From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Wrist He Cleaned

In Tancredi's villa Adriana remembers how she died, and he tends her cut wrist. The Don wakes and asks for her alone.

Tancredi's villa stood at the end of a gravel drive behind two sets of gates.

He did not say a word to me in the car.

A guard stood at each end of the upstairs hall, and the room he gave me had a bed, a bathroom and a window with a lock on the outside.

"This is a cage," I said.

"It's a room." He shut the door behind us and set a black medical case on the dresser. "Sit."

"I'd rather stand."

"Then stand and bleed on my floor."

I looked down.

There was a line of red on my left cuff, from my wrist to my knuckles.

I must have caught it on the forceps in OR One and never felt it.

He opened the case.

It held gauze, saline and a curved needle, all of it neatly packed, and I knew the packing wasn't the work of a man who bought his first-aid supplies at a drugstore.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He knelt on one knee in front of me and took my hand.

His palm was warm and dry, and he turned my wrist over under the lamp.

"Hold still."

"I'm a surgeon. I know how to hold still."

"Then do it."

He cleaned the cut.

His thumb lay across the inside of my wrist, right where a nurse takes a pulse.

I could feel mine going. It was a great deal faster than it had any right to be.

"Why did you take me out of that room?" I asked.

"Because my uncle had five votes and wanted six."

"That's not an answer. Anyone in that room could have taken me. You took me home."

He tore the tape with his teeth.

"I wanted you where I could see you."

"That isn't an answer either."

"It's the one I'm giving."

I looked at the top of his bent head. His black hair had a few grey threads at the temple, and I had never noticed them before.

Last time, I never got this close to him.

Last time, the only time I got this close was the stairwell.

The east stairwell was concrete, with a steel rail and a yellow light that buzzed.

He had stood two steps above me, with the gun held very low.

I remembered what the rail felt like against my back, cold even through my coat.

I remembered that he said my name.

I could not remember anything after that, and I knew exactly why.

His hand tightened on my wrist.

"Where did you go just now?" he said.

"Nowhere."

"You went white."

"It's been a long day."

He nodded slowly, but he did not let go.

Where his collar opened, at the side of his neck, a pulse was beating hard enough to see.

I told myself it was adrenaline, or the long morning with his father on the table.

I told myself it had nothing to do with me.

"You gave me gloves," I said.

"Yes."

"Six and a half. Before I'd opened my mouth."

"Supply sends me a list of the staff on call," he said. "I read it."

That was a lie. I could not have said how I knew, except that his eyes didn't leave mine when he said it.

Supply did not keep glove sizes on a list. Supply kept one older woman who remembered everyone's hands.

I let the lie stand.

I needed him more than I needed to catch him in it.

"The Don," I said instead. "I want to see him."

"You'll see him when he wakes."

"If he wakes and Ignazio is standing at the foot of the bed, I'm done."

"Ignazio will not be in the room."

"You can't promise that."

"I just did."

He finished the dressing and smoothed the last strip of tape flat with his thumb, once, along the length of my wrist.

I felt it all the way up my arm.

He stood. He took the case. He went to the door.

"Eat something. Sleep if you can. Nobody comes through this door tonight who doesn't come through me."

"And you? Who locks you in?"

For a second, he almost smiled. It didn't last.

"Good night, Dottoressa."

He had one hand on the knob when his phone rang.

He listened.

He said nothing for a long moment, and his face did not change.

"He's awake?" he said. "Already?"

He turned back to me.

"My father is asking for you," he said. "Alone."

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