The smell of roast duck with apples, thick, buttery, and laced with the sharp sweetness of cinnamon, hung in the air like a heavy fog. To anyone else, that aroma would have been a promise of celebration, a symbol of comfort and family warmth. It was the scent of a Sunday homecoming, of laughter clinking against crystal glasses. But for me, sitting at the head of the table in my own dining room, it was just a visceral reminder of my helplessness. It was the scent of my own starvation.
I stared at my plate—bone-white china, delicate, with a gold rim that caught the chandelier light. It was part of a set my late husband, William, and I had bought down in the French Quarter forty years ago. We had laughed that day, worrying if the porcelain would survive the flight home. Now, the plate was empty. Perfectly, mockingly clean.
To my right, where my hand should have been resting on the linen tablecloth, rested a heavy, clumsy plaster cast. It felt cold and alien, like a stone tied to my body, dragging me down into the depths of the ocean. The swelling under the rough plaster throbbed with a malicious rhythm. Every heartbeat sent a dull, aching spike of pain through my forearm, shooting up to my shoulder and settling at the base of my neck.
Radius fracture with displacement.
I knew the diagnosis even before I saw the X-ray. I had spent thirty years as a trauma surgeon; I knew the sound of bone giving way. I heard that snap—a dry, sickening sound like a dead branch cracking in a winter storm—when Tavarius shoved me into the doorframe.
“Come on, y’all. Don’t be shy.” Tavarius’s voice, loud and dripping with unearned entitlement, rolled through the room, drowning out the polite clinking of silverware. “The duck today is just magnificent. Javisha really outdid herself.”
Tavarius sat in my husband’s seat, the high-backed mahogany chair upholstered in dark velvet. He looked ridiculous there, like a child playing king. He had unbuttoned his charcoal gray suit jacket, his belly pressing against the white shirt. His face was already shiny from the heat of the room and the liquor he’d been consuming since noon. He wielded his knife and fork with barbaric energy, sawing off huge chunks of meat and shoveling them into his mouth, barely chewing. Grease ran down his chin, and he wiped it carelessly with the back of his hand, leaving a glistening streak on his skin.
Around the table sat his guests: two men in ill-fitting suits and a woman, a subordinate of his from the City Housing Department. They ate in a terrified silence, keeping their eyes glued to their plates as if the secrets of the universe were written in the gravy. They felt the tension hanging in the air, thick as the humidity before a Delta storm. They saw me—a gray-haired Black woman with a straight back and a cast on her arm, sitting there without a crumb of food—but they were paralyzed. Tavarius was their boss, a petty little tyrant whose signature determined their bonuses, their vacations, and their livelihoods.
I tried to wiggle the fingers of my left hand. They obeyed, but I couldn’t lift the heavy platter of duck sitting in the center of the table. It was too far, placed deliberately out of reach of my good side. To ask would be to beg. And Ophelia Vance does not beg.
“Tavarius,” one of the guests, a young brother in thick-rimmed glasses, said quietly, not daring to look up. “Maybe… maybe we should serve Ms. Ophelia some?”
“Stay out of it, Marcus.” Tavarius cut him off, pouring himself another shot of expensive cognac—my husband’s cognac. The bottle clinked sharply against the crystal glass. “Ms. Ophelia is on a diet today. Therapeutic fasting is very good for clearing the mind. Isn’t that right, Mama?”
He looked at me, his eyes cloudy with liquor and malice. There wasn’t a drop of remorse in them, only triumph. It was the triumph of a scavenger who had finally cornered the old lioness and was now enjoying the spectacle of her weakness.
“Mama brought it on herself,” Javisha chimed in.
My daughter sat to her husband’s left. She was wearing a beige dress that didn’t suit her complexion; it washed her out, making her look tired and pale, a ghost in her own home. Javisha was meticulously cutting a cucumber into tiny, transparent slices, avoiding my gaze with the dedication of a sinner avoiding the pulpit.
“She knows she’s getting up there in age,” Tavarius continued, addressing the guests as if telling a funny anecdote at a barbershop. “Coordination ain’t what it used to be. Legs get tangled up. She tried to climb up to the attic yesterday. Can you believe that? I told her, ‘Where you going, old woman?’ But she wouldn’t listen. And down she went. Lucky she didn’t break her neck.”
He laughed. It was a wet, heavy sound. The guests forced out polite, tight smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.
I looked at my daughter. For thirty years, I operated on people. I saw the human brain in real life—gray, pulsing, fragile. I knew where memory hid, where speech lived, and where fear resided in the amygdala. But I couldn’t find the moment in my memory where I lost my daughter. When did she turn into this shadow? When did she become this echo of her worthless husband?
“It was an accident,” Javisha said quietly, finally lifting her eyes to mine. Fear was swimming in them. Not fear for me, but for herself. “But it was a necessary lesson. Mama, you have to learn to listen to the head of the family. You aren’t at work anymore. You don’t give the orders here.”
My stomach twisted with a spasm of hunger, a sharp reminder that I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, not since the moment Tavarius, demanding the deed to the condo, threw me into the hallway wall.
The pain in my broken bones pulsed in time with the ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the corner. Tick-tock, tick-tock. That was my father’s clock. It had survived the 1906 earthquake, survived the move north, survived everything. It always kept perfect time.
Tavarius raised his glass. “To discipline,” he proclaimed. “A house must have order and hierarchy. The one who pays the bills calls the tunes, and the one living on charity sits quiet and stays out of the way.”
He tossed the cognac down his throat, grunted, and stabbed a pickled mushroom with his fork.
I felt something inside me—somewhere deep beneath my ribs—shift from hot resentment to cold ice. It was a familiar feeling, that same icy calm that used to descend on me when I scrubbed in at the O.R. sinks. The water running over my hands, the smell of antiseptic. When the anesthesiologist nodded and said, “Patient is ready,” and I took the scalpel in my fingers, the world narrowed. Emotions are just noise. Anger causes tremors. And I needed to be steady.
