The Family physician—an old man with steady hands and eyes that had seen too much—made a small cut across my palm with a blade that had drawn the blood of generations. The pain was sharp and clean. Blood slid down my skin into a glass container etched with the Corleone crest, mixing with the clear solution inside. I did not flinch. I made no sound.
"Does it hurt?" Giorgio asked, his voice low and gentle, yet lacking weight. "Hold on, it'll be over soon."
If this were the past, I might have felt protected. Now his words were only background noise, meaningless as the hum of the fluorescent lights above. The sting of the blade was nothing compared to the marks left when he and Silvia had acted together—wounds that went deeper than flesh, carved into the very marrow of my trust.
Just as the procedure ended, a short alert sounded in the room. I did not need to look to know who it was. It was the exclusive tone of his private communicator—three ascending notes, like a bird's call. Reserved only for Silvia. She had always liked making her presence known that way, marking her territory even in her absence.