From behind the half-open door of the study, I heard the doctor speaking in a voice that trembled at its edges, the way men's voices trembled when they knew they were caught between a medical oath and the only oath that mattered in this house.
"Don Valente, although both your wife and Miss Ferraro share RH-negative blood, your wife has a long history of heart disease. Forcing a draw of this volume could trigger acute cardiac shock. I strongly advise we transfer her to a proper facility where we can monitor—"
"No need to persuade me." Dominic's voice was ice over stone. The silver Zippo was motionless in his left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, perfectly still. "Your only job is to make sure Daniela gets better. I'll handle everything else."
I heard his footsteps approaching across the hardwood, each one measured and deliberate, and I slowly closed my eyes.
"Does it hurt?"
His tone, for once, carried a trace of gentleness, thin as a razor's edge and just as dangerous.
"Hang in there. It'll be over soon."
I turned my head away, unwilling to waste a single word on him, staring instead at the wall where a framed photograph of Salvatore Valente's younger days hung in judgment over the room.
By the time they had drawn eight hundred cc's of blood, my lips were already turning purple, and the edges of my vision had gone soft, the study dissolving into watercolor at the periphery.
Just then, a faint cough echoed from the master bedroom down the corridor. Daniela.
Upon hearing it, Dominic immediately pushed the doctor's hand aside and ordered him to draw twice as much, his voice carrying the flat certainty of a man issuing a kill order.
The doctor, drenched in cold sweat, his hands shaking around the syringe, warned him again. "If I continue, your wife could die."
Dominic paused for only two seconds, and in those two seconds the room held its breath, the soldier by the door held his breath, and even the old house seemed to hold its breath, waiting to learn what kind of man its master truly was.
"Daniela is pregnant," he said coldly. "The baby comes first."
"But—"
Without hesitation, I interrupted the doctor. "Just do it." My voice came out steadier than I expected, hollowed out of everything except the exhaustion of nine years. "But after this, let me go."