I didn’t cry. Tears are for those hoping for pity. I hoped for nothing. I knew.
I shifted my gaze to the clock face. The hands moved inexurably forward. 7:59 p.m.
Silence hung in the room, broken only by Tavarius’s grotesque chewing. He felt like a winner. He thought he had broken me along with my bone. He thought this cast was a symbol of my defeat.
I straightened my back as much as the pain allowed and took a deep breath.
“Tavarius.”
My voice came out quiet but distinct. It sliced through the thick, greasy air of the dining room like a surgical instrument cutting through fascia.
Tavarius froze with his fork near his mouth. The guests stopped chewing. Even Javisha went still, her knife hovering over a cucumber slice.
“What you want?” he grumbled, not turning around.
“You are sitting in my husband’s chair,” I said, looking straight at the back of his sweaty neck. “And by my calculations, you have exactly one minute left to enjoy it.”
Tavarius turned slowly, his face flushed, lips twisting into a smirk that was half-amusement, half-threat.
“Excuse me?” he asked, a rumble rising in his voice. “You threatening me, old hag? What you gonna do? Hit me with your cast?”
He burst out laughing, and his laugh, coarse and barking, bounced off the high ceiling. “Oh, I’m so scared. I’m shaking.” He mocked me, turning to the guests, inviting them to join the ridicule. “Look, y’all, she’s timing me. Go ahead, count. 59 seconds. 58.”
I didn’t answer. I just watched the second hand trembling as it approached the vertical line. I knew something he didn’t. I knew that the mechanisms I had set in motion worked just as precisely as that clock. Tavarius didn’t know that the silence in this apartment wasn’t submission. It was a countdown.
The second hand completed its final rotation, and exactly at the moment it touched the 12, the pain in my arm flared with new force, seemingly transporting me back in time.
Exactly twenty-four hours ago.
That evening, the air in the apartment didn’t smell of roast duck. It reeked of the sour stench of fear and stale liquor. Tavarius was pacing the living room, bumping into corners. He looked like a trapped rat—sweaty, eyes darting, hands shaking.
“I need the money, you old witch,” he had screamed, spitting as he spoke. “Do you understand how much I owe? These ain’t jokes. These are serious people. They don’t send letters; they break legs.”
I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, blocking his path.
“This is my husband’s apartment,” I answered calmly. “And as long as I am breathing, it will not be sold to cover your gambling debts.”
That was a mistake. Not the refusal—no, the mistake was thinking I was still dealing with a human being. In that moment, the human inside Tavarius finally gave way to the animal terror of his creditors.
He lunged at me. I saw his dilated pupils, the whites of his eyes bloodshot map of his vices. The shove was sharp and unexpectedly strong for such a soft man. He didn’t just push me; he threw his whole weight into it, tossing me like a ragdoll.
I flew backward. My right hand instinctively went up to protect my face from hitting the doorframe.
Crack.
I would recognize that sound out of a thousand sounds. The dry, sickening snap of bone yielding to physics. In that second, the world narrowed down to a single point of agony in my forearm. A hot wave of nausea rolled up to my throat. I slid down the wall onto the hardwood floor, clutching my unnaturally bent wrist to my chest.
Javisha was standing in the hallway. She saw everything. She saw him wind up, saw the shove, heard that crack. But she didn’t rush to me. She just pressed her hands to her cheeks and whispered, “Mama, why you got to provoke him? Just sign the papers.”
Tavarius, breathing heavily, loomed over me. “See?” he wheezed. “Your own fault. Tripped, you old fool.”
He darted to the landline phone on the nightstand and yanked the cord out of the wall. Then he snatched my cell phone out of my robe pocket.
“No calls,” he growled. “Sit here and think. The notary is coming tomorrow at 8:00 PM. If you don’t sign nicely, I’ll put you in a home. I’ll tell him you’re senile and violent. I got people everywhere at City Hall. You know that.”
He slammed the bedroom door and turned the key in the lock. I was left alone in the dark on the floor with an arm that felt like it was on fire.
But Tavarius, for all his cunning, was just a petty bureaucrat. He knew how to steal budgets for sidewalk repairs, but he knew nothing about people of my generation, and he certainly forgot who I was before I became a “useless old woman.”
I am a doctor. Panic is a luxury a surgeon cannot afford.
Fighting through the pain that made my vision go dark at the edges, I crawled to the old wardrobe. With my left hand, I felt around the bottom shelf for a worn leather satchel. My emergency kit. It hadn’t held scalpels for years, but it held things that could save a life in other ways. An ampule of strong analgesics, a syringe, and an old burner phone I charged once a month out of habit—a relic from the days when I was on call for emergencies that couldn’t go over official lines.
I gave myself the shot. With trembling fingers, I put the battery in the phone. The screen lit up with a dim greenish glow. Signal found.
Who to call? 911 was useless. The captain of the local precinct drank with Tavarius at the sports bar every Sunday. They were tied together by the circular bond of petty corruption. My call would just get intercepted, labeled a “domestic disturbance,” and Tavarius would get even more aggressive.
I needed someone who stood above this filth. Someone for whom the laws of this district didn’t apply.
I closed my eyes. Memory helpfully provided a combination of digits I hadn’t dialed in exactly twenty years. I never wrote this number down. Numbers like this you keep in your head, like the combination to a safe.
Ring.
Second ring.
Third.
“Speak.”
A male voice answered. Calm, deep, commanding. A voice not used to repeating itself.
“It’s Ophelia,” I said. My voice shook, not from fear, but from shock at hearing that tone again. “I need help.”
