Giancarlo moved first, his expression unreadable as he pulled his car keys from the breast pocket of his charcoal suit. Salvatore appeared at my side without a word, and together we lifted Nonna Elisabetta between us, her frail body lighter than it had any right to be, and carried her to the waiting car. Giancarlo drove. Salvatore and I held her steady in the back seat as the city blurred past the tinted windows.
The hospital smelled of antiseptic and fluorescent grief.
"Fortunately, you arrived when you did." The doctor pulled his surgical mask down to his chin, his face grave. "Another twenty minutes and I would not have been able to save her."
I thanked him until my voice broke. Then I stationed myself at Nonna's bedside, her hand in mine, her pulse a thin thread beneath my fingers. While she slept, I pulled up the security feeds on the hospital's network terminal. I knew what I would find, and I found it.
Rosalia Ferraro. Clear as a confession on the surveillance footage. She had been the one to plant the photographs, to swap them into the display where everyone would see. Every single image was fabricated. Doctored intelligence, composited with surgical precision, designed to destroy what little remained of the Genovese name.
I saved the footage. I reached for the phone to contact the authorities.
Two hands stopped me.
Giancarlo's grip closed around my wrist from the left. Salvatore stepped in front of me from the right. Their faces wore the same expression: cold, dismissive, final.
"It was a joke, Seraphina." Giancarlo's voice was smooth as polished marble and just as hard. "You want to make a federal case out of a prank? Do you understand what you'd do to Rosalia if you brought the Feds into this?"
I stared at them. The shock lasted only a heartbeat before the rage swallowed it whole.
"What about me?" The words tore out of me like something alive. "My Nonna nearly died in that room. Her heart almost gave out. And you stand there worried about Rosalia?" My voice climbed, raw and ragged. "She wasn't afraid of destroying me? Of destroying the entire Genovese Family? Of killing the last Matrona of our bloodline with her poison?"
Salvatore moved before I finished speaking. He shoved Rosalia behind his broad back, shielding her with his body, and drove his open palm into my shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling.