The phone rings at six in the morning. A number I don't recognize. I pick up before Nico stirs because anything that rings at this hour is either about my father or for my father, and either way it's mine.
"Mrs. Catara?" A woman's voice, clinical, careful. "I'm calling from Saint Catherine's surgical unit. Your father made it through the night."
My hand flies to my mouth. Made it through the night. Four words and my whole body goes liquid with something so close to relief it makes my eyes sting. He's alive. He survived the dark hours I spent sitting in a room full of men who were already dividing his legacy. He held on.
"We've managed to stabilize the internal bleeding and remove the shrapnel from his lower spine, but he needs a follow-up surgery — specialized, and soon. The sooner the better." She pauses. The pause people take before they deliver a number that'll hit like a fist.
"The procedure will cost one hundred thousand dollars."
I write the number on the inside of my wrist with a pen from the nightstand because my hands are shaking too hard to find paper.
One hundred thousand. I don't have one hundred. I don't have access to a bank account with my name on it. I have a husband who controls every dollar that passes through this house and a father who survived the night only to need something I can't give him.
The relief from ten seconds ago curdles into something sharp and desperate that sits behind my sternum like a blade turned inward.
I wait until Nico is showered, fed, sitting in the living room with his laptop open like it's a regular Tuesday and not the morning after the world exploded. Last night one of his men said the hospital would do what they can. Now I know what what they can costs. I stand in front of him. He doesn't look up.
"My father needs surgery. Today. The hospital called — it's a hundred thousand, and the Catara accounts can cover it." My voice is steady. Professional, almost. Like I'm pitching an investment instead of begging for my father's life.
"I'm asking as your wife."
He looks at me over the screen. His face does absolutely nothing. "Kneel."
I don't move. My knees lock like my body knows something my brain is still negotiating.
He closes the laptop. Slowly. The click sounds like a verdict. "You want something from me, you kneel and you ask properly."
I get on my knees on the hardwood floor. The cold bites through my dress. I fold my hands the way you fold them when you've run out of options and dignity left the room two minutes ago.
My father's face flashes behind my eyes — the tubes, the machines I haven't seen yet but can picture so clearly it makes my chest cave — and I use it. I use his face like fuel because without it my pride would drag me back to my feet.
"Please." My voice cracks and I hate it. "He'll die without the surgery. I'm begging you, Nico. Please."
He watches me. Tilts his head the way someone tilts their head at a dog performing a trick. The corner of his mouth lifts — not a smile, something worse. Something entertained. Then he opens his laptop again and says, "No."
The word lands in my chest like a closed fist. For a moment I can't breathe around it. My father on a hospital bed. The number on my wrist. My knees on this man's hardwood floor. And the word no sitting between all of it like a wall I can't climb. "But you said — if I kneel —"
"I didn't promise anything." His eyes are on the screen already. I've been on my knees for thirty seconds and I'm dismissed. "Go make me breakfast instead of whimpering."
I stand on legs that have forgotten what they're for. The kitchen is bright and cold and my hands won't stop trembling as I crack eggs into a pan.
The oil spits against my wrist and I don't feel it. Or I feel it and it doesn't matter because my father is dying in increments — hour by hour, cell by cell — while I scramble eggs for a man who just watched me beg on his floor and found it boring.
My throat aches. My eyes burn. I will not cry in this kitchen. I will not give this house one more piece of me.
My father blessed this marriage. Kissed my forehead at the altar and told me Nico would take care of me. And Nico did — for a while. The first three months he opened doors, pulled out chairs, brought flowers home on Fridays like a man auditioning for a role he had no intention of keeping.
I don't know when the audition ended. I just know one morning the flowers stopped and the silence started and the silence grew hands.
I bring the plate. Set it in front of him. Reach for the chair beside his.
"Did I say sit?"
I stop. My hand on the back of the chair, frozen mid-pull. My empty stomach folds in on itself.
He cuts into his eggs without looking up. "You don't eat with me. You've got laundry, the floors, the upstairs bathroom." He chews. Swallows. "You want my mercy over your father, don't you? Prove you're a good investment first."
Good investment. That's what I am. A line item with legs. I release the chair and walk to the laundry room because if I open my mouth right now what comes out won't be words, it'll be something feral and ugly and he'll make me pay for it with more than a slap.
My hands are shaking again. Not from weakness this time — from something hotter, something that lives closer to my teeth. I press my fists into the folding table until the tremor passes.
I'm pressing creases into his collar — the man who just denied my father's life, I'm ironing his shirts — when his phone rings in the other room. His voice changes immediately. Lower, clipped, the register he reserves for money or power. The call is short. Chair pushing back, shoes on hardwood, coat from the hook.
I step into the hallway. "Where are you going?"
He stops. Turns. Walks toward me slowly until I can smell his cologne and the coffee on his breath.
"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone." His voice drops into that low register. The one that means the next wrong word costs something I can't afford. He holds my eyes a beat too long, then turns, opens the door, and pulls it shut behind him.
I listen to the car start. The crunch of gravel. The gate. Silence fills the house like water rising and I'm standing in the hallway holding his half-folded shirt with the number still on my wrist, smudged but readable.
Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone.
I drop the shirt. Pull my coat from the hook. My hands aren't shaking anymore. My father is alone in a hospital bed with a clock running down and the man who controls every dollar in this house just made me kneel for the word no.
If that's the choice — stupid or obedient — I know which one I can live with. And if he finds out, whatever he does to me will hurt less than standing here folding his shirts while my father's body gives up waiting for his daughter to be brave enough to walk through a door.
The front door closes behind me and the sound is the loudest thing I've ever heard.