Chapter 23: The Heir

My son was born at twenty to five in the morning in the Orsini house, with the chairman's own doctor at the foot of the bed.

Federico stood at my head with his left hand in mine and his right arm in a sling.

"Breathe," he said.

"I am breathing, you are bleeding on my pillow."

"I'm not."

"You are, Federico, you stupid man, go and sit."

"No."

He did not sit.

It lasted six more hours of the worst pain I had ever known, and for all of them he was there, saying my name.

Paola held my other hand and swore at the doctor in two languages.

At ten past four the pushing began.

At twenty to five I heard a thin, furious cry fill the room.

"A boy," the doctor said, and laid him on my chest, wet and red and screaming.

I looked down.

He had a dark, damp scalp and a crumpled face and a fist the size of a walnut.

I put a finger into the fist, and it closed.

Federico made a sound I'd never heard from him.

He bent his head and put his forehead against mine, and for a while neither of us said anything.

"Look at his hands," Paola said, wiping her eyes with her wrist.

They were long hands, with long fingers.

"Your father's," Federico said.

"I know."

"Take him to my grandfather."

"He's too tired."

"He's waiting," Federico said. "He said he would be."

An hour later I was in the old man's room in a robe, with the baby wrapped in a white blanket in my arms.

The curtains were open, and gray light came in.

The oxygen hissed.

The old man's eyes opened, and when they found the bundle they were clear.

"Give him to me," he said.

Federico took the child from me and laid him on the old man's chest, with one hand ready under him.

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