Chapter Ten: Bianca At The Clinic Door
Skylar should not have gone back to her clinic that week.
She went anyway.
The clinic in Queens had no name on the door. The paint peeled near the window. The radiator screamed when it worked.
It smelled like antiseptic, old coffee, and people who could not pay.
Dominic stood beside her in the doorway, leaning on a cane, looking wrong in a place money had not conquered.
“Do not buy anything,” she said.
“I did not speak.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
“The roof leaks.”
“It has character.”
“It has water damage.”
“Do not flirt with renovations.”
His mouth curved.
Then pain stole it.
Skylar unlocked the clinic.
Inside, everything was as she left it. Cheap chairs. Mismatched cabinets. A medication fridge that Dominic stared at like it had personally offended him.
A knock came at the back door.
Three short.
Two long.
Skylar stiffened.
Dominic stepped in front of her.
She stepped around him.
He sighed.
“Of course.”
Skylar opened the door with the chain on.
Bianca stood in the alley.
No makeup. Arm in a sling. Hair hidden under a hood. Rain dotted her face.
She looked like a girl who had survived being useful.
Dominic’s voice went cold.
“Leave.”
Bianca flinched.
“I came to her.”
Skylar studied her.
“You have thirty seconds.”
Bianca held up a flash drive with trembling fingers.
“My father kept files.”
“On what?”
“Carmela. You. Matteo. The hospital board.”
Dominic went still behind Skylar.
Bianca swallowed.
“He shot me.”
“I remember.”
“He did not look back.”
“No.”
“I thought I would feel angry.”
Skylar waited.
“I felt empty.”
That was the bridge.
Not redemption.
Not forgiveness.
Only the first honest thing Bianca had ever carried.
“Why bring this to me?” Skylar asked.
“Because you saved me after I tried to kill you.”
Skylar did not soften.
“I saved a wound.”
Bianca nodded.
“That is more than he saved.”
She pushed the flash drive through the gap.
Skylar took it.
“If this is a trap,” Dominic said.
Bianca looked at him.
“You will kill me.”
“No,” Skylar said.
Both of them looked at her.
Skylar kept her eyes on Bianca.
“If this is a trap, you will live with yourself.”
Bianca’s face crumpled.
That was punishment enough.
After she left, Skylar plugged the drive into her old clinic laptop.
Files opened.
Medication logs.
Payment trails.
Forged medical authorizations.
Videos of Carmela confused after controlled dosing.
Dominic stood behind her without breathing.
Skylar opened a scanned consent form.
Authorized by Dominic Rossi.
She enlarged the signature.
Dominic leaned closer.
“I never signed that.”
“I know.”
The D was wrong.
A broken loop.
Skylar had seen it before on hospital donations.
On her suspension documents.
On a staff approval form for Penelope Gray.
Her stomach dropped.
“Matteo.”
Dominic reached for the desk.
Missed.
For one second, his weight sagged into her.
A king with the floor removed.
Skylar held him upright.
“Do not forgive him because I saved him.”
Dominic’s laugh was hollow.
“I was thinking the opposite.”
“Do not become worse because he lived.”
He looked at her.
There was the abyss.
And the choice.
“What do we do?” he asked.
Skylar did not miss the word.
We.
“First,” she said, “we make him tell the truth.”
