Silence Smells Like Mandarins

Silence smells like mandarins.

I didn’t know that until today. I also didn’t know my brother-in-law would cry like this — a man who never spoke more than three words to me in a row has been sobbing over my coffin for ten minutes now, with a devotion that, frankly, feels excessive.

I could tell him I’m fine, that it was a lovely touch to leave me a couple of mandarins — my favorite fruit.

I can’t.

The deal was clear: absolute silence until the money is out of the country. Forty-eight hours inside this box and the problem disappears — I disappear, technically — and no one comes looking for me again.

It was an elegant plan.

It was… until I heard my wife confess to the priest that she already had someone in mind to move on with.

Silence, now, weighs differently…

I could keep quiet. The two hundred million are still real. The risk of ending up in prison for fraud is, too. But there are things a dead man cannot ignore from inside his own funeral — like hearing my wife mention to her friend Laura the name of that lover.

Jhon Cortez-Smith — my business partner.

The same man who offered me that deal, the one that led to this very profitable fraud.

The same one who suggested this plan.

The same one who helped me choose this coffin.

From in here, with the heat starting to rise and the smell of mandarins clinging to my throat, I’m beginning to think that maybe the plan wasn’t meant to save me.

Forty-eight hours ahead is a long time to think — and to decide.

The important thing: I have a copy of everything in a place Jhon will never find. The problem is that using it costs me the two hundred million… and forces me to endure this absurdity.

If I die and don’t call the Swiss lawyers within seventy-two hours, the money disappears.

Ricard Serra took a slow, imperceptible breath as he closed his eyes, thinking:

For now… silence still smells like mandarins.