Silence hung on the other end of the line. It lasted only a second, but decades rushed through it.
“Location?” he asked. No “How are you?” No “Long time no see.” Only instant readiness for action. A soldier’s reflexes.
I gave the address.
“Stand by.”
A sharp ring at the door pulled me out of my memories, snapping me back to the stifling dining room. The grandfather clock chimed eight times.
The sound of the doorbell wasn’t like the usual chime. It was a long, persistent, demanding signal that made the glass in the china cabinet rattle.
Tavarius flinched, but then broke into a smug grin. He wiped his greasy lips with a napkin and, swaying slightly, stood up.
“Well, look at that,” he proclaimed triumphantly to the quiet guests. “And you were worried. Punctuality—the politeness of kings.”
He looked down at me. His eyes shined with the anticipation of easy profit. “That’s the notary,” he explained to the guests, winking. “I called him specifically for 8:00. We’re going to quickly sign one little paper, a formality, you know, family business. And then we continue the banquet.”
Javisha exhaled in relief and reached for her wine glass. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Mama, please just sign it. Don’t make a scene.”
I said nothing. I just gripped the armrest of the chair tighter with my left hand. The painkiller I took yesterday had worn off long ago, but now adrenaline drowned out everything else.
Tavarius, stumbling and humming something under his breath, walked into the foyer. I heard his heavy steps moving down the hall. I heard the lock click.
“Come in! Come in, my friend!” His voice boomed, full of fake hospitality. “We’ve been waiting on you. Hope the papers are ready. Our old lady is being a bit cranky, but we—”
Tavarius’s voice cut off mid-sentence. Not faded out, but cut off as if someone had pinched his oxygen supply.
The dining room went silent. The guests exchanged glances. Javisha froze with the glass near her mouth.
I watched the empty doorway leading to the hall. I knew what was about to happen. Tavarius thought he was opening the door to his accomplice, a pathetic pen-pusher who would legalize robbery for a few hundred bucks. He was so sure of his impunity, of his pathetic little power over a senile old woman.
But he opened the door to the wrong man. He didn’t open it to a notary. He opened it to his Judgment Day.
Instead of a greeting, a dead silence hung in the hallway. It was so dense it felt like the air had been sucked out of the apartment. And then I heard a sound that made my heartbeat a little faster. The heavy, rhythmic thud of combat boots on hardwood.
These weren’t the shuffling steps of a lawyer. This was the stride of power.
I couldn’t see what was happening at the front door, but I heard Tavarius’s breathing hitch, turning into a raspy wheeze.
“G-Governor Thorne…”
My son-in-law’s voice, which had been booming through the apartment a minute ago, now sounded thin and pathetic, like a schoolboy caught smoking behind the gym.
“Governor, sir…”
A paralysis took over the table. The guests froze with forks in hand. The woman from City Hall dropped a piece of duck onto the tablecloth but didn’t even notice. The name Tavarius had spoken was too big for our dining room. This was the name of a man whose portraits hung in their offices above their heads. A man who decided the fate of the entire state with a stroke of a pen.
“What an honor,” Tavarius stammered in the hall. I heard him backing up. “We… we weren’t ready. If I knew you were going to grace us with a visit… It’s just a family dinner, Governor Thorne. We…”
Two figures appeared in the dining room doorway. These weren’t guests. They were boulders. Two massive men in tactical gear. No insignia, but with that posture you can’t hide under any clothes. Security detail. They silently took positions on either side of the entrance, scanning the room with cold, indifferent eyes.
Tavarius backed into the room, bowing to someone invisible in the hall. His face was the color of spoiled milk.
“Please, please come in,” he fussed, knocking into chairs. “Javisha, stand up! Guests—up! The Governor himself!”
And then he walked in.
Casius Thorne had aged in these twenty years. His hair had gone completely silver, and the lines around his eyes were deeper, scars left by time and responsibility. But those were the same eyes—steel, intelligent, seeing right through a person. He was wearing an impeccable charcoal suit that fit him like armor, emphasizing the broad shoulders of a former military man.
But the strangest thing wasn’t his appearance. The strangest thing was in his hands. In his massive palms, used to holding weapons and signing executive orders, he carefully held a small, modest bouquet of wild blue hydrangeas. Bright blue spots against the stern gray fabric.
Tavarius, shaking all over, tried to block his path, extending a sweaty hand for a handshake.
“Governor Thorne, allow me! I’m Tavarius, Deputy Director of Housing. Sir!”
The Governor walked through him. He didn’t even slow down. He simply didn’t notice Tavarius, as if the man were a coat rack or empty space. Tavarius was left standing with his hand out, gasping for air like a fish thrown on the bank.
Casius’s gaze was locked on me. He walked straight to my place at the head of the table, looking neither at Javisha, frozen in terror, nor at the petrified guests. The only sound in the room was his breathing and the creak of floorboards under his weight.
He walked up to the table and stopped. His eyes fell on the rich spread—the roast duck, the salads, the liquor—and then he moved his eyes to my plate. To its virgin whiteness.
Slowly, very slowly, his gaze slid to my right arm, to the rough, hastily applied cast from under which my swollen, bruised fingers peeked out.
I saw his jaw clench so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek. The blood drained from his face, making it frighteningly still. This wasn’t just anger. It was rage, quiet and terrifying, like a tsunami that hasn’t crashed onto the shore yet but has already risen above the water.
The room was so quiet I could hear Daddy’s clock ticking. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Governor Casius Thorne, the master of the state, a man feared by oligarchs and gang leaders alike, did something no one in the room expected.
He got down on one knee right on the hardwood floor next to my chair. His expensive suit touched the floor, but he didn’t care. He was level with my face. He placed the bouquet of hydrangeas on the table next to my empty plate, and carefully, as if afraid to cause pain with just his touch, covered my good hand with his warm, broad palm.
