Chapter Thirteen: The Room Without Lies
Carmela’s truth came in pieces.
Some mornings, she remembered the poisoning.
Some evenings, she asked why the roses were sleeping.
Skylar changed her medications under Dr. Elaine’s supervision. The decline slowed. Some symptoms lifted.
Not all.
Some damage had teeth.
Dominic did not outsource the explanation.
Skylar respected that.
Barely.
They told Carmela in the sunroom, where winter light fell over her hands. Dominic stood near the chair. Skylar sat beside Carmela with the files.
No guards.
No Matteo.
No men listening through doors.
One room without lies.
Skylar explained the drug interactions. The forged consent. The payments. The difference between natural decline and induced confusion.
Carmela listened.
Her face did not break until the end.
Then she looked at Dominic.
“How much did you know?”
His voice was quiet.
“Not enough.”
“That is not an answer.”
Skylar looked down.
Carmela Rossi was still a queen.
Dominic swallowed.
“I knew you were declining. I trusted doctors I should have questioned. I trusted Matteo. I trusted control.”
“And Skylar?”
The room tightened.
Dominic looked at her.
“I ruined her to keep her alive.”
Carmela closed her eyes.
“Oh, my son.”
Not forgiveness.
Grief.
Dominic’s face went pale.
“I am sorry.”
“To me?”
“To both of you.”
Carmela held out one hand.
Dominic walked forward.
Then knelt.
Not as an emperor.
As a son.
Carmela touched his cheek.
“You became your father in the ways you hated.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Then become unlike him now.”
No one spoke.
Outside, rain tapped softly against the glass.
Carmela turned to Skylar.
“And you?”
Skylar looked up.
“What do you choose?”
Dominic went still.
He did not interrupt.
He did not answer for her.
Progress could be cruelly small.
Skylar held Carmela’s hand.
“I choose the clinic.”
Carmela nodded.
“And my son?”
Skylar felt Dominic stop breathing.
“I choose not to decide today.”
Carmela smiled faintly.
“That is also a choice.”
Dominic accepted it.
That mattered.
Over the next weeks, the Rossi estate changed by inches.
The medicine cabinet was removed.
The east tunnel was sealed with steel and concrete.
Matteo testified until his voice broke.
Isabella was found alive in Montreal under another name, terrified and thin but breathing.
Bianca entered witness protection after providing enough evidence to destroy what remained of Lorenzo’s network.
Lorenzo went to federal prison without a farewell.
Dominic did not visit him.
Skylar noticed.
She noticed everything.
But she did not reward men for doing what decency should have demanded.
Not anymore.
