Chapter 100: The Minute That Killed Gabriel

The chapel door crashed open below me. I ran. Bianca's wax-stained strip cut into my fist with every stair I took. Gray dawn leaked through the high windows, turning the hospital stone the color of old bones. Behind me, a man's shoes struck the steps—steady, unhurried, De Luca sure that a woman with nowhere to go would eventually stop. I did not. At the pediatric floor, Maya saw my face and moved before I spoke. She went inside Noah's room with Dr. Hall, shutting the protected glass door between my son and the gallery. Noah lay curled beneath his blanket, fever-bright and breathing. I gave myself