Chapter 14: Bianca Bleeds Perfume

Rocco put the evidence envelope in my hand while Noah slept behind the recovery-room glass. Smoke had kissed the corner of the paper inside. Across the surviving strip, a red stamp cut through the ash. A-0. 19:14:07. Ms. Reyes read it over my shoulder. "That is the approval level?" "It means Bianca couldn't release the wedding edit by herself." I folded the strip back into its envelope. "Someone above her in the Moretti house opened the door." Rocco was rain-wet. "Mr. Moretti said this belongs to you." "He is stable," Ms. Reyes said, reading my face. "Dr. Hall will call if that changes. Go do what they thought you would be too frightened to do." Bianca's foundation gala glowed three blocks away in the Moretti hotel conservatory: a night for children who needed a second chance. At the door, her assistant looked at my black dress, then at the guest list in her hand. "I'm sorry, Ms. Vale. This is a private donor event." "Then why did Bianca send hospital flowers with my name on the card?" I held up the white lilies Rocco had found waiting in the hall. The attached note read, Thinking of Noah. Bianca's neat signature sat beneath it. Her assistant reached for the card. I stepped around her and walked into the gold light. Music drifted between glass walls. Women in silk stood beneath a ceiling of white orchids, raising crystal flutes while a giant banner promised HOPE FOR EVERY CHILD. At the center of it all, Bianca wore a white gown and smiled for cameras. She saw me before I reached the bar. The smile stayed on her mouth. Everything behind it died. "Elena." She glided toward me with two donors at her elbows. "I didn't expect you to leave your son's bedside." "He woke up asking for me." I let that sit between us. "Then he went back to sleep. He knows I come back." One of the donors—a silver-haired woman whose name I had seen beside half the hospital's pediatric grants—looked from Bianca to me. Bianca's fingers closed around my elbow. "We should speak privately." "You asked these people for money to save children. They should hear why you were so interested in mine." Her grip tightened. I opened my clutch and placed a copy of the strip on the white bar between us. The red A-0 stamp looked almost fresh under the chandelier. "Does this look familiar?" I asked. Bianca did not touch it. "You are making a scene." "I am asking one question. Five years ago, at 19:14:07, a wedding video was released from the Moretti main house. It required A-0 approval. Did you have that approval?" The woman beside her lowered her flute. Bianca turned toward the donors with a practiced, wounded smile. "A mother under strain has brought private family paper into a children's benefit. I hope you will all give her grace." For one second, the room almost made me the problem again. I tapped the timestamp. "Then tell them why 19:14:07 needed A-0. Did you have it?" "Did you have A-0?" Her eyes moved to the cameras near the stage. Then to the donors. Then to my face. "I didn't have A-0," she snapped. The room around us seemed to stop breathing. Bianca heard herself too late. Her hand struck the bar, clipping a guest's glass. Ruby-colored cocktail splashed across the front of her white dress, darkening the place where her expensive perfume rose from her throat. "I didn't mean—" She caught the broken thought and turned on me. "You don't know what you're talking about." "I know you helped ruin my wedding. I know you wanted my child moved before his surgery. And now everyone here knows you needed help to do the first thing." The silver-haired donor put her flute down. "Bianca, what is she accusing you of?" "Nothing that concerns the foundation," Bianca said. "A sick child was nearly removed from his hospital room," I said. "It concerns every dollar in this room." The donor's face hardened. She stepped away from Bianca, taking her husband with her. Across the conservatory, two more people stopped posing for photographs. My phone stayed quiet: Noah was sleeping, but Bianca had counted on that fear to keep me invisible. Bianca's assistant rushed in with napkins. Bianca slapped them away. The crimson stain spread as she tried to cover it. For five years, she had made white look innocent. Tonight it looked like evidence. I picked up the copy before anyone could steal it. "Ask yourself why the bride who wanted Dante Moretti needed someone higher in his house to destroy me." I turned toward the exit. Bianca caught my wrist beside the service corridor, hard enough to stop me. Her smile was gone. So was the woman who had walked into Noah's room pretending she belonged there. "You think you won because I said one number?" Her perfume was sharp beneath the spilled drink. "Vittoria will take the boy." I pulled my hand free. "Then she can come try. I will drag every lie in her house into daylight." Bianca's mouth twisted. "She already thinks he belongs to her. Now you've made her angry."