Domenico nodded once, his gaze ice-cold on me. "No need to check. I believe Giuliana."
He seized my right hand without warning, and a single savage twist sent a crack through the air. Bone snapping.
Blinding pain swallowed me whole, and through it came his voice, sharp and merciless.
"You're a surgeon. You should know. If the bone is set within three minutes, your hand can still be saved."
"Get on your knees right now. Give Giuliana a sincere apology, head to the floor, and we'll call it even. Otherwise, you deal with the consequences."
My heart was pounding so hard with hatred it felt like it would bleed.
"Domenico Corsetti!"
The scream tore out of me.
"I will not apologize for something I didn't do! I've spent years saving lives. Even if I despise the other woman, I would never sabotage my own reputation for a personal vendetta!"
The room stirred, voices rising in my defense. People who had been treated behind the clinic's discreet walls, people whose families owed their lives to my hands.
"She's right. La Mano Santa has always put her patients first. We've all seen it."
"My wife had triple nuchal cord. She did the C-section herself, pulled both of them back from the edge."
"Same here. My wife couldn't conceive. She spent a whole year working with her, and now we have a baby."
…
Domenico faltered for a moment. Then his eyes cut to Giuliana, not far away, still clutching her stomach, and his expression hardened again. The Don's jaw set. The room felt it, the way a room always felt it when he decided something.
"You think you're above a personal vendetta?"
"You lost the ability to have children a long time ago. That twisted your mind. You can't stand seeing Giuliana pregnant, so you smeared her, you hurt her. Someone like you doesn't deserve to be called La Mano Santa!"
His words hit the room like a match dropped in oil.
"I'd heard rumors it was the Don's problem… Turns out Seraphina is the one who can't have kids? Did she start those rumors herself?"
The same people who had just been thanking me turned on me in an instant, fingers jabbing at my face.
"No wonder! My wife was perfectly fine, and then after one ultrasound you suddenly said she needed a C-section. You're sick in the head. You just wanted her cut open!" He spat in my face.
Before I could wipe it away, a palm cracked across my other cheek.
"You can't even have kids yourself, and you had the nerve to treat my wife's fertility? No wonder it cost so much. You were scamming us the whole time! Trash!"
The mob forced me to my knees and shoved my head down, slamming my forehead against the floor.
My ears rang from the blows. Blood ran freely down my face.
Inside, there was nothing left but despair.
Too late. Three minutes had long since passed. My hand would never be the same.
I don't know how long it went on before Domenico finally stopped them. He pulled me upright, battered and barely standing, and leaned close to my ear. His voice was quiet. The voice of a man who owned the room and every person in it and knew he didn't need to raise it.
"Sweetheart, I never actually wanted to leave you. But that temper of yours really needs to go. Now your hand is ruined. You'll never operate again."
"Once my blood test comes back, you won't have a penny to your name. From now on, you can only depend on me."
"But as long as you behave, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life. After all, the one I love most has always been you."
My right hand hung limp at my side. My eyes were burning red.
He'd broken my wings and built a cage around me, and he still dared talk about love.
Disgusting. Every word of it.
I stared at them, each syllable ground out like blood from my throat: "You'll pay for this."
The words had barely left my mouth when Salvatore Benedetti approached. He removed his glasses and began cleaning them with the cloth from his breast pocket, slow and methodical, and the people nearest to him went quiet one by one because they knew what that gesture meant.
"Signora Corsetti, your examination results are in. I'm sorry to say your cancer has returned." He paused, the cloth still moving across the lens. "But please don't worry. Your daughter-in-law is La Mano Santa. With her performing the operation, the chances of success are very high."
At the same time, Domenico's right hand rushed over with a report in hand: "Don Corsetti, the results are back—"
Salvatore's words turned every pair of eyes in the room toward Patrizia.
