TORPEDO ✓

my ship is sinking, call me titanic

SITTING BY THE DOOR, GIOVANNI pulls his entire weight into the chair. His forearms fully resting on its wooden arms and his head buttressed by the hard, oblong headboard. He sits like he is comfortable; he looks like he flexes on three meals a day and even more room for miscellaneous; he looks like a businessman with a million dollar investment sitting back and waiting for it to bloom.

"Hey, Anny."

Deep down on the contrary, Giovanni's heart is starving and hungry for support. His heart is clenched tight neath his lungs, blue and about to explode like the July 4th sky.

"Anny? Are you okay?"

There is suddenly something interesting about the back of his mother's head and his eyes stay glued to it, but his soul about to repel from his body.

"Your mother is talking to you, Giovanni."

Gio blinks back into reality. "Y-yes sir," he stutters, squeezing his eyes like he just awoke from a quick nap--which he really needs, now that he thinks about it. "Anything the problem?"

His mother's intense cerulean eyes appraise him with the most apathetic of expressions. Donatella Price's dark brows are resting on her eyelids, her long, stringy legs stretched across the room like Rapunzel's hair; as if she is literally not planning the abortion of her could-have-been first grandchild.

"The doctor is asking for any...conditions they should know about you."

Gio cocks his head to the side, his alabaster locks sweeping to that side too. "Conditions? I don't get."

"Conditions," Dr. Athi reiterates. "Are you clean? Any diseases, sexually transmitted or genetic?"

"Oh." From his backpack, he retrieves a folder. That is his copy of his personal doctor's health report. Apparently, for whatever reason, they would need for the surgery.

"Thank you." The doctor collects it from across his table, before skimming with his deep-set brows jumping up under his glasses. "Okay, good."

Good that he has the report prepared or good his own body sentenced him to death and he kinda deserves for subjecting Dorian to similar circumstances?

"So, Doctor," Donatella turns to Athi. "Are you sure we are in the clear? No court cases in sight and the other party has agreed the act was consensual."

Of course that is the only plausible reason she is here, Giovanni muses. There is no absolutely no way Donatella came to the hospital on his behalf unless her reputation is on the line.

"I'm right here, you know," Dorian's mother, Mrs Mercy comments in a derisive manner.

She's sat beside Donatella, eyeing the taller woman's regal countenance and the inferiority is clear as day on her face. Giovanni won't lie; even his own mother intimidates him, especially when she is being a douchebag, which is most of the time.

"Are we in the clear, Dr?" Donatella ignores Mercy on purpose. "We have agreed to take full responsibility of the bills, signed an NDA and countless hospital paperwork."

"All the bills?" Mercy chirps in, her voice mocking.

"All the bills."

Donatella carries herself with obvious classism and she is not afraid to wield it as a weapon.

"No need to worry, baroness. It has all been taken care of," says the Price's family lawyer. For some reason, Donatella's ill confidence has rubbed off on him. "With that, I think we're done here." The striking middle-aged man clicks his briefcase shut and takes a stand.

Gio, Donatella and her husband, John, follows his lead before Mercy bids them her icebreaking farewell.

"And keep him away from my son. He is corrupting my Dorian and that ends today. I must never see them again."