Chapter 293: With you, I tried

Helena knew what that meant. His tablet was not in this room. It was down the hall, in his study, behind a locked door. To get it, she would have to open this one. She would have to leave him alone, with the lock undone and the guards just outside.

She would lose the upper hand.

It was the only thing she had. A weak man, a cut wire, and a locked door. If she stepped out for even a minute, he might find a way to shout. Or crawl. Or reach a button she had missed.

He knew it, too. She could see it in his face. He is not asking for the tablet to prove anything, she thought. He is asking so I will go. She stayed where she was.

"Okay," the Don said gently. "The second part is juicy." She did not answer.

"Help me, and I will tell you." She looked at him. His face was gray and tired. There was sweat on his upper lip, and his hand shook against the sheet. He had the look of a man in pain who was trying not to show it.

She was torn. She did not know what to do.

But something deep in her chest, under the fear and the hate, was pulling her toward the bed. It was a thin, cold voice. This could be true. If he was lying about Kontino, he was lying well. And if he was telling the truth about the second thing, and she walked away, she might never know.

Let him suffer, or get what I need from him.

She could not do both.

She crossed the room to the little cabinet in the corner and opened it. Inside were bandages, a bottle of clean water, a roll of white tape. She took them out and set them on the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Helping you."

She sat on the edge of the mattress and took his wounded arm in her hands. She wiped the skin with a cloth. The stitches were red and swollen, but they had not torn.

The Don watched her.

"These are fresh," she said. "They are not soaked in poison. They are not hiding anything." She wrapped the new cloth around his arm, neat and firm. "They are just bandages." He gave a weak, surprised laugh.

"You did it. The old ones. You did something to them."

"It was nothing harmful," Helena said quietly. "Only a little something that makes a wound burn and keeps it from closing. A little more blood than it should. A little more pain." She tied off the knot. "I did not want you to die. I only wanted you to be easy to keep."

He stared at her. Then, slowly, he began to smile. "My God," he said softly. "Twenty years, and you still know how to surprise me."

She handed him the pills from the bedside table and a glass of water. He took them. He swallowed. He lay back and closed his eyes, and some of the gray left his face. "I feel better," he said. "It does not hurt as much."

"Good. Now tell me." He opened his eyes. "The other thing," he said, "is Katalia." Helena’s heart stopped.

"Our daughter. My beautiful niece." He said it very carefully, as if the words were glass. "She is married. She is surely sleeping with her husband. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

"Yes."

"There is one thing she does not know." His voice dropped. "She cannot get pregnant. No. She should not."

"What are you saying?"

"Her heart condition. It is not what the doctors told her. It is not an ordinary heart." He watched her face. "It is a reaction. The cure was never finished. There are hormones that a pregnant woman makes, a small amount, in the first weeks. And her body cannot take them."

Helena’s mouth went dry.

"If she takes a seed, her heart will slowly stop beating." The room went very still.

"Slowly. It begins with a flutter. Then dizziness. Then it fades." He spoke without any heat, as if he were reading a chart. "Unless I help. Unless I change her heart for an artificial one, like her father’s."

He lifted his eyes to hers. "You see? You need me, my love." Helena almost fell.

Her knees went weak, and she caught the bedpost with one hand. The room tilted. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears, loud and wild.

She was pale.

She saw it again in her mind: Sienna’s face in the corridor, gray and drawn, with dark circles under her eyes. Sienna swaying in the hall. She had suspected. A mother always did. She had looked at that thin, tired girl and felt something stir in the back of her mind, and she had told herself it could not be true. She had said, in the lamplight, Could you be... and let the question die.

I asked her. She would not answer.

If it was true, then every flutter in her chest, every wave of dizziness, every hour she had spent running through that house with blood on her dress, had been a clock ticking down.

And I let her go.

She had not hugged her enough. She had not said what she meant. She had let her walk out of the door into the dark, on legs that were already failing.

She had thought this was over.

That was the cruelest part. The papers were signed. The houses were back in his name. She was free. She had stood at this window not an hour ago and felt twenty years fall off her back.

And now she stood in the wreck of it, with a husband who might be alive, and a daughter who might be dying.

It was horrifying. It was not how it was supposed to be. "I could bring her back," the Don said. He said it softly, kindly, like a man offering a cup of water.

"With just one word. Men would go out to search everywhere. The airports. The borders. Every road. They would find her by nightfall." He folded his hands on his chest.

"And I would not hurt her. I swear it. I would give her the best doctors in the world. She would live." Helena did not look at him. "But I am hurt, Helena."

Something in his voice made her turn her head.

His face had changed. The calm had gone out of it, and what lay under was raw and old. His eyes were wet. His mouth was working.

"Very hurt. For twenty years, you were beside me. In my house, at my table, in my bed. And you never loved me." His voice cracked. "Not even a little."

"Let me say it." He lifted a shaking hand. "You were with my brother for five years. Only five. And I gave you twenty. Twenty years, and I never touched you. I never forced myself on you, not once."

His breath caught.

"I did everything right. I did every single thing so that you would love me." A tear slipped down his cheek, and he let it fall. "I was a monster, Helena. I know it. I have always known it. But with you, at least, I tried."

He looked at her. "At least with you, I tried." The clock ticked on the wall.