Chapter 67: The De Luca Daughter

The questions followed me through the hospital doors. "Ms. De Luca, did you tell Dante Moretti Elena Vale slept with Matteo?" "Were you at the wedding AV rack?" "Did Vittoria Moretti know Matteo was alive?" The glass vestibule made every voice sharper. White light bounced off the marble and off my coat, making me look exactly as the cameras wanted me to look: cornered, expensive, guilty. I kept walking. Outside, rain snapped against the awning. My driver had brought the sedan to the curb. The rear door stood open. Three steps. That was all that separated me from dry leather and tinted glass. Then the camel-coat reporter planted herself beside the door. "Did you make up the affair?" I looked at her microphone, not her face. "You are asking me to answer accusations based on a man who appeared out of nowhere carrying a device no one has examined." "You tried to take that device from him." The driver shifted under his umbrella. I saw the movement before I saw the phone against his ear. He was listening. Every De Luca employee knew how to make bad news look like obedience. His shoulders went still. His gaze dropped to the wet pavement. When he ended the call, he did not open the door wider for me. "Get in," I said. "Ms. De Luca." His voice had become careful. "Mr. De Luca says the car is needed elsewhere." For one second, the rain seemed to miss me entirely. "Luca sent you here for me." "I was sent to the hospital." He reached for the door handle. "I was not told to wait after the press situation." The reporter's eyes widened. She could smell blood better than rain. "Is your family withdrawing support?" she called. I stepped between her and the car. "Go inside before security removes you." She smiled. "That isn't an answer." Neither was the driver refusing to meet my eyes. But it was worse. Luca had seen what happened in that lobby. Elena had spoken Matteo's name, and the whole room had leaned toward it as if the truth were already walking through the doors. No proof had been shown. No one had named who ordered the wedding screen or who had hidden Matteo. Still, the story I had survived inside for five years had cracked in public. And now Luca was leaving me standing in the rain with the crack visible. I caught the driver's sleeve before he could slide behind the wheel. "Call Luca back." His face tightened. "I can't." "Can't, or won't?" He lowered his voice. "The house says you are not to create another scene." The house. Not Luca. Not Vittoria. Not a person willing to attach a name to the order. Just the house, as if I were a spill someone wanted cleaned before it stained the carpet. I let go of him slowly. Across the curb, reporters pressed together beneath their umbrellas. One of them was already speaking into her phone. I did not need to hear the words. Bianca De Luca abandoned outside hospital. Bianca De Luca unable to answer about Matteo. Bianca De Luca no longer protected. Five years ago, I had believed protection was something a powerful family gave a woman who did what it wanted. Now I understood it was only the leash they removed when she became inconvenient. My own phone vibrated in my bag. I expected Luca. I expected Vittoria. It was neither. The message had no name above it, only the old number I had kept because I had once needed people who did not wear family crests on their cuffs. **You need to disappear for a day.** I stared at the words until the letters blurred in the rain. Disappear. Elena had spent five years disappearing after I helped give the world a reason to believe she deserved it. Now she was upstairs with her son, surrounded by witnesses who had heard her choose herself. Dante had left the hospital because Elena told him to. Even his obedience had become a headline people could understand. What did I have? A white coat soaked through at the shoulders. A family that had just taken back its car. A lie that had begun to rot. And Matteo. The thought came clean and cold. Not the recorder. The recorder was dangerous because I did not know everything it held, and because touching it would turn every camera in that lobby into a witness against me. But Matteo was worse. He was breathing. He could point at me. He could say Elena never came to him, and every person who had enjoyed the old story would have to look for a new one. If Matteo vanished again, the questions would change. Not into answers. Never that. Into fear. Into doubt. Into the kind of silence a family could use. I walked away from the sedan before the driver could decide he had the right to stop me. The rain struck my bare head and ran down my neck. At the far end of the awning, beside the flower stand, a delivery van idled with its lights off. Its driver had kept his face turned toward the windshield all morning. I knew the number in my phone because De Luca daughters learned early which doors opened for money and which opened for blood. I pressed call. The man answered after one ring. "Bianca." "I need men who do not answer to Luca." Silence. "That costs more than you have today." I slipped the diamond bracelet from my wrist. It had been a birthday gift from Vittoria, heavy enough to bruise when she fastened it herself. I held it out toward the rain as if it were already gone. "Then put a price on this." "What do you need them to do?" The reporters were calling my name again. Behind the hospital glass, Elena's elevator had already carried her out of sight. Somewhere inside, Matteo was still alive, still holding his recorder, still believing surviving had made him untouchable. I watched the delivery van pull away from the curb and felt something inside me settle into place. "Watch the hospital," I said. "Follow Matteo Moretti when he leaves." "And then?" I closed my hand around the bracelet until its edges cut my palm. "Take him alive. Leave the recorder in his hand until he is out of every camera's reach."