Chapter 22: Dinner With Wolves

Vittoria Moretti took my place card from the center of the table and set it beside the water glasses. "A guest should not be confused with family," she said, softly enough that every person in the candlelit dining room had to lean in to hear her. I had come by choice. Noah was stable upstairs with the nurse I had chosen. The platinum band on my finger got me through the front door; it did not buy Vittoria the right to arrange my life. "You may sit there," Vittoria said, indicating the far end, near the service door. "Until the family decides what this little public performance means." A fork clicked against china. Dante stood at his own place. I lifted one hand without looking at him. Wait. He did. Vittoria smiled at my silence. "I know a Vale girl might find the traditions overwhelming. But a Moretti table has rules. Wives are seated with their husbands. Guests are seated where they cannot mistake access for belonging." "Then I am glad you brought everyone who needs to hear them," I said. I crossed to the center chair anyway. Vittoria's eldest cousin drew in a breath. A footman stalled with the wine bottle tilted above Dante's glass. Vittoria's smile did not move. "Elena." "Or Noah's mother," I said as I sat. "That one is not borrowed." The ring was suddenly heavy against my skin. I slid it onto the untouched bread plate between us. "I will not wear a label that lets anyone here decide where my son sleeps," I said. "Not even his father." Dante's hand tightened around his chair. He said nothing. Good. I had come to make his mother answer for a child she kept trying to turn into a key. Vittoria folded her hands over her pearls. "No one is threatening Noah. The family has shown extraordinary generosity toward his care." "Generosity isn't the word for a vault that can be used to frighten a five-year-old." I took a strip of white tape from my clutch and laid it across the silver runner. On it was the hard angled V from Noah's bedroom lock. Beside it I set Mara's photograph: a pearl-gray sleeve, a green stone, the same black V cut into it. I did not know her. I knew she had let Bianca reach my son. The footman dropped the wine bottle. It rolled once across the floor, red wine bleeding from its neck. Vittoria's cousin stared at the two marks. "That is a vault mark," she said before she could stop herself. "It reaches the vault where Noah's next compatible infusion waits." Livia's eyes snapped to Vittoria's face. Vittoria turned on her. "Livia." The older woman went pale, but she did not take the words back. I kept my eyes on Vittoria. "The Moretti blood vault holds the rare donor blood Noah can accept. It is what keeps his next infusion from becoming another gamble." I tapped the tape, then the photo. "Anyone with that access can get near the blood meant for him. They can delay it, replace it, or make it disappear. So tell this table why that mark was on my son's lock and on the woman who held his hospital door for Bianca De Luca." For one clean second, nobody breathed. Then Vittoria laughed. It was a beautiful sound. It was also too sharp. "You bring a child's frightened stories and smudges of tape to my table," she said. "You mistake hysteria for proof and expect decent people to panic." "No." I moved Dante's ring to the empty place Vittoria had assigned me by the service door. The scrape through the silence was louder than a slap. "I expect decent people to ask why you recognize a vault mark before I have named it." Her thumb had stopped rubbing the pearl at her wrist. Livia looked from the tape to Vittoria. "The old black-V clearance was retired years ago. Only the vault steward and the family sponsor—" "Enough." Vittoria's voice cracked across the room. Not loud. Worse. Uncontrolled. Dante moved only when I nodded. He stepped between Vittoria and the tape, making it clear no servant would sweep my question off the table. Vittoria's hand closed on the tablecloth. Vittoria rose. Her chair struck the floor behind her. The sound made every candle flame shiver. "You want to play investigator because you found a symbol?" Her eyes fixed on mine, all warmth burned out of them. "Your father played that game too. Gabriel Vale came to the vault with the same cheap courage." My breath stopped. My fingers locked on the table edge. Gabriel Vale was my dead father. His name belonged to a cemetery stone, not Vittoria's mouth beside Noah's blood and the mark that could reach it. Vittoria saw the hit land and smiled again, but the polish had split. "Ask yourself why he never came home with what he found." The room had gone silent around us. I looked at the black V between my father's name and the blood keeping my son alive. If Gabriel had pushed against the same system that now controlled Noah's lifeline, then his death was not only old grief. Vittoria knew why he had entered that vault—and exactly who could decide whether Noah's next infusion arrived.