Dante
St.Bonifacewasdrowningin bodies.
Three hundred people packed into pews built for two-fifty, the overflow spilling onto the sidewalk where September sun baked the concrete to shimmer. I stood in the front row with my father's casket six feet ahead of me and felt nothing at all.
Santo pressed against my left side, solid as a wall. Marco on my right, close enough that our shoulders touched. Behind me, Donatella's palm rested flat against my back—a small pressure, barely there, but I could feel it through my suit jacket like a brand. She'd been doing it since the processional started. Her way of saying: I'm here. Don't fall.
I wasn't going to fall. Falling wasn't an option.
The casket was closed. Polished mahogany, brass handles, draped in white roses that cascaded over the lid like a funeral in a movie. Someone had decided roses were appropriate. Traditional. Dignified. Probably Aunt Teresa, who had opinions about everything and the stubbornness to enforce them.
My father had hated roses.
He'd called them overwrought. Attention-seeking. "A flower that needs thorns to be interesting isn't worth the trouble," he'd told me once, back when he still told me things. What he'd loved were gardenias—the simple white ones my mother used to grow in the backyard, the ones that smelled like summer evenings and her perfume and everything we'd lost when she died.
No one had asked me about the flowers, of course. No one had asked me about anything. By the time I'd arrived at the funeral home, every decision had already been made by people who meant well and understood nothing.
People thought it wasn’t important enough to bother me with.
White roses. My father would have laughed. Or maybe he wouldn't have—maybe he'd have approved of the performance, the image, the way it looked to outsiders. He'd always cared more about appearance than truth.
The organ music swelled and faded. Father Pietro was speaking about eternal rest and the mercy of God, his voice rolling over the congregation like water over stones. I caught fragments: beloved husband, devoted father, pillar of the community. The words meant nothing. They were placeholders, blank spaces where a real person should have been.
I felt every eye in the room.
Not watching the priest. Not watching the casket. Watching me.
The Gambettis in the fourth row, calculating whether the son could manage what the father had built. The Rossinis near the back, already repositioning their alliances in their heads. City councilmen and ward bosses and businessmen who owed us favors—all of them here to pay respects, yes, but also to take measure. To weigh the new don against the old and decide whether the Caruso family was still worth fearing.
They couldn't see that I was drowning.
Father Pietro turned to me. Nodded. My cue.
I rose from the pew.
The walk to the pulpit took maybe ten seconds. It felt like ten years. I was aware of my heartbeat, my breathing, the way my shoes sounded against the marble floor. The congregation was silent. Three hundred people holding their breath, waiting to see what the new don would say about the old one.
I reached the podium. Gripped the edges. Looked out at the sea of faces.
"My father," I began, and my voice came out steady. Thank God. "My father believed that family was everything. Not just blood—though blood mattered to him, deeply—but the family we choose. The people we trust with our lives, our livelihoods, our futures."
I'd written this eulogy at three in the morning, sitting in his office with his papers spread around me and his ghost in every shadow. I'd drafted and redrafted, cutting anything that felt too personal, too raw, too real. What remained was a monument: solid, impressive, utterly impenetrable.
"He built something remarkable. Not just a business—a legacy. A network of relationships built on loyalty and mutual respect. He taught me that a man's word is his bond. That you protect what's yours at any cost. That strength isn't about force—it's about the will to do what must be done, even when it's hard."
I watched heads nod. Saw approval in familiar faces. The eulogy was landing exactly as intended—painting Vito Caruso as a patriarch, a visionary, a man worth mourning.
"My father wasn't perfect." The words slipped out before I could stop them. Not part of the script. The congregation shifted, suddenly attentive. "No man is. But he loved his family—fiercely, protectively, sometimes to a fault. Everything he did, he did for us. For our future. For the legacy he believed we could build together."
My voice didn't waver. My hands didn't shake. I was exactly what a new don should be.
And inside I was screaming.
I finished the eulogy. Said the expected things about rest and peace and memory. Returned to my seat with measured steps, lowered myself into the pew, felt my siblings close ranks around me.
Donatella's hand pressed against my back again. Harder this time. Her way of saying: I know. I know what that cost you.
The priest resumed his prayers. The organ played. The incense rose in spiraling threads toward the vaulted ceiling.
