Chapter 6 - The Weight of Sins
The intensive care unit at Northwestern Memorial was silent save for the rhythmic, mechanical hiss of the life-support machine.
I sat in the plastic armchair beside Clara’s bed, my head resting in my hands. I had washed my hands twice in the restroom down the hall, scrubbing with abrasive industrial soap until my skin was raw and red, but I could still feel the phantom residue of her blood beneath my fingernails.
Clara looked agonizingly fragile. Her face, usually radiant with quiet strength, was swollen and crisscrossed with butterfly sutures. White bandages covered her shaved scalp, and an endotracheal tube disappeared into her throat, forcing air into her punctured lungs with a dull, unnatural hiss. Her pale, elegant hand rested on the thin hospital blanket, hooked to an IV line.
On her ring finger, the diamond wedding ring I had given her seven years ago was dull, coated in a fine layer of dried saline and dust.
I took her limp fingers in mine, bringing them gently to my lips. They were cold.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the quiet dark of the room, my voice breaking for the first time in twenty years. “I’m so sorry, Clara.”
The door opened softly behind me. It was Dr. Aris, accompanied by an older woman in a white coat whose badge identified her as the Chief of Obstetrics.
My heart seized. I stood up slowly, facing the two physicians. “What is it? Did her vitals drop?”
The obstetrician looked down at her clipboard, then looked at me with deep, sorrowful eyes. “Mr. Valente, we performed a full pelvic ultrasound during the internal repair surgery to locate the source of secondary hemorrhaging.”
She paused, choosing her words with immense care.
“Your wife was approximately six weeks pregnant.”
The world stopped. The air vacated the room, leaving a vacuum so intense my ears rang with a deafening screech.
“What?” The word was barely a breath.
“The blunt-force trauma from the impact caused an acute placental abruption,” the doctor continued softly. “We were forced to perform an emergency procedure to stop the internal bleeding. We could not save the fetus. I am so deeply sorry for your loss.”
I stood frozen, staring at the doctor as if she were speaking a foreign language. A child. Clara was carrying my child.
That was why she had been trying so desperately to resolve the war with Moretti. That was why she had risked everything to retrieve those ledgers. She wasn't just trying to save an unfaithful, arrogant husband from his own blind negligence; she was trying to secure a future for our unborn baby. She was building a wall around our family while I was tearing the roof off to invite in the cold.
“Mr. Valente?” Dr. Aris asked cautiously, seeing the terrible, vacant look in my eyes.
“Leave,” I said.
“Sir, we need to monitor—”
“Leave us,” I commanded, my voice flat, hollowed out of every human emotion.
They stepped out, closing the door quietly behind them.
I fell to my knees beside Clara’s bed. I pressed my forehead against her unmoving hand, my shoulders shaking violently as dry, silent sobs tore through my chest. The pain was unlike anything a bullet or a knife had ever inflicted; it was an absolute, irreparable destruction of the soul.
I had murdered my own child. My vanity, my lust, my arrogance had driven Clara onto that dark road on the South Side. I had handed Lorenzo Moretti the weapon, and I had personally aimed it at my wife’s heart.
I stayed on my knees until four in the morning, holding her cold hand, praying to a God I had long abandoned for a mercy I did not deserve.
Then, slowly, I stood up.
The grief inside me did not vanish; it hardened into an impenetrable slab of black basalt. The tears dried upon my cheeks, replaced by a cold, calculating desire for absolute eradication. Lorenzo Moretti had taken my child. He had broken my wife.
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He was about to discover what happened when Dominic Valente ceased to be a businessman and became the devil himself.
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