Page 76 of The Mad Don
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.”
