From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: A Debt Paid in Rings

The Don's ICU room was dim and quiet except for the monitor.

Ettore Orsini lay propped against two pillows, and his skin was grey.

He had been alive for six hours, and he was already giving orders.

"Close the door, Doctor."

I closed it.

Tancredi stayed on the other side of the glass, with his back to us.

"Come where I can see you," the Don said.

I came to the side of the bed and checked his drain, his line and his pressure before I did anything else.

He watched me do it.

"You called the bag," he said. "My nurses tell me you called it before anyone said a word."

"Yes."

"How?"

"The port had tape around it." I kept my eyes on the monitor. "Our blood bank never tapes a port."

"That isn't what I asked."

I looked at him then.

He was an old man with a hole in his chest and a lifetime of reading faces, and he knew an answer that stopped short.

"I can't tell you more than that," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't. You wouldn't believe the rest."

For a moment he said nothing.

"Who hung it?" he asked.

"The chief resident said she did."

"Bianca."

"She said it in front of the whole family. I can't prove anything else, and if I say her name to you now, I'm the woman who accused your niece with nothing in her hands."

"That's very careful."

"I've learned to be."

The Don closed his eyes.

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