"Are you finished, Seraphina?" His jaw was set like a locked vault. "Your Nonna is alive. She's breathing. She's fine. And besides, flies don't land where there's no rot. You must have done something shameful first for these rumors to take hold. Where there's smoke, there's fire."
In the life before, those words would have shattered me. Now they fell against my skin like dead leaves. I felt nothing.
I pushed past both of them, numb and steady.
Giancarlo caught my wrist again. His grip was different this time. Tighter. His eyes had lost their diplomatic sheen and revealed something beneath, something cold and reptilian and utterly without mercy.
"Seraphina. Don't humiliate yourself further." His voice dropped to a register meant only for my ears. "You know the reach of the Valenti and Monreale Families. There is no Consigliere in this city, no lawyer, no judge who would dare take your case against us."
I did not release the phone. I did not look away.
His fingers tightened until the bones in my wrist ground together.
"Don't forget," he whispered, "your Nonna is still in that bed. Still connected to those machines. I can have the doctor end her treatment with a single word. One phone call, Seraphina. That's all it would take." His lips barely moved. "I'll count to three. If you haven't handed over that surveillance footage by the time I finish, I will have someone pull the ventilator."
He began to count, his eyes never leaving mine.
"Three."
The word hung in the sterile air like a death sentence.
"Two."
"I was wrong." I dropped to my knees on the cold linoleum. The tears came then, hot and silent, carving tracks down my face. "I was wrong. Please."
I did not dare. I could not gamble with Nonna's life. Not again. Not in this lifetime.
Salvatore ripped the phone from my hands and hurled it against the floor. It shattered on impact, the screen splintering into a web of fractured glass, the casing splitting apart and scattering across the tiles like broken teeth. A shard sliced across the back of my hand. Blood welled in a thin red line.
He looked down at me with the flat, empty gaze of a man watching an insect drown.
"As long as we're alive," he said, "you will never touch Rosalia again."
They left. Their footsteps receded down the corridor, unhurried, absolute.