His eyes, usually cold, looked at me with such pain and tenderness that my breath caught. He ignored everyone: Tavarius leaning against the wall to keep from falling, Javisha shrinking into her shoulders. The guests. For him, there was only me in this room.
“Ms. Ophelia,” he said softly, and his deep baritone made the crystal on the table tremble.
He looked at my empty plate, then back into my eyes.
“You said you fell,” he continued, almost in a whisper. And in that whisper, there was more threat to everyone around us than in any scream. “But you didn’t tell me you were starving.”
Casius slowly rose from his knee. He didn’t wait for my answer. He didn’t need words to understand the obvious: the tremor in my fingers, the pale lips, that humiliating, gnawing hunger that is impossible to hide.
He turned to the table. His movements were fluid, but they carried a heaviness that made throats dry up. He walked to the high-backed chair at the head of the table—the very one Tavarius had been sprawling in a minute ago—and placed his hand on the backrest. He didn’t even look at my son-in-law. He just stood and waited.
Tavarius, stumbling, stepped back as if scalded with boiling water. He gave up the seat so fast he almost knocked over Javisha’s chair. Animal terror was written in his eyes. He had just been thrown off the throne he thought was his by right of strength.
Without a single word spoken, the Governor sat. The chair didn’t creak under him. He occupied that space so naturally, as if he had sat there all his life.
He picked up a linen napkin, shook it out, and neatly spread it on his lap. Then his eyes fell on the utensils Tavarius had thrown on the tablecloth. Greasy, dirty. Casius pushed them aside with his pinky finger in disgust. One of the security guards materialized like a shadow and placed a clean set before the Governor—pulled from somewhere inside his tactical vest, a travel set, but gleaming steel.
The silence was absolute. Tavarius’s guests sat with their heads pulled into their shoulders, trying to be invisible. They understood. Right now, they were witnesses to something best forgotten if you wanted to keep your career.
Casius reached for the duck platter. Easily. With one hand, he pulled the heavy dish toward himself and picked up the knife.
I watched his hands. Thirty years ago, those hands were the hands of a scared sergeant brought to me with shrapnel in his parietal lobe. Back then, they shook. Now, they were steady as granite.
He cut a slice of meat. He didn’t tear it like Tavarius but separated the fibers with surgical precision. Then, he began to cut it into tiny, neat pieces. Slice. Another slice. He was preparing the food the way one does for small children or the critically ill.
No one dared make a sound. Tavarius stood behind the Governor, shifting from foot to foot, sweat rolling down his temples, soaking his collar. Javisha sat white as chalk, twisting the edge of the tablecloth.
Casius finished cutting. He speared the juiciest piece of duck on the fork and turned to me.
There was no pity in his eyes that could humiliate me. There was respect. Deep, filial respect. He brought the fork to my lips.
“Please, Ms. Ophelia,” he said quietly.
My cheeks burned. To be fed by hand in front of people who, an hour ago, were laughing at my helplessness… it could have felt shameful. But there was so much dignity in Casius’s gesture that the shame receded. I opened my mouth and accepted the food.
The taste of roast duck, salty fat, and sweet apples hit my senses. My stomach clenched with gratitude. I chewed and swallowed, feeling warmth spread through my body, bringing my strength back.
Casius waited patiently. He gave me another piece. And another. Only when I had dulled the first, sharpest hunger did he set down the fork.
He wiped his hands with the napkin, and without turning around, spoke into the empty room.
“So.”
One word. But it sounded like a gavel strike.
“Who among those present…” The Governor’s voice was even, conversational, as if asking about the weather. “…is the author of the lesson Ms. Ophelia received?”
Tavarius twitched. He giggled nervously. The sound came out wet and shaky.
“Oh, Governor Thorne, come on. Seriously?” He babbled, trying to inject confidence into his voice but cracking into falsetto. “What lessons? It’s… it’s just a figure of speech! Family business, you know, domestic trivialities.”
He took a step forward, trying to get into the Governor’s line of sight, but a guard blocked his path with a shoulder.
“Mama is… well, you understand the age.” Tavarius tapped his temple with a finger. A gesture that made bile rise in my throat. “She gets confused. Forgets where she is. Coordination is gone. Yesterday she went to get water at night and…” He stumbled, searching for a convincing lie.
Javisha nodded beside him like a bobblehead, backing up her husband’s story.
“And fell down the stairs!” Tavarius blurted out, joyfully grabbing onto the saving thought. “Yes, exactly like that. Tripped on the steps, poor thing. We were so scared. Wanted to call an ambulance right away, but she refused. Said, ‘No need, it’ll pass.’”
A pause hung in the room. Tavarius smiled, wiping sweat from his forehead. Sure, his lie sounded plausible. After all, it’s a standard story. Old woman, stairs, fall. Who’s going to check?
I swallowed the last piece of meat. The pain in my arm hadn’t gone anywhere. But now that my brain had glucose, my thoughts became crystal clear. I looked at my son-in-law, at this little man who thought he was the master of life.
“Tavarius,” I said. My voice had strength now.
He twitched, shooting a vicious look my way, ordering me to shut up. “What, Mama?” he hissed through his teeth. “Want some more water?”
“There are no stairs in this condo,” I said, clearly separating every word. “We are on one level. There isn’t a single step here. Even the thresholds were removed ten years ago so I could walk easily.”
The silence that followed those words was deafening. The smile slid off Tavarius’s face like melting slush. He froze with his mouth open, realizing the stupidity he had just uttered. In his panic, he forgot the architecture of his own home—the one he was so desperate to sell.
Governor Thorne stopped swirling the water glass he held. He slowly raised his eyes to Tavarius. His gaze darkened, looking like the barrel of a gun.
