The woman stared blankly at the Sparrow. She had no idea what he meant.
"Take off your clothes!"
The Sparrow stayed silent. His assistant's voice cracked like a whip across the square. "Strip off that whore's rags! Peel away the filthy silk you earned on your back!"
"Bare your sinful body and receive purification!"
Her face went dead white.
She looked around. Hundreds of eyes bored into her—curious, disgusted, numb, eager. Her arms tightened around her daughter until her knuckles turned bone-white. When she lifted her head, the Sparrow's face was still the same mask of gentle pity.
"Removing the filth is the first step toward washing away sin," he said calmly, the words iron beneath the velvet. "Only then can we cleanse the corruption running through her blood."
That last cruel line shattered whatever was left of her. Trembling, she set her half-conscious little girl down on the cleanest patch of stone she could find. Then she stood, fingers fumbling for the laces of her dress.
The silk slid to the ground. She had done this a thousand times for paying men, but never in front of hundreds.
Autumn wind cut across Fishmonger's Square. Goosebumps rose on her bare skin. Her body was still beautiful—curves in all the right places, no signs of starvation. Business had been decent. But the bruises on her breasts and between her legs told the real story.
She hugged her arms across her chest, head down, long hair falling like a curtain over her face. It couldn't hide the shaking.
"Look at them!" the assistant barked again. "Lift your head! Look into the eyes you've polluted with your sin!"
She obeyed, tears sliding down her cheeks.
"Now," the Sparrow said, meeting her gaze with that same serene expression, "confess every single sin. I will listen. They will listen. The gods will listen."
The woman opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"Speak!" someone shouted from the crowd. One voice became twenty, then fifty. The hunger on their faces was ugly. "We're waiting!"
"Confess!"
"For your child!"
Herd instinct took over. The few who might have felt pity were swept along, shouting louder to prove they were pure.
Under that pressure the woman finally broke. "I… I'm a whore…"
"I work at the Red Roost… with men… I…"
She couldn't finish. She just cried.
"Not good enough," the assistant snapped, voice colder. "Vague answers won't earn the gods' forgiveness! How many times? What kind of men? How much coin? Every filthy detail. You must measure your sins exactly so we know how much repentance you owe."
Iggo shifted beside Corleone. "I want to kill him right now, blood of my blood," he growled, pure murder in every syllable. "That sheep-fucking bastard turns something good into sin?"
Corleone glanced sideways. Your brain really does work in strange ways, brother.
Under the assistant's relentless prodding the woman gave in. She started describing the worst parts in a flat, broken voice. The crowd drank it up—another man's shame was entertainment when your own life was shit.
When she reached the fifth "customer," the assistant raised a hand.
"Enough. Now for the second step of purification."
He turned to the square. "The Seven teach us to reject sin. Spit on her! Wash the filth away with your saliva!"
The crowd hesitated.
The assistant hawked and spat first. Then another. Then ten. Then fifty. Even some women joined in, desperate to distance themselves from the "fallen one."
The woman stood there naked, eyes squeezed shut, body jerking with every wet slap. She didn't wipe it off. She just took it.
The crowd grew bolder—shoving, slapping, until one fist knocked her to her knees.
The assistant watched with sick satisfaction.
The Sparrow remained calm, waiting until the frenzy burned itself out. Then he called out, "Enough."
Everyone froze. The Sparrow lifted a steaming bowl of the dark medicine. "You may now beg the gods' grace for your child. Because you have shown true repentance."
The woman's eyes lit up with desperate hope. She reached for the bowl with shaking hands—
"She doesn't need your grace."
The voice cut through the square like a scalpel.
Every head turned.
Two figures stepped out of the shadows, unhurried.
The leader wore a deep-gray hooded robe that covered him from head to toe. The hood hid the upper half of his face, leaving only a hard, clean jawline. The robe swayed with each step—clean, controlled, no wasted motion. An invisible pressure rolled off him; people stepped back without thinking, as if the square itself was making room.
The Sparrow's peaceful eyes narrowed a fraction. For the first time in years, he felt a flicker of real threat.
The woman on the ground didn't understand. She only knew the medicine—the last hope—was gone. Her mouth opened in silent despair.
A pair of boots stopped in front of her.
A warm cloak dropped over her shoulders.
"Stand up," the voice said—low, cold, hard.
She looked up into a pair of pitch-black eyes and a mouth that was neither thin nor full.
"Don't kneel."
He didn't look at her again. He walked straight toward the Sparrow.
"Stop!" the assistant finally roared, jabbing a finger. "Who gave you permission to interrupt the judgment of the Seven?"
Corleone paused, facing the platform.
"I'm a physician," he said, looking the Sparrow dead in the eye. A small, dangerous smile curved his lips. "Not a con artist."
