Chapter 289: Signed deal

Carina looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded once. Something loosened in Helena’s chest, so suddenly that she almost fell. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet, and she blinked fast.

"Good," she said. "That is good." On the bed, the Don stirred.

He had been lying with his eyes half shut, breathing in short, soft sighs. Now his head turned on the pillow. His eyes opened a crack. They were glazed and far away.

"Katalia," he murmured. Helena stood. "Where is Katalia?" His voice was thin and cracked. He tried to push himself up and could not. "Where is my daughter?"

"She is fine," Helena said it sharply, with no pause at all. She crossed the room and laid a hand on his forehead.

"She went to bed early. She was tired. She is asleep upstairs." She smoothed the damp hair away from his temple. "Do not worry."

"Asleep."

"Yes." He sighed, then his eyes closed again. In her chair by the wall, Carina went very still.

She had heard the lie. It had come out of Helena’s mouth like water, smooth and easy. And Carina knew what it meant. She had helped Sienna escape. She had called away the guards, and she had held the door open. When the Don learned of it, as he surely would, he would never forgive her.

She had broken the one rule of this house. She had chosen someone else over him. She said nothing. She leaned back in the chair, and she held her side, and she let the lie stand.

The doctor came within the hour.

He was an old man with a gray mustache and a black bag, and he did not ask questions. He looked at the Don, and at Carina, and he began to work. He cut away the sleeve and cleaned the wound. He took out the bullet with a pair of silver tongs and dropped it in a dish. He stitched the Don’s arm, and then turned to Carina and did the same to her. Neither of them woke fully.

It was almost dawn when he finished. He gave Helena a list of pills and a folded paper. He told her to keep the Don quiet, and to let him sleep. Then he packed his bag and left, and the guards closed the door behind him.

Everyone rested.

The Don slept like a man at the bottom of a lake. Carina was helped upstairs to her own bed, and she fell into it fully dressed. The wounded men were carried away. The dead were taken out through the back.

Then the cleaners came.

They were a group of women in gray, with mops and buckets and rubber gloves. The guards called them whenever there was a mess like this one. They did not speak. They did not look at the stains. They came in through the servants’ door at four in the morning, and they went to work.

They worked all morning.

They scrubbed the white marble of the grand hall until the floor shone. They took away the broken glass and the torn linen. They carried out the chairs. They washed the walls, burned the cloth, and opened every window. By the time the sun was fully up, the ballroom smelled of soap and lemon and nothing else.

You could have held a party in it again. Helena had changed her clothes.

She wore a plain dark dress now, with her hair tied back. She sat in a chair by the window of the Don’s room with her hands in her lap. She had not slept or even tried. She had watched the night turn gray and then gold, and she had listened to the slow rise and fall of his breathing.

At nine o’clock, a knock came at the door. She stood and smoothed her skirt.

"Come in." A man stepped into the room. He was small and neat, in a dark suit, with a black leather case under one arm. He had thin gray hair and thick glasses, and he bowed to her a little.

"Madam."

"You are on time."

"Always, Madam." It was the lawyer. She had chosen him herself, years ago, in secret. He was not one of the Don’s men. He had never worked for the empire. He had met her in a small office on a gray afternoon and listened to every word she said, and he had not asked why. He had only written it all down.

She had trusted him since then with everything. He crossed the room and set his case on the table. He did not look at the man on the bed. "Is he awake?"

"Almost." The Don lay propped against three pillows.

His face was the color of old paper, with a sheen of sweat on it. His arm was wrapped in white, and a drip of something clear ran from a bottle into the back of his hand. The doctor had given him something for the pain. It had made him soft and slow, like a man floating in a warm bath.

He turned his head as they came in. "Helena," he said. His voice was slurred. "My dear."

"Good morning."

"What is..."

"The lawyer is here. For the papers." She smiled and sat down beside him on the bed. "Do you remember? You promised Katalia. Today." He frowned.

He tried to follow it. She watched him try. His eyes drifted to the lawyer, then to the window, then back to her face. His thoughts were thick as syrup.

"Katalia," he said.

"Yes."

"She is asleep."

"She is. But she asked me to take care of it for her." Helena’s voice was very gentle. "So that you do not have to worry." The lawyer had already opened his case.

He took out a thick leather folder and laid it on the table. Then another, smaller one. He opened the first and turned it around so the pages faced the bed. Neat black lines of print ran across the paper, seals and dates. A long column of names.

He held out a pen. The Don looked at it.

He did not know what he was signing. He could not have read a word. The room swam, and the letters swam with it. But he saw his wife’s face, soft and worried, and he saw the lawyer’s quiet nod. He knew that man. He knew that face. He took the pen.

His hand shook. He made a long, loose scrawl at the bottom of the first page, and then the next, and the next. The lawyer turned the pages for him. He signed, and signed, and signed, and the pen scratched on the paper in the quiet room.