Chapter 45: Biancas First Fall

I dragged the child-sized chair across the ritual-room doorway and turned it sideways until its back struck the frame. The scrape cut through the room. I set Vittoria's red box on the seat, between the empty chair and the open cabinet where three little amber bottles waited behind folded white linen. "Noah stays with Marisol," I said. "He does not come near this room." An older woman from the family stepped closer before Vittoria could stop her. She saw the labels and stopped with one hand over her mouth. Vittoria's gaze slid past my shoulder to the bottles. "You are making danger out of a label." "I am making a decision out of it. There is a difference." The child-sized chair still faced the hall where I had put it. Empty. Impossible to ignore. Bianca gave a brittle little laugh. "Of course you are. Every room is a threat when you have nothing except a child to hold over people. You ran into Clinic Six while Noah was in a hospital bed, and your tagged coat is still enough to make any mother look unsafe. The Hall review is not finished. Neither is the report against you." A murmur moved through the relatives. Not agreement. Worse. Doubt. I turned toward her. "Nothing?" I asked. "You walked into my son's hospital room when you had no reason to be there. You stood by the angel statue where he could see you crying. Then you threw yourself into an injury and used the report against me. And now you want to hide behind that same report while my son has a chair and sedatives waiting for him in this room." "Do not put that on me," Bianca said. "You are the woman who left a sick child to chase a Moretti man. That is what people saw. That is what the review will remember." "I put it in front of the people who keep asking why I won't trust you," I said. Luca De Luca had been silent at the back of the room, one shoulder against the dark wood paneling. A silver-haired De Luca woman stood just behind him, watching Bianca like she had become someone else's problem. Vittoria moved toward the cabinet. "Those bottles are not Bianca's concern. They are not yours to inspect, either." "Then no child will be brought here until their purpose is clear," I said. "That is all I need to know today." I shut the drawer with my heel. Not hard. Not like I was hiding the bottles. Like I was closing a door my son would never have to open. Then I left the chair across the doorway where every one of them would have to step over it to pretend the room was ready. Bianca's smile sharpened. "Listen to her. She thinks a man like Luca will abandon an alliance because a mother is frightened by a spoon." "No," I said. "I think he should care that the woman he is supposed to put beside a powerful family treats sick children like ways into a room." The words changed the air. Luca left the wall. He was not Dante. He did not soften the space when he moved through it. He made it smaller. "Explain the hospital room," he said to Bianca. Her bandaged wrist lifted toward her throat. "I checked on Noah. I was worried about him." "You were not invited," I said. "Then he recognized you crying by the statue before you used your fall to turn a review against me." Her eyes flashed. "A five-year-old's drawing is not a verdict." "No. It was a little boy telling the truth." Bianca stepped closer. Her white sleeve brushed the red curtain. "You want a verdict? Fine. You have no proof I fell on purpose. You have no proof I touched those bottles. You have nothing but your fear and a family that is tired of it." She was right about one thing. I did not have proof of what the bottles meant. I would not pretend a label could do the work of truth. So I pointed to the small wooden chair. "Sit down," I said. Bianca blinked. "What?" "You said I pushed you. You said that wrist could barely move after the fall. Sit in the chair. Show them how a woman with that injury can grab me hard enough to keep her story straight." Color crept up her neck. "This is absurd." "It is simple. You have been making everything simple sound absurd since the hospital." I stepped aside from the chair. No one spoke. The old Moretti relatives watched Bianca instead of me now. Even Vittoria did. Bianca's mouth twisted. Then she kicked the chair away. It scraped across the floor and struck the cabinet. The bandaged hand that was supposed to be useless shot out for the red box under my arm. I turned my body. The box stayed with me. Bianca's fingers closed on my sleeve anyway, hard enough to drag the fabric tight across my shoulder. No tremor. No hesitation. Her wrist bent cleanly as she pulled. For one second, she forgot to perform pain. Luca saw it. So did everyone else. I looked down at her hand on me. "That is the hand you said could not lift a glass after I hurt you?" Bianca let go as if my sleeve had burned her. "You trapped me," she breathed. "No. You rushed me. Again." Vittoria came forward at last. "A sore wrist proves nothing." "It proves she will use whatever body part is convenient to make herself a victim," I said. "It proves what Noah has had to live beside. And it proves why she does not get a place near him." Luca's eyes stayed on Bianca. "You entered a child's room without his mother's consent. You made an injury into a weapon at the exact moment that mother was fighting to keep a doctor at the bedside. And now you put your hands on her in a room meant for the child." "I did not put anything in this room," Bianca snapped. "I did not say you did." His voice went flatter. "You made yourself the danger that can be seen." For the first time, Bianca looked afraid. "Luca," she said. "Don't do this because she baited me." He reached toward the small De Luca rose pinned at her collar. The white enamel had looked delicate when she walked into the room. Under his fingers, it looked like a price tag. Bianca flinched when he touched it. "Luca, no. We made an agreement." "You made a performance," he said. He unpinned the rose slowly. The metal stem dragged through the fabric of her white sleeve, leaving a tiny torn hole above the bandage she had used to buy sympathy. He crossed the room and set the rose on the empty chair. The silver-haired De Luca woman stepped forward. She looked at the rose, then at the chair blocking the door. "The De Luca house will not announce a bride who uses a child as leverage," she said. "Her rooms are closed to you, Bianca. Her name is closed to you." One Moretti elder stepped back. Another whispered to his wife. The sound spread around the room. "There will be no De Luca bride beside the Moretti heir," Luca said. "Not while you cannot tell the difference between a child and a weapon." The rose made the faintest click against the wood. Bianca stared at it as if it had landed on her skin. That was her first real fall. Not the stairs. This one had witnesses. "Vittoria." Bianca reached for her grandmother's hand. "Tell them. Tell them why I did this. Tell them you will fix it." Vittoria did not take her hand. Her face went still. Bianca saw the cliff beneath her feet. I tightened my hold on the red box and turned for the door. Dante moved only when I did, keeping the distance I had set between us. Behind me, Bianca made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. "You promised me," she said. I stopped with my hand on the chair blocking the doorway. Vittoria did not answer. Bianca looked from the empty chair to the rose, then back to the woman who had left her alone in the middle of the room. Her breath hitched. When she spoke again, the words came out too loud for a secret and too broken for a plan. "You promised me the boy would vanish." I turned back toward Vittoria and held the red box where she could see it. No one in the room moved.