"Blasphemy!" the assistant's face flushed purple. "You dare—"
"That child has pneumonia," Corleone spoke over him, voice carrying to every corner of the square. "Or possibly severe bronchitis, but given the sunken spaces between her ribs and above her collarbones when she breathes, I'm betting on pneumonia. Could be bacterial. Could be viral on top of bacterial. It is not—and I repeat, not—caused by sin."
Every medical term landed like a slap. The assistant's face twisted. The crowd muttered; they didn't understand the words, but they sounded important.
"What nonsense are you spouting?" the assistant snarled.
"The Seven don't heal," Corleone cut him off again, turning to face the square. "The Seven don't mix medicine, don't listen to lungs, don't diagnose infections. Knowledge heals. Medicine heals. That little girl doesn't need her mother stripped naked and spat on. She doesn't need your sermons. She needs treatment."
The square stirred. People started whispering.
The Sparrow finally spoke. "Who are you?"
A cloud drifted across the sun, then blew away. Sunlight poured down, cutting Corleone exactly in half—one side blazing bright, the other wrapped in shadow.
He answered, voice calm and clear:
"Vito Corleone."
The Sparrow's pupils shrank.
He knew the name. The new power in Flea Bottom. The man who called his crew the Black Hand.
A tiny voice in the crowd breathed, "Uncle Al Capone…"
Little Tommy stared, wide-eyed.
Corleone flashed the kid a quick grin, then raised his voice so it rolled across the square like thunder.
"You heard right. My name is Vito Corleone!"
"Starting today, the Hall of Order in Flea Bottom is opening free soup kitchens and free clinics!"
"The Black Hand will feed anyone who's hungry and treat anyone who's sick. No kneeling. No prayers. No stripping. And definitely no drinking that hallucinogenic poison you people are calling 'divine grace'!"
He pointed straight at the barrel of brown sludge. "That's not a blessing. That's a drug. It hooks you, ruins you, and keeps you crawling back."
The square exploded.
"Poison?"
"No way…"
"But… I felt better after I drank it…"
"He said it's a hallucination…"
"Free food? Real medicine? Is he serious?"
The Sparrow's eyes finally changed. The careful web he had spent months weaving was being ripped apart in front of him.
"Drive out these blasphemers!" he ordered.
A dozen protectors surged forward, clubs sliding out of their sleeves.
Corleone didn't flinch. He raised his voice one last time.
"Stand with me or kneel for them. Your choice. But you only get to choose once."
He gave Iggo a single nod.
The Dothraki's grin was pure savage joy. Finally. Time to kill.
Iggo charged straight into the pack, took two clubs across the shoulders without slowing, and ripped a short sword from his belt.
Shlick.
One throat opened. A reverse thrust punched through a lung. An overhead chop split a skull down to the teeth.
"ROAR!"
Iggo beat his chest, blood spraying, and three men were already dead.
Corleone moved like a surgeon in the middle of an operation. His blade was almost invisible—precise, economical. He didn't hack necks; he slipped between ribs for a collapsed lung. He didn't chop limbs; he severed nerves so hands went dead. Achilles tendons, arteries—every strike found the weakest point and left the man alive long enough to feel himself dying.
By the time the fifth protector dropped, Corleone's sword had barely any blood on it.
Half a minute later the last protector tried to run. Iggo kicked his spine in half.
Ten men down.
Iggo threw his head back and howled, blood dripping from his chin.
Then he spotted the Sparrow slipping away behind a wall of his own men, heading for an alley.
"He's running!" Iggo bellowed, hurled his sword, and tried to chase.
Five more protectors threw themselves in his way.
Iggo roared in fury and started smashing skulls with a stolen club.
The delay was enough. The Sparrow vanished into the maze of alleys.
Corleone finished the last man pinning Iggo, then laid a hand on his blood-soaked shoulder.
"Let him go. They know these streets better than we do."
Iggo looked ready to explode, but Corleone just smiled faintly.
"It's fine. Let the bullet fly a little longer."
Iggo spat, tossed the club aside, and turned his red eyes on the one man still standing on the platform—the assistant.
The man's legs gave out. He collapsed, piss darkening his robes.
"The Seven will punish you… you blasphemers… your souls will—"
Iggo didn't let him finish.
He snatched Corleone's short sword, vaulted onto the platform, grabbed the man by the hair, and dragged him to the edge.
The blade punched into the chest and ripped upward. Ribs cracked like dry sticks. The scream lasted less than a second.
Iggo shoved his hand into the gaping wound, groped around, and tore out the still-beating heart.
Hot blood sprayed across the platform.
The square went deathly quiet.
Iggo lifted the dripping organ high, turned back to Corleone, and scratched his bloody scalp with his free hand, smearing red everywhere.
"What's wrong, blood of my blood?" he asked, genuinely confused. "You told me to kill the heart, right?"
The heart gave one final, weak twitch in his fist.
Corleone stared at the dripping mess, then at Iggo's proud, earnest face.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
…Close enough.