Chapter 8: The Accounting Begins
Roman did not stay at my bedside for long. Once the monitors confirmed stability, he stepped into the hallway and made three calls in sequence, each quieter and more final than ordinary conversation. I could not hear the words, only the cadence—short, precise, without the polish he used for business. When he returned he sat on the edge of the hospital chair, took my hand again, and spoke in the same low register he had used at the gates.
“You will not go back to that house tonight. You will not go back until every person who stood silent is no longer under its roof. The staff who held the scissors are already gone. My mother’s access to the estate accounts and to the daily operations is suspended as of this hour. The rest will be handled in order.”
He did not ask whether I wanted vengeance. He stated the sequence as fact. I studied his face in the low light of the private room and saw no performance, only the same controlled focus he had shown when he refused the ambulance in the alley years earlier. The difference was the target. This time the wound had been inflicted inside his own walls, on his wife and the child she carried, while the household watched.