“No stairs?” the Governor asked very quietly.
Tavarius started stuttering. “Well… I meant… figuratively! In the building hallway! Or… I misspoke. Governor, stress! I worry so much about Mama.”
The Governor stood up slowly. He was a head taller than Tavarius. He walked right up to him, invading his personal space, forcing my son-in-law to press back against the china cabinet.
“Lying to a public official is a misdemeanor, Tavarius,” Casius said, looking straight into his pupils. “Lying to an investigation is a felony.”
He paused, letting the words soak into Tavarius’s consciousness.
“But lying to the woman who pulled me back from the other side thirty years ago…” The Governor’s voice dropped to a whisper that made the guests break out in a cold sweat. “That is a sin, son. And I am a God-fearing man.”
He sharply turned away from the trembling man and looked at me again.
“Javisha,” I commanded, not giving Tavarius time to recover. “Give me my bag.”
My daughter flinched at her name. “Why, Mama?” she squeaked.
“Give me the bag. Now.”
Javisha, stumbling, rushed to the hallway and brought my worn bag. I nodded toward it for the Governor.
“Open the inside pocket, Casius,” I asked, using the name I called him in the hospital ward for the first time that evening. “There’s something in there that explains the nature of these ‘stairs’.”
Casius froze. His hand hovered over the zipper of my bag, but he didn’t open it yet.
At that moment, Tavarius, realizing silence was dragging him to the bottom, decided to go all in. He straightened up, squared his shoulders, and tried to put on that boss-man arrogance that worked flawlessly on maintenance workers and petitioners at his office.
“Governor Thorne, wait.” His voice found a shaky but brazen firmness. “Let’s speak plainly. Man to man. Official to official.”
He took a step forward, ignoring the tensing guard, and spread his hands as if inviting the Governor into his circle of elites.
“I am the Deputy Director of Housing,” Tavarius said, the title sounding like the rank of a general in his mouth. “We are in the same boat, Governor. We run this city. This state. You know how it is. Nerves, responsibility, constant stress. And here…” He waved a hand carelessly in my direction, as if brushing a crumb off the table. “Here we are dealing with a family tragedy. Ms. Ophelia… unfortunately, age is taking its toll. Mental health, you understand? Dementia is a terrible thing.”
Javisha, catching the change in her husband’s tone, instantly joined the game. She nodded, and tears shone in her eyes—not of repentance, but of fear for her own comfort.
“Yes, she… she attacks us,” my daughter cried out, pointing a manicured finger at me. “You have no idea, Governor, what it’s like living with her under one roof. She gets aggressive! Yesterday, she threw a vase at Tavarius. We were just defending ourselves. That arm… I tried to hold her so she wouldn’t hurt herself or us.”
I listened to them and felt a strange emptiness. My own daughter. My flesh and blood. She stood there slandering her mother to save the hide of her worthless husband. But instead of pain, I felt only the cold clarity of a diagnostician observing the progress of gangrene.
Casius didn’t look at them. He looked at me. He waited. He didn’t need excuses. He needed the truth.
“Javisha,” I said quietly. The room was so still you could hear fabric rustle. “Take the envelope out of the bag. The one you saw this morning but were too scared to touch.”
Javisha froze. Her hand hovered in the air. She shifted a frightened look to her husband, seeking support. But Tavarius was too busy trying to drill a hole in the floor with his stare.
“Do what your mother says.” Casius’s voice cracked like a whip.
He held the satchel out to her. With shaking fingers, Javisha unzipped it. She fumbled inside and pulled out a large yellow envelope made of thick paper. The sound of her pulling it out seemed deafeningly loud in the silence.
“What is that?” Tavarius laughed nervously, though a large drop of sweat rolled down his temple. “A note from the psych ward? Proof of her insanity?”
“Give it here.” Casius snatched the envelope from Javisha’s limp hands.
He didn’t tear it open. He carefully removed the contents: a black and gray sheet of X-ray film. He didn’t need a lightbox. Casius held the film high above his head, holding it up to the shining crystal chandelier. The light refracted through the crystals, shining through the film and revealing to everyone present the clear, whitish geometry of my bones against the black background.
The fracture was clearly visible—an ugly, jagged line slicing through the radius bone.
Tavarius snorted, trying to save face. “Well, see? Fell just like I said. Typical fall trauma.”
Casius slowly lowered the image. Now he looked at Tavarius not as an official, and not even as a human. He looked at him like a target.
“I served two tours in the desert, Tavarius,” the Governor said in a voice that radiated the cold of the grave. “I’ve seen men fall from trucks, from roofs, from cliffs. When a man falls, he instinctively puts his hands out forward, palms down. The bone breaks at the wrist. A Colles fracture.”
He tapped a finger on the film, right on the break in the middle third of the forearm.
“But this…” Casius took a step toward Tavarius, and the man pressed into the china cabinet, rattling the dishes. “This is a diaphyseal fracture of the radius. It happens in only one scenario: when a person covers their head with their arm to block a blow from above. A blow from a pipe, a bat… or a very heavy fist.”
Tavarius opened his mouth but couldn’t make a sound. His lie crumbled to dust, colliding with the brutal anatomy of violence.
“This is a defensive fracture,” Casius stated, tossing the X-ray onto the table, right into the potato salad bowl. “She didn’t fall. She was blocking.”
He sharply turned his head to the left, where his head of security, a tall man with a stone face, stood.
“Major,” the Governor commanded in a tone that brooked no argument. “Call the District Attorney. I want a full audit of the Deputy Director’s activities. Every contract, every signature, every taxpayer dollar for the last five years. And start with his personal accounts.”
“Yes, sir,” the Major answered shortly, pulling out a radio.
“When do we start?”
Casius looked at Tavarius, who was sliding down the wall, clutching his chest.
