A second slap landed clean. Her head snapped to the side. The room was so quiet I could hear the bodyguard outside shift his weight again, uncertain, listening.
"That one's for climbing into a married man's bed when your own husband hasn't been dead five months and you were nine months pregnant. Fausto took a bullet for Tomasso, and this is how you honor his memory."
Then a third.
The sound of it hung in the air like the last note of a bell.
"And that's for destroying a family and not feeling an ounce of remorse."
Three slaps. She stood there, stunned stupid. Her cheek was scarlet and swelling. Her hospital gown hung open. The provocation was gone from her face, replaced by something raw and animal, the look of a woman who had never been hit back before.
The silence settled over us like dust after a detonation.
Then she screamed, clawing her way off the bed. "Giovanna, I'll kill you!"