The second was the lawyer's fee after Vincent was arrested.The police called it armed robbery. I found the footage from the shop's back door proving he had been in another neighborhood at the time, and had a lawyer bring it to the prosecutor.The third was Sophia's tuition for medical school.Her grades were excellent, but she couldn't pay. I donated to the school from my own trust fund so they could gi

When Vincent got home, he ordered everyone to get my things back.My clothes had already been hauled away by the garbage truck.He had the dump shut down at once and sent more than twenty men to dig through the trash.They searched all night and recovered only a single pump with the heel snapped off, half a sweater ruined by water, and the canvas bag I used for groceries.Vincent sat in the dump with those few things clutched against his chest.No one dared say a word to him.The next day, he had Malcolm brought in.To save his own life, Malcolm handed over a folder of documents.It recorded everything I had done for Vincent over the years.When Vincent first took control of the Brooklyn docks, the union president tried to extort five million dollars from him. I found proof the president had embezzled the union's pension fund, mailed it to him, and forced him to resign.When the FBI first set its sights on Vincent, the key witness was ready to testify. I sold my champion racehorse and

Vincent put out a bounty across New York.Anyone who recovered a single gram of my ashes would get a hundred thousand dollars.He had the riverbank sealed off, the snow and soil collected, and divers sent into the river.Hundreds of people searched for seven days, and in the end recovered less than half an urn's worth.He kept the urn in our bedroom and slept holding it every night.At the same time, he began to undo what he had done wrong.He withdrew the false evidence against Arthur and had my brother released early.He used his own money to restore the pensions Whitmore Bank's ordinary employees had lost.He sold part of his casino holdings and set up a fund for women and children the crime families had hurt.When Arthur was released, Vincent went to meet him in person."I'm sorry," Vincent said.Arthur punched him in the face."You should be saying that to Eloise.""I don't have the chance anymore.""Then live," Arthur said. "And remember every day that you're the one who killed h