I stayed on the floor. The cold seeped through my knees, through my palms, through the thin fabric of my clothes. The pain did not come from the cut on my hand. It radiated from somewhere deeper, somewhere older, a wound that had been open for two lifetimes. Every promise made in youth. Every oath sworn under summer skies when we were children running through the old quarter together. All of it was counterfeit. The blood-promises were hollow. The loyalty was theater. Only the betrayal was real.
I wept until my chest ached and my throat closed and there was nothing left inside me but silence.
I did not know how long I remained there before I rose and walked back to Nonna's room like a woman already dead. I was terrified that Giancarlo or Salvatore would make good on their threats, so I did not leave her side. For days I sat in that plastic chair beside her bed, sleeping in fragments, eating nothing, watching the monitors trace the rhythm of her stubborn, enduring heart.