Russo Blood Debt Chapter 06
The Wake
The body is perfect.
Silicone over a polymer skeleton. Heated to 35 Celsius. Bagged human blood — type-matched to mine — slowly leaking into the white sheet under her hips. Hair my color, my length. Even the chipped pinkie nail I never got around to fixing.
She lies in the morgue drawer of the Russo clinic like she belongs there.
I lie in a leather chair four thousand miles away, a glass of red on the side table, watching the security feed on a monitor my father’s tech consigliere set up in the villa’s library.
Papa sits beside me. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t speak. Just watches with me.
Three hours after Bianca delivers, Dante finally remembers he has a wife.
Camera 4. Maternity floor.
He comes out of the suite holding the baby. Eight pounds of swaddled boy. His face is — God help me — radiant. I have never seen him look at me the way he is looking at this child.
Nonno hobbles up on his cane and weeps into the blanket.
“Finalmente. Finalmente un Russo.”
Bianca is wheeled out smiling. Pale, tired, victorious. She’s in his eyeline the entire time.
A nurse sidles up to Dante. Whispers.
He frowns. Looks annoyed. Annoyed. Like she’s interrupting.
“How is she.”
“Sir — there’s no update. Dr. Marino is still with her —”
“I’ll go down.”
Gia trots after him.
Camera 11. Stairwell.
Camera 7. First floor.
Marino is leaning on the wall outside the empty OR. He looks like a man waiting to be shot.
Dante: “Where’s my wife.”
Marino’s mouth moves. No sound for a long second.
He just turns. Points at the morgue.
I take a slow sip of wine.
Dante’s face does an interesting thing. The radiance peels off. What’s underneath is not grief — not yet. It’s confusion. Like a man checking his bank app and finding the wrong number.
“What.”
“Mr. Russo. She — she hemorrhaged. We had no equipment, no pharmacy access — I tried — Madonna, I tried —”
Dante steps back. Hits the wall.
“That’s not possible.”
Gia is faster. She knows. She’s already moving toward the morgue.
Camera 14. Morgue.
She slides the drawer out.
The silicone face is perfect. My mouth is open the way mouths open when women die screaming. The blood under the sheet has soaked through.
Gia stares for four seconds.
Then her hand goes to her mouth and she runs.
“Fratellone — it’s true — it’s her —”
Dante walks in.
He stops in front of the drawer.
He stands there.
He stands there for a very, very long time.
Papa, beside me in the library: “Cuore. Look away if you need to.”
“No.”
I want to see this.
Dante’s hand comes up. Hovers over the silicone forehead. Doesn’t touch.
His shoulders start to shake.
Marino, in the doorway: “Sir, your phone was off. The labor ward doesn’t allow phones. I — I tried —”
Dante turns. His face is wet. His face is destroyed.
“You couldn’t walk upstairs. You couldn’t take one elevator — you just stood here and watched her die.”
“Miss Gia said —”
Dante’s head snaps to Gia.
“You.”
She backs up. “Fratellone — I — Bianca needed everything, Nonno said —”
He hits her.
Open palm, full weight, across the face. She crashes into the wall.
I lean forward.
“Fratellone — I was protecting the heir —”
“That was my wife. That was my daughter.”
“She was a girl, Dante! Nonno said —”
Something in his face goes empty.
“A girl. So her life didn’t count.”
Nobody answers him.
I sit back. Drink my wine.
Papa watches my profile.
“Cuore. Are you all right.”
“I’m fine, Papa.”
I’m not fine. But I will never be fine again, so the question is academic.
On screen, the cold-blooded, calculating heir of the Russo Family — my husband — slides down the wall next to the drawer holding my body. He puts his hand on the metal. His other hand goes over his face.
For the first time I have ever seen, he cries.
It does nothing to me.
That’s the part I didn’t know would hurt.
That a man could cry over my corpse and I could feel — nothing.
I set the wine down.
“Papa.”
“Sì.”
“Wake. American-Italian style. Open casket at the Russo brownstone. Rosary, the whole thing. Make him sit with it for three days.”
My father almost smiles.
“Brava, figlia mia.”