Betting Over My Grief
Five years after my younger brother Luca and my fiancée Elena were killed in an ambush, I arranged my own burial at sea.
I was pressing the engraved nameplate onto my custom urn when my father, Don Salvatore Leo, walked into the room with a cigar between his lips.
"Antonio, you don't need to go to the docks to mourn them this year. They're not dead."
My fingers went white around the nameplate.
Then the hidden door in the safe room opened from the inside.
Luca walked out with Elena in his arms, casually spinning the emerald ring I had once given her around his finger.
"I won the bet," he said, lazy about it. "I told you we could live right next door to him for five years and he'd never