“Five minutes ago.”
The words five minutes ago hung in the air like the smell of ozone after a lightning strike. For Tavarius, they meant the end. I saw the understanding break through the alcohol fog in his brain. An audit. Checking accounts. This wasn’t just getting fired. This was the collapse of that entire house of cards made of bribes, kickbacks, and petty theft he had built for years.
Instead of surrendering, he exploded. It was the reaction of a cornered beast whose escape route had been cut. His face filled with purple blood. The veins on his neck bulged, turning into ugly cords.
“You have no right!” he screamed, spit flying onto the polished table. “You can’t do this to me! Who do you think you are? You think just ’cause you’re Governor, you can do whatever you want?”
He slammed his fist on the table, making the plates jump. The guests shrank into their chairs, wishing to dissolve into the wallpaper.
“This is my house!” Tavarius roared, losing all human semblance. “My condo! I’m the master here! And her?” He poked a shaking finger in my direction. “She ain’t nobody! She’s a dependent! I feed her! I pay for the lights! I put up with her senility! I have rights! Constitutional rights!”
Fear of prison burned out the remnants of his reason. Alcohol and panic created a combustible mix. And Tavarius, forgetting the armed security, forgetting who stood before him, lunged forward.
He didn’t see anyone but me—the cause of all his troubles. He wanted to get to me. Maybe hit me again. Silence me. Destroy the witness to his downfall.
“This is all your fault, you old witch!” he rasped, rounding the corner of the table.
Javisha, covering her face with her hands, let out a thin, piercing shriek.
The guards moved. I saw the Major’s hand slide to the holster under his jacket—a practiced, fluid, deadly motion. But they didn’t have time to take a step. They didn’t have to.
Casius Thorne simply stood up.
He made no sudden movements, didn’t raise his voice. He just rose to his full, considerable height, squaring the broad shoulders beneath the gray wool suit. He stood between me and the rampaging Tavarius, turning into an immovable wall. A wave of heavy, crushing power radiated from him, making the air around us seem denser.
Tavarius ran into that wall and recoiled as if he’d hit concrete. He froze a half-step from the Governor, breathing heavily, fists clenched, but not daring to raise a hand.
Casius’s eyes looked down at him with the icy calm of an executioner who has already raised the axe and is just waiting for the command.
“Sit,” Casius said quietly.
It wasn’t a request. It was a command given to a dog.
Tavarius started shaking. All his fire went out, shattered against the granite calm of my guest. He stepped back, tripped over a chair leg, and sat heavily on the floor, right on the hardwood, grasping the edge of the tablecloth.
A ringing silence took over the room. Only my son-in-law’s raspy breathing and Javisha’s sobbing could be heard. I slowly caught my breath. My heart was beating steadily. Now that the threat of physical violence had passed, it was time for a violence of a different sort. For the truth.
“Your house?” I asked. My voice was quiet, but in that silence, it sounded louder than a scream.
Tavarius lifted a cloudy gaze to me. “Yeah,” he spat, still clinging to his illusions. “Mine by law. Javisha is the sole heir. As soon as you… as soon as you’re gone, this will all be ours. I already talked to the realtors. I need that money.”
“Casius,” I didn’t look at my son-in-law. I looked at the Governor. “Pass me the red folder, please. The one I asked you to bring from the archives.”
Casius nodded. He held out his hand to his aide, and the man, asking no questions, placed a thin cardboard folder with the City seal into his palm. The Governor placed it in front of me on the table, next to my empty glass.
With my left hand, I opened the folder. There lay just one document, paper with watermarks, yellowed by time over ten years, but still possessing the strength of steel.
“Tavarius,” I said, turning the document so he could see the header. “You broke my arm demanding I sign a deed. You threatened me. You humiliated me. You starved me for this apartment. You screamed you’d sell it to cover your debts.”
I paused, giving him a chance to realize every word.
“But you made one mistake, typical for an amateur. You never checked the property registry. You were so sure I was just a senile old woman holding onto the walls that you didn’t even bother to pull a title report.”
Tavarius craned his neck, trying to read the text on the paper. His eyes narrowed, trying to focus on the letters.
“What is that?” he rustled.
“This is a Deed of Gift,” I said with a slight smile. “Dated 2014. Ten years ago, Tavarius.” I placed my good hand on the document. “I donated this condo to the City Hospital Board in memory of my husband and my career. The contract has only one encumbrance clause: the right of lifetime residency for Ms. Ophelia Vance.”
Javisha stopped crying. She raised her head, and her mouth opened in silent amazement. “Mama…” she whispered. “You gave the condo to the hospital?”
“Yes,” I answered, not taking my eyes off Tavarius’s pale face. “This apartment does not belong to me. And it doesn’t belong to Javisha. And most certainly, Tavarius, it never belonged to you.”
I watched as the meaning of my words reached him. As his last hope for salvation from his creditors crumbled. He hadn’t just committed a crime; he had committed a pointless crime.
“You beat me for a piece of paper that is worth nothing,” I finished, closing the folder. “You were fighting for a ghost. There is nothing here for you except your debts.”
Tavarius made a sound like a beaten dog, whimpering. He covered his face with his hands and rocked side to side, sitting on the floor of my—no, the State’s—dining room. He realized he didn’t lose tonight. He lost ten years ago when he decided I was just a resource to be used.
Suddenly, he moved. But not to attack. All his arrogance, all his puffed-up importance evaporated, leaving only sticky, animal fear.
Tavarius slid from his spot onto the floor completely, turning into a shapeless pile of expensive fabric and sweaty body. He crawled toward me on all fours, grabbing the legs of my chair. His fingers slid on the wood, leaving wet streaks. He tried to reach the hem of my dress to kiss it, but I pulled my feet back in disgust.
