Chapter 6: The Room Next to His

I left the dessert untouched and walked out of the dining room with sixty Bellandi eyes on my back.

Alessio caught up with me in the hall.

"Serena, my driver is faster than yours."

"Then drive."

We covered the hill road in four minutes.

The private wing was dark when we stepped out of the lift.

One lamp burned at the empty nurses' station, and the corridor beyond it had no sound at all.

I ran the rest of the way.

My mother's door stood half open.

She lay awake in the dark with her rosary in her fist, and her monitor ticked beside her.

"There you are," Mama said. "I rang the bell twice."

"Nobody came?"

"Nobody came."

I pressed the bell myself and counted to a hundred.

A single night nurse appeared at the end of the corridor, pale and out of breath, with a tablet in her hand.

"I'm sorry, signora, I'm covering the whole floor alone. The board sent the others home at nine. The order came down from the Bellandi office."

"Whose signature?"

She looked past me at Alessio and swallowed.

"Signor Ruggero's," she said.

Alessio said nothing, and his hands closed.

I turned to my mother.

"Mama, we're leaving."

"Where to?"

"Somewhere with a nurse who answers."

"Good," said Mama. "Tell the girl to bring my slippers."

Alessio spoke for the first time since the lift.

"There is a clinic wing at the Bellandi house. My father had it built when he was ill. It has its own doctor, its own staff, and a door that locks."

"Your house," I said.

"My house."

"The same house where your uncle just ate dinner."

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