Chapter 78: White Camellias

The marble rail bit into my palm when Elena stopped in front of me. “Tell me, Dante.” Gabriel's phone burned white in her bandaged hand. “What do you remember about the camellias?” There was no hello. No softness. Before dawn, she had left Noah's glass to bring me the only direction Gabriel had left after Noah's birthday failed. Behind her, Maya kept watch inside the pediatric boundary. Noah slept under his blue blanket, safe and stable. Vittoria's treatment threat was still only a threat because Elena had refused to make it anything else. “I brought them to you before the vows,” I said. “I know.” Her grip tightened around the phone. “What else?” The gallery vanished. Rain. White petals. Elena laughing at the ribbon I had mangled around the stems. Then a glass pressed into my hand from the edge of the conservatory. Sweet. Metal. The floor lurched under my shoes. I watched a petal circle near the hem of Elena's dress and could not make my eyes hold it still. The music came too loud, then too far away. I reached for her and hit marble instead. My fingers locked on the rail in the present. “The water tasted wrong,” I said. “I couldn't keep a thought in place. I remember trying to find you.” “Who gave it to you?” “I don't know.” Sweat chilled at the base of my neck. “I can't give you a face. I can't tell you when the room stopped moving.” But I remembered the screen above the altar. Elena begging me to listen. My own voice making the lie a weapon because it was easier than looking at her. “I remember what I did after,” I said. “That part is mine.” Elena did not blink. “Feeling drugged isn't proof you were drugged,” she said. “And it doesn't make you innocent of choosing not to listen.” “No.” Across the gallery, Vittoria sat at the family table with the original ledger under one hand. She watched the phone, not my face. Elena turned slightly, putting her body between the screen and Vittoria. “Your memory is a direction,” she said. “Not an answer. You don't touch this. You don't decide what comes next.” “I know.” “I won't give it another part of Noah. And I won't give it you.” She braced her burned palm against the rail. The gauze had begun to pink at its edge, but she held the phone level with her other hand. She did not enter a new name or offer the route another key. She chose to keep the white camellia open and waited through the screen's shiver. Once, it went dark. Elena drew one tight breath and held still. The conservatory returned in broken light. Rain smeared the glass walls. Vittoria stood beside a small table. Bianca faced her in white, younger and pale, both hands knotted hard at her waist. Vittoria pushed one white sheet across the table. Its lower edge vanished beneath her fingers before the image could show what was on it. “My father cannot carry that De Luca debt another month,” Bianca said. Vittoria's eyes stayed on the sheet. “Then Elena's name reaches the wedding screen before the vows.” Bianca flinched. “Beside Matteo's?” “Make Dante believe she chose another man. The bride will earn what we clear.” Bianca looked toward the ballroom. “And Dante?” Vittoria's hand did not move from the sheet. “He will sign the line I put in front of him.” The image buckled. Bianca's mouth opened. Rain swallowed the first sound she made, and the segment tore to black. Elena pressed the dark phone to her coat before either of us could reach for more. The fragment showed Vittoria using Bianca's De Luca debt to buy a wedding-screen lie: Elena's name beside Matteo's, so I would believe Elena had chosen another man. It did not tell us who had put the glass in my hand, who had authorized the lie, what that sheet contained, or whether I had ever signed it. It did not change the choice I had made when Elena needed me to hear her. Vittoria's chair scraped back. She crossed the gallery, not toward me but toward the pediatric glass. Elena moved faster. She planted herself in front of the boundary, phone hidden against her ribs, and caught Vittoria's wrist before her fingers could touch the glass. “No,” Elena said. Vittoria looked down at Elena's hand on her wrist. “You found a fragment. Do not confuse it with power.” “You don't get to stand over my son while you bargain for the next piece.” Elena did not let go. “One more step, and I learn the rest where everyone at that table can hear it.” For the first time, Vittoria's gaze flicked to the dark phone. Then to me. “Ask him whether he remembers the line,” she said. Elena's hold tightened once before she released her. “I will,” she said. “When the next segment opens.” Vittoria stepped away from Noah's glass, but not from the threat of dawn. Elena kept the phone in her own hand and faced her across the gallery.