Coffin Undertaker Novels & Stories

"Five minutes. If you hate what I show you, I'll leave and never bother you again. I promise." Peggy hesitated. Her hand was still on the door, ready to slam it in his face. But something in Dante's voice made her pause. "Fine," she said finally. "Five minutes." She stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her, and followed Dante to his Range Rover. He opened the back hatch. Peggy looked inside and stopped breathing. A coffin. Simple, wooden, but clearly expensive and polished with brass. "What is this?" Peggy's voice was barely a whisper.

The coffin arrived at the Marcelli estate just after midnight. It was an old manor perched on the edge of the river, guarded by wrought-iron gates and men with polished shoes and machine pistols under their coats. But the box that rolled up the gravel drive in the back of an unmarked van wasn’t dressed in ceremony. It was crude, raw pine, strapped with iron hinges, the kind of thing you might bury someone in when you didn’t care about prayers or flowers.