Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Yana
Giovanni turns to look at me, but his face is empty. Nothing moves in it.
“That’s impossible,” he says. “I put her to bed myself.”
“Then come and see for yourself, Don,” Fabiano answers.
Giovanni walks past him. The men with the guns gesture at me to follow.
My body shakes as I walk. This is a dream.
It’s a dream, or it’s a mistake; somebody made a mistake.
Lucia was in the garden yesterday with the sun on her face, the porridge steaming, and the color back in her cheeks.
She stood up by herself. She talked and joked with us; how could she die in her sleep? Somebody got it wrong.
We go to her room, and she is on the bed. I see her face. She is as pale as paper, and her lips are blue. Her skin feels lifeless. My legs quiver.
No, no no no no
Giovanni reaches out with shaking hands and touches her neck.
“There’s no pulse,” Fabiano says.
I force my way past the man beside me and drop to my knees at the bedside.
“That’s impossible. That doesn’t make sense. She was fine; she was fine yesterday. Call the doctor! Call the doctor!” I scream.
I press my fingers to her throat. There is nothing under them. Not a flutter, no warmth. I press harder; this has to be a lie. There has to be something; why isn’t there something?
I’m not finding it because I’m doing it wrong, that’s all; my hands are shaking, let me do it again —
I grab Giovanni’s trousers. He’s standing over her, dazed.
“Call the doctor, please; she could still be alive. We can still get her to a hospital. It’s not too late;, it can’t be too late, please!”
“The doctor checked,” Fabiano announces coolly.
He claps, and the doctor comes in.
“Examine her again. Tell them what you told me.”
The doctor bends over her, and he feels her pulse, examines her eyes, and checks her chest.
“There’s no pulse,” he says. “She’s been gone for hours.”
“Thank you,” Fabiano says.
“It’s not true.” I’m saying it to myself, over and over. “It’s not true; it’s not true.”
Hours? How can it be hours? Giovanni tucked her in, and he said she was fine.
Giovanni breathes in, and his head comes up.
“Don,” Fabiano says, “the cook confessed.”
A woman is shoved into the room. She goes down onto the floor and crawls toward Giovanni with her hands up.
“Mercy, Don, please, she made me, the Russian made me, she told me to put something into the Lady’s porridge—”
My head snaps toward her. What?
“No. No, I didn’t. Why are you saying that? Why are you lying!” I scream. My heart is pounding in my chest.
“Then why did you have her make porridge specially for the Lady?” Fabiano says.
“Because it was good for her; it was for her recovery from the medication.” I’m looking at Giovanni. “It was for her recovery; you have to believe me. Ask the maids!”
Giovanni isn’t looking at me.
“I’ve sent the remains of the porridge to a lab,” Fabiano says over me. “We’ll have a result soon.”
What is happening? I feel my heart starting to pound painfully as I look at the woman on the floor saying my name, the doctor closing his bag, Lucia not breathing, all of it coming at me at once and none of it real, none of it.
I reach for her wrist again. I have to feel it myself.
I have to be sure, just let me be sure.”
“Don’t touch her,” Giovanni says. His voice is restrained. He’s looking at me. The pain held back behind his face, and the anger under it, building.
He thinks I did this.
No. No, no. Look at me, look at me properly. You know me; you held me last night.
“We think Kirill put her up to this,” Fabiano says. “I think this is a plan to blindside the Don.”
No. The word is huge in my chest, and it won’t come out; it’s stuck.
Why won’t it come out? I switched her pills.
I switched her injections. I was the one keeping her alive.
But Lucia can’t tell him anything. Lucia can’t say a word.
The only person who knows what I did is lying right there, and she’s gone.
She’s gone, and there’s no one left who can say it for me.
Giovanni laughs. “Then Kirill and I have a score to settle,” he spits. “Lock her up.”
Fabiano’s face holds satisfaction just beneath the surface.
“Yes, Don.”
The men pull me up. “Do not touch a hair of her head,” Giovanni says. “I’ll kill her myself.”
“Yes, Don.”
They drag me toward the door because my legs won’t take my weight. How is she dead? How?
I turn my head as they pull me out. Giovanni has sat down on the edge of the bed beside his sister. He bends forward over her and puts his face in his hands.
And for the first time in years, a tear runs down my face.
* * *
The room I am locked in is dark, and the floor is cold. I was thrown in there, and the door shut behind me, leaving me in total darkness.
My back finds the wall. My knees come up. I let my head drop forward against them, and I stay like that, folded over, my hands hanging loose between my feet. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to do with my body, so my body does nothing.