“Ms. Ophelia! Mama!” he whined, and tears mixed with snot ran down his crimson face. “Forgive me, for God’s sake! Forgive me! I didn’t know! I really didn’t know! It’s all nerves! It’s the job! You know what my job is like?”
He raised eyes full of terror to me.
“They’ll kill me, Mama,” he whispered in a breaking voice. “The people I owe. If I don’t pay tomorrow, they’ll cut me into pieces. I don’t have the money. I thought… I hoped… Mama, save me! Ask Governor Thorne! Let him give me an extension! Let him help! I’ll work it all off! I’ll wash your feet!”
It was revolting. The man who, an hour ago, called me an old nag and laughed at my pain was now groveling at my feet, ready to lick my shoes. I looked at the top of his head, at his thinning hair matted with sweat, and felt nothing but nausea, as if I stepped in mud.
“It wasn’t me!” he suddenly shrieked, trying to find an excuse. “It’s all her! It’s Javisha!” He poked a finger backward toward his wife without turning around. “She wound me up! She said, ‘Mother is old, she doesn’t need the apartment, let’s sell, let’s invest.’ She wanted money for a new car! I just wanted peace in the family! Mama, believe me!”
Something clattered in the room. Javisha had dropped her fork.
I shifted my gaze to my daughter. She sat white as a sheet, hands pressed to her chest. Hearing her husband’s words, seeing how this sinking ship was trying to drag her down with him, she transformed. The fear in her eyes was replaced by the fury of a cornered rat.
She jumped up from her chair, knocking it over with a crash.
“What are you saying, you animal?!” she screamed, her voice cracking into a squeal. “How dare you?! You forced me! You…”
Javisha rushed toward me, pushing the air with her hands like a swimmer. She fell to her knees next to Tavarius, shoving him with her shoulder, trying to get closer to me, closer to the source of salvation.
“Mama, don’t listen to him!” she babbled, grabbing my good hand. Her palms were cold and clammy. “He’s a monster! A tyrant! I was afraid of him! He hit not just you! He threatened me! I wanted to call 911! Mama, I swear! I reached for the phone, but he ripped the cord out! I cried all night! I wanted to help you, but he said he’d kill us both!”
She sobbed, smearing mascara over her cheeks, turning into a grotesque mask of grief.
“I’m your daughter, Mama! Your baby girl! I love you! Save me from him! Tell Governor Thorne I’m a victim!”
I looked at both of them. Two creatures crawling at my feet. One a stranger who just wanted money. The other, the one I carried under my heart, whom I nursed, whose scraped knees I kissed when she was little.
How did this happen? At what moment did my “baby girl,” my little Javisha, turn into this?
I gently, firmly pulled my hand from her grasping fingers. The pain in my broken bone throbbed, reminding me of reality, not letting me slide into sentimentality.
“Javisha,” I said quietly.
She froze with hope, watching my mouth, waiting for forgiveness, expecting the mother’s heart to waver.
“You are lying,” I said.
Incomprehension flashed in her eyes. “Mama, I… you didn’t…”
“You didn’t want to call the doctor.” I interrupted her, and my voice sounded harder than a scalpel cutting flesh. “I remember every minute of that night. I was lying in the hallway on the floor. I was moaning in pain. Tavarius was in the kitchen drinking water. And you?”
I leaned closer to her, looking straight into her dilated pupils.
“You stood over me. You weren’t crying. You leaned down and hissed in my face: ‘Shut up, old fool. Shut up. The neighbors will hear. You’re embarrassing us.’”
Javisha recoiled as if I had slapped her. Her mouth opened, but the words stuck in her throat. The flush of shame didn’t flood her face; she turned even paler. She realized that I remembered. That I was conscious. That the witness to her betrayal wasn’t God, but me.
“You weren’t scared for me,” I continued ruthlessly. “You were scared of a scandal. You were scared the neighbors would call the cops, and that would hurt Tavarius’s career, and therefore your lifestyle. You chose comfort, Javisha. Not your mother.”
She lowered her head. She had nothing to say.
At that moment, a short, sharp vibration sound buzzed across the polished table surface. Everyone flinched except Governor Thorne. The Governor calmly pulled a smartphone from the inside pocket of his jacket. The screen glowed with a cold blue light, reflecting in his dispassionate eyes. He swiped the screen, reading a message. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, barely noticeably. But this wasn’t a smile of joy. It was the smile of a surgeon who had confirmed a terminal diagnosis.
“The audit moves fast,” he said dryly, not looking up from the screen. “In our time, digital footprints are harder to wash off than blood.”
He slowly placed the phone on the table and looked at Tavarius, who had gone quiet, sensing the end approaching.
“Turns out, Tavarius, your debt problems are just the tip of the iceberg.” The Governor’s voice sounded almost bored, but there was a threat in that boredom. “My people checked not just your accounts. They checked the properties under your management. Including the basement of this very building. A building that is a Historical Landmark.”
Tavarius stopped breathing. His eyes bugged out. It seemed the mention of the basement scared him more than his mother-in-law’s broken arm.
“Interesting case,” Casius continued, tapping a finger on the table. “On paper, it’s a janitorial storage unit. But in fact, my guys are down there right now. They say there are enough crates of confiscated goods to open a small illegal market. Counterfeit luxury bags, untaxed cigarettes… fencing stolen goods, Tavarius?”
The Governor shook his head like a disappointed teacher.
“You didn’t just beat a retired surgeon. You used the basement of the building where the woman who saved my life lives as a warehouse for your dirty business. You turned her home into a trap house.”
Casius raised his eyes to the head of security. “Major.”
The officer nodded. He didn’t need extra instructions. Two guards stepped forward. They moved synchronously like parts of a single machine. Tavarius didn’t even have time to scream. Strong hands in black gloves jerked him up from his knees. He tried to twitch, but they cuffed him so professionally and hard that joints popped.
