Part 4 — I Entered the Mafia Boss’s House While He Was Wounded, but When He Heard My First “No,” the Doctor Turned Pale

The phone screen went dark.

For one second no one moved.

Then Dominic reached a hand toward me.

“Give it to me.”

“It no longer works.”

“I know.”

He turned the phone over, touched a small hole on the back, and removed the battery. Then he took off his watch.

“Clara, do you have an old radio?”

“In the laundry room.”

“Leo, go to the rear gate. If someone is there, do not start shooting.”

Leo nodded.

“They are already inside.”

The sound of footsteps came down from the upper floor.

Marino stood against the wall, wiping his trembling hands.

“I will call Mateo,” he said. “I will convince him that everything is under control.”

“You are not speaking to him anymore,” I said.

“You cannot stop me.”

“No, but your voice may put you in prison.”

I took a small medical recorder from my bag. I usually used it when documenting the condition of a critically ill patient. The red light came on.

“Continue, Doctor. Tell him that Dominic is dead.”

Marino looked at me in surprise.

“What are you doing?”

“I am pushing you to become again the man you have been until now.”

Dominic smiled for the first time, but there was no joy in that smile.

“Call him.”

Marino dialed the number with trembling fingers. It rang for a long time.

“Tell him that I can no longer breathe,” I said.

“I cannot do that.”

“You can. You did it six times.”

The call was answered.

“What happened?” Mateo’s voice sounded.

Marino lowered his eyes.

“It is over. Dominic will not survive.”

There was silence on the other side for several seconds.

“Did he sign?”

“No.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

Marino looked at me.

“Because Nora… Nora knows everything.”

Mateo’s voice changed immediately.

“Silence her.”

“The police will come here.”

“The police are already with me. I told them that Dominic planned the murders. If the recording appears, I will take you down with him too.”

Marino’s face became ash-colored.

It was the moment when a man first heard himself in someone else’s voice.

He stepped back several paces.

“I do not deserve this,” he whispered.

“You yourself said that you were ready,” I replied.

Clara turned on the old radio. After the static, it caught the police frequency. Detective Alan was speaking.

“All units, the order to enter the Rosses’ house has changed. Contradictions have been found in Mateo Ross’s statement. Medical substances and signature documents have been found in his car.”

Mateo’s presence at the police station had been a trap. He was trying to write his own version there, but the items Leo had left in his car had already been found.

Leo said quietly:

“I was writing to the police several weeks ago. I did not dare say the name.”

“Say it now,” I told him.

“Mateo Ross.”

The door above opened. Sandro and two more men appeared on the stairs. Dominic raised his gun, but I stepped in front of him.

“Lower the gun,” I told him.

“Nora.”

“If there is shooting here, all the evidence will disappear. I need you alive, not a hero.”

He watched me for several seconds.

Then he lowered the gun.

“Everyone be quiet!” Sandro shouted.

Clara raised the radio.

“The police are on their way.”

“That is a lie.”

“Then wait and you will find out.”

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Sandro’s face fell. One man put his gun on the floor. The other raised his hands.

A few minutes later police officers entered the basement. Dominic did not run. Marino confessed everything when the detective played the recording for him. His own voice sounded in the room several times, and each time it became smaller.

Mateo was arrested that same night.

His lawyer refused to continue the case the next morning.

“You told me that all the documents were safe,” he said to Mateo.

“I paid you—do your job!”

“I cannot erase my client’s crime with money.”

Mateo lost his patience for the first time.

“I did all this for him!”

“For whom?”

The lawyer put a folder on the table.

“You planned to kill your own brother.”

Mateo found no answer.

Dominic’s room was empty when I found it the next day. Only one thing had remained on the bed—the copper sewing scissors, still bearing traces of the previous nurses’ blood. Morning light came through the window and drew a small, sharp line across the white bed sheet.

I picked up the scissors.

“Will you take these?” Dominic asked from the doorway.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I should not take this house with me.”

He nodded.

“If you had not come…”

“I came because I had forty-one dollars.”

“No. You came because you said ‘no.’”

“You listened for the first time too.”

Three weeks later I changed cities. I began working at a clinic in a small coastal town. In the mornings I wrote down the patients’ names, and in the evenings I drank tea by the window. I no longer checked the door lock every ten minutes. I no longer woke up at the smell of a syringe.

Clara moved with me. She continued her medical course and began working as the clinic’s receptionist. With her first salary she bought a small yellow bag, because the old bag had remained in that house.

Dominic was treated in the hospital for six weeks. The wound healed. He was offered a witness-protection program, but he refused.

“I do not want to run away,” he told me on the phone. “I simply want to live under my own name for the first time.”

“That will be difficult.”

“You also started with forty-one dollars, didn’t you?”

“And now I have thirty-nine.”

“You are already rich.”

In the following months we spoke often. Not about the past. About the weather, the clinic, Clara’s exams, and my neighbor’s cat, which sat by my window every day.

One morning, when the first snow came, an envelope was found at my door. Inside was one short letter.

“Nora, the trial is beginning. The lawyers say that if you change your testimony, everything may end differently. I no longer have a house, money, or strength. I only need your help.”

Mateo had written the letter.

Below it he had written one more sentence:

“You understand what kind of family this is, don’t you?”

I looked at these words for a long time.

Then Clara asked me:

“Will you answer?”

“Yes.”

“What will you tell him?”

I returned the letter and wrote only one sentence.

“Saving you from your decisions is no longer my job.”

I closed the envelope.

That same evening Dominic came. He was holding a small wooden box. When he opened it, the copper sewing scissors were inside.

“The police returned my belongings,” he said. “And these should be with you.”

“I told you that I did not take anything from that house.”

“This is no longer that house. It is only a pair of scissors.”

I took the scissors. The metal was cold, but the bloodstain was no longer visible. Clara had carefully polished them until the last trace disappeared.

Outside the window, snow was silently falling on the city.

For the first time I breathed out as if the air truly belonged to me.

I put the scissors in the drawer.

And I locked the door not out of fear, but in peace.