Fabiano set me up; it has to be him. Who else would be bold enough to pull this? But why is he so hasty? He was so careful, poisoning her so subtly; why did he become careless overnight?
Unless I made him careless, and he wanted to get rid of her before she could stand in front of Giovanni with both legs working and say Fabiano was making me sick. I pushed him, and he killed her. My heart sinks at the thought.
Lucia is dead. I press my hand against my mouth. I don’t believe it. I won’t. I press my hand harder against my mouth until it hurts.
Get up. Get up, Yana. Crying doesn’t help her, doesn’t help anyone; get up. I make myself stand. My legs are tired; they hold me anyway. I need to get out of here. If Fabiano has gone to such lengths to set me up, he won’t just let me be; he will try something soon.
I think about Giovanni. He’s clever; he’s the cleverest man I’ve ever met. So, he’ll take her to a hospital. If anyone can see through this, it’s him.
Please see through this.
The doors open suddenly, and the light floods in. Giovanni steps in with Fabiano behind him.
I run across the room to him, and I take his hand.
“Did you take her to the hospital? Tell me you took her.”
He smiles, and for one second, the hope is so big it hurts.
Then I see his eyes, and the second dies. It’s blood red.
“She’s been officially declared dead,” he says.
The floor feels unsteady. No. No, that’s — no, that’s not —”
He laughs; it’s a sound tinged with bitterness.
“The lab came back. The porridge was poisoned.”
“What?”
“You poisoned my sister.” His voice climbs. “In front of me. Have you no fear? None?”
The last word hits the walls.
“I didn’t!”
My voice is desperate, and I can’t make it stop. “I would never, I would never have hurt her or you, Giovanni, I swear to you, I would never —”
“I trusted you.”
I fall back a bit at the words. Fabiano puts a gun in his hand; Giovanni cocks it and puts the barrel to my face.
“Give me one reason,” he says, “why I shouldn’t paint that wall with your brains?”
And I laugh, not because anything is funny; it’s because this is wild, all unbelievable, ridiculous, insane, and I’m the only one in the room who can see it.
“Are you stupid?” I look at him over the barrel. “Are you actually stupid, or are you pretending because I need to know?”
I throw my arm out toward Fabiano.
“He found her, he found her body, and he didn’t call a hospital; he didn’t try; he gathered men, and he pointed at me first. That’s time, Giovanni! Time she might have had, and he spent it building a story instead of saving her. Why, why would he do that? Ask yourself why!” I scream.
“Shut up!” Fabiano’s voice splits across the room. “Don, do not listen to her.”
I keep my eyes on Giovanni. His face is empty. His whole body is rigid inside that suit, holding something shut by force. He doesn’t look like he cares about what I am saying. But I still try.
“Think, just think for one second — if I wanted her dead, I’d have done it myself; I wouldn’t use a cook. Why would I leave a witness that would be caught so easily?”
“Nonsense.” Fabiano turns to him. “Don, you must not be deceived. The Pakhan used her as bait. He sent her here knowing she might be able to get to your sister. He might want to discard her after.”
I’m looking at Giovanni’s face and screaming internally for him to see it. It’s right there; it’s in front of you. Look at the snake beside you. Look at him whispering in your ear!
But I know why he can’t. The one person he built his whole life around is dead, and a man whose heart is in pieces does not think straight.
“You killed my sister,” he says through his teeth.
He pulls the trigger, the sound rips through the room, and I shut my eyes and wait for it, for the pain, for the darkness, but there’s nothing. The ringing fades, and I’m still standing. Nothing hurts.
I open my eyes. The wall beside my head has a hole in it. Fabiano’s face drops; he doesn’t try to hide the disappointment. He wants me dead.
Giovanni lowers the gun an inch.
“I’m going to make you regret this,” he tells me. “By the time I’m finished, you’ll be begging me to do what I just didn’t.”
He turns to Fabiano.
“Give her food, water, and maids around her every hour, watching every move. Not a hair on her head is touched.” His voice drops lower. “I’ll end this myself.”
He leaves the room as I cry out. “Please — please listen to me, Giovanni, please—”
Fabiano stands there looking at me, and the smile he’s been swallowing all morning finally spreads across his face. Then he’s gone, and the lock turns over.
I lower myself to the floor. My hands won’t stop shaking. I get them into my clothes, pull out the watch I have hidden for emergencies, and tap an SOS directly to Kirill.
Nothing makes sense. But under the noise, two things stay clear, and I hold onto them like they’re the only things left. I didn’t kill her. Kirill didn’t kill her.
I pull my knees in and press my face down against them, and the thing that won’t leave me alone is that he couldn’t even look at me.