“No! No! Governor Thorne, we can work this out!” Tavarius squealed, twisting in the steel grip. “I’ll talk! I’ll give up the suppliers!”
“Don’t take out the trash,” the Governor said quietly, turning to the window.
The guards dragged Tavarius toward the exit. They didn’t stand on ceremony. His feet dragged on the hardwood, bunching up the rugs. He screamed, begged, threatened, but his shouts were just noise fading away. The door to the hallway was open—the same door he had so proudly thrown open ten minutes ago, expecting to see his accomplice. Now they were dragging him through it like the criminal he always was.
“Javisha! Do something!” His last wail drifted from the foyer.
Then the front door slammed. A heavy oak door. The sound was final, like a judge’s gavel.
The apartment went quiet again. Only the ticking of the clock and Javisha’s heavy breathing as she remained sitting on the floor, alone amidst the ruins of her life. She didn’t look at me. She looked at the empty spot where her husband had just been, realizing she was next.
“Javisha.”
The Governor’s voice tore through the vacuum left after the security team’s departure.
My daughter flinched. She was still sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, staring at one spot. The spot where her comfortable life, built on lies and my patience, had collapsed.
“You can’t stay here tonight,” Casius said. There was no anger in his tone, just a dry statement of fact, like a doctor writing a quarantine order. “A criminal case has been opened against your husband. You are a witness for now, but considering your silent consent to running a fencing operation in the basement, investigators will want to ask you a lot of questions.”
Javisha slowly raised her eyes to me. There was no more arrogance, no fake concern. Only emptiness.
“Where do I go?” she asked quietly, like a child.
“Pack your things,” Casius answered, not looking at her. “Take the essentials. My driver will take you to a hotel. While the investigation is ongoing, you are forbidden from approaching Ms. Ophelia.”
Javisha didn’t argue. She didn’t beg. She got up from the floor, painfully straightening her stiff legs, and stumbled to her room. Ten minutes later, she came out with a small gym bag. She stopped in the dining room doorway, looking at me. I saw her lips trembling. She wanted to say something. Maybe goodbye. Maybe to blame me for everything again.
But she stayed silent. And I stayed silent. Sometimes an incision must remain open for the wound to clean itself out.
The front door clicked shut quietly this time.
The apartment plunged into silence, but it wasn’t that oppressive, sticky silence that had reigned here for the last few years. It was a clean, cool silence. Like in an operating room after a successful, difficult, multi-hour surgery, when the lights go down and the patient is wheeled to recovery. Life is saved. The worst is over.
Casius’s aides worked quickly and silently. While we talked, they cleared the dirty plates, the remains of the ravaged duck, the spilled wine stains. They opened the windows wide, letting in the fresh night air, blowing out the smell of stale liquor and Tavarius’s cheap cologne.
We were left alone. Me and the boy I once saved, now a gray-haired man carrying the weight of the state on his shoulders.
We sat at a clean table. In front of us stood only two cups of fine china with steam rising from them and a saucer with thinly sliced lemon. The tea was strong, real, amber-colored.
My right arm in the cast lay on my lap. The painkiller was wearing off, and the dull, aching pain returned, reminding me of the price paid for this evening. But this pain was different. It was the pain of healing, not the pain of destruction. I felt incredibly light, as if a lead apron I had worn for years had been lifted from my shoulders.
Casius took a sip of tea and looked at me over the cup.
“Ms. Ophelia,” he asked softly. “Do you need anything? I can send a nurse. I can organize a transfer to the best suite at the General Hospital. Money, medicine, security… Just say the word.”
I looked at him. In his eyes, I saw a genuine readiness to turn the world upside down for me. But I didn’t need the world. I needed to get myself back.
I shifted my gaze to the center of the table. There, on a small plate, remained the only untouched item from that barbaric feast. A slice of red velvet cake. Deep crimson layers, thick cream cheese frosting. It stood like a small monument. Next to it lay a silver dessert fork.
“Just one thing, Casius,” I said, smiling for real for the first time that evening.
The Governor tensed, ready to fulfill any request.
“The fork,” I said.
He blinked, clearly confused. “The fork?” he asked, looking around the table. “Shall I serve you? I’ll call the—”
“No,” I shook my head. “Just slide it over to me.”
Casius, still not understanding, carefully slid the saucer with the cake and the fork closer to my edge of the table.
I looked at my right arm, encased in plaster, useless, immobile. The very one Tavarius had laughed at, calling me unable to even eat.
Slowly, with concentration, I raised my left hand. My non-dominant hand. My fingers trembled a little—age and stress taking their toll—but I forced them to obey. I picked up the silver fork. It sat in my palm strangely, uncomfortably, but firmly.
“Tavarius said I couldn’t hold it,” I said quietly, looking at the shine of the silver. “That I was helpless. That without him, I’d die of hunger in front of a full plate.”
I looked at Casius. “I need to prove him wrong. Even if he doesn’t see it. I need to prove it to myself.”
I lowered the fork into the cake with my left hand. Awkwardly, but decisively, I broke off a piece and brought it to my mouth. The frosting was sweet. The cake melted on my tongue. It was the most delicious cake of my life because I was eating it myself. In my house. At my table. Without fear.
“I am not helpless, Casius,” I said, swallowing the piece and feeling strength return to me. “I’m a surgeon. I was just waiting for the necessity of the operation to mature.” I set the fork down and looked out the dark window, where the lights of the big city burned. “Sometimes, for the organism to survive, you have to amputate the infected part. Even if it hurts. Even if it’s family. I was just waiting for the right assistant to cut out the rot.”
Governor Thorne silently covered my good hand with his palm. We drank tea, and my husband’s clock counted the time of my new, free life.
