Only the Sea Breeze Remembers

When I died, my fiancé, Ron Corleone, was on his way to get to us.

I learned this quite a while after… My soul was trapped in the cold storage of an abandoned fishing harbor, listening to the faint sounds outside—the hum of an engine, the screech of brakes, the opening and closing of car doors. Then came his footsteps, hurried and heavy, pounding against the concrete like drums.

The Ron I knew was the Don of the Corleone family. He was always calm and always in control. However, his voice was trembling and sounded panicked.

“Lisa!”

I floated out of the cold storage and watched as he rushed into the neighboring warehouse.

Moonlight leaked through the broken roof, illuminating Lisa, who was curled up beside a stack of oil barrels.

Her hands were bound behind her back, and her mouth was sealed with tape. Her white dress was smeared with dirt and… my blood.

The blood she had deliberately rubbed onto herself when she was “kidnapped.”

Ron lunged forward. As he peeled the tape from her mouth, he touched her gently as if he were unwrapping a delicate gift.

“Lisa, it’s okay now. I’m here.”

Lisa threw herself into his arms and wailed. “Ron… I was so scared…”

“Where’s Wendy?” Ron asked as he untied the ropes. “She went out with you. Where is she?”

The question made Lisa’s crying stop for a split second.

It was so brief that only I, the dead woman, noticed it.

“I don’t know…” she sobbed, burying her face in Ron’s chest. “They separated us… I was locked up here… Wendy… I haven’t seen her since…”

Ron’s hands froze. “Separated? When?”

“As soon as we were brought here.” Lisa looked up, tears rolling down her dirt-covered face, leaving two streaks of dirt. “When they took Wendy away, I heard someone say, ‘How much do you think the Marino family’s daughter is worth?’”

Ron’s expression darkened instantly.

I knew that look. Ron was angry but not at the kidnappers. He was furious at me.

Because of the Marino family’s name, I was naturally a target because I was the Marino family’s Principessa.

Meanwhile, Lisa, his long-lost sister, whom he had only just found after twenty years, had suffered an undeserved disaster because of me.

“She didn’t try to save you?” Ron asked gently.

Lisa shook her head, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.

“There were so many of them… Wendy might have… might found a chance to escape… She is capable after all…”

That last sentence was the finishing touch.

Wendy Marino was so capable. Raised in a mafia family, rigorously trained, proficient in hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and survival, she could absolutely escape on her own.

However, if she escaped, why did she not come back to save Lisa?

There was only one answer. Wendy did not want to.

I watched Ron’s eyes grow colder by the second. I knew I had guessed exactly what he was thinking.

He carried Lisa in his arms and walked out while ordering one of his men. “Search every inch of this place. I want to see her, alive or dead.”

Alive?

But he would never find me alive.

Because I was already dead, my body lay just twenty meters away, in the cold storage, piled together with dead fish. A gunshot wound in my chest, the blood already congealed into a deep brown crust.

As Lisa passed by the cold storage, she cast a glance in that direction.

In that instant, there was no fear in her eyes, no grief. All I saw was a strange, almost pleasurable calm.

Then, she buried her face back into Ron’s shoulder and continued playing the role of the terrified little sister.