Uri smiles, but his eyes fall to the side with barely masked guilt. I don’t know his backstory or what happened in Russia, but it’s obvious he blames himself. He’s been beating himself up for a week over Markus getting shot. Honestly, for a while he was practically inconsolable. He’s putting on a brave face in public, but I know the signs. He’s faking it on an epic scale.
The music swells again as the Cardinal strolls down the aisle. I think he’s a Cardinal. He’s dressed in all red and looks like a bird, so I’m going with it.
He starts the funeral.
Among the silence and prayers, the Cardinal says, “Please lower your heads.”
Then—a phone rings.
The crowd stiffens. Everyone twists in their seats trying to find the source of the sacrilegious interruption.
All eyes land on Alana.
She gives a half-apologetic smile and opens her purse. The phone continues to ring as she stares at the screen.
“I need to take this,” she says.
Gasps. Hissing. Mumbled blasphemy from all corners of the Four Families as Alana taps the screen, and a voice echoes through the speaker.
“Ah, Alana. I’d expect my ungrateful family to ignore my weekly phone calls and not check in on me while I’m in Italy—but you? I never expected you would miss our weekly computer chat. I waited for an hour and nary a notification.”
Silence and confusion ensue in the church, with the general consensus being: What. The. Hell.
Alana swallows as the color drains from her face. “Nonna?”
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Nonna demands.
I twist around in my seat, but the view sort of sucks. I shift and kneel on the pew, leaning over the back of the bench. Decorum be damned… Odin doesn't care.
Alana’s mouth hangs open. “We thought you were dead.”
“Why would I be dead?” She sounds insulted.
“Because the plane you took to Italy exploded over the Atlantic Ocean.” Alana looks around the church, I’m assuming to check that everyone has the same confused expression on their faces. Spoiler alert: they do.
“Oh no, I wasn’t on that plane. Some terrible young man pushed me aside and said, ‘I’m an Olympian, I only ride on the private jets.’ He flashed his gold tooth and continued to be generally rude and horrible. So, I got off the plane. I didn’t want to spend seven hours with that miscreant. No wonder someone knocked his front tooth out.”
Alana stays very still, her voice icy. “I know that guy. He orchestrated the attack on the kids.” She adds flatly, “His tooth is in Ian's bedroom.”
“Oh. Did you rip out his tooth?” Waverly whispers.
“He took my kids,” Alana counters, giving a little shrug. “Doesn’t matter much since he’s at the bottom of the ocean. Problem solved.”
Nonna continues, “I called my friend Rhea. She got me a second plane. That’s how I returned to Italy. But I needed an Epsim and couldn’t call without it. I assumed one of you would have figured that out.”
“An... Epsim?” Waverly whispers.
Alana’s eyebrows furrow into a deep V, clearly as confused as the rest of us.
“An Epsim. Epsim! What makes the phones work.”
“You mean an eSIM card?” Joey says.
Alana sinks her head, handing the phone over to him, giving him control of the situation.
“Yes, that’s the thing the boys called it.” Nonna waves her hand but pulls the screen closer to her face. “Where are you?”
The vein in his forehead starts pulsing, and my poor boyfriend is about to lose his shit in church. “At your funeral,” Joey forces the words through his clenched jaw. “We were under attack and at war. We thought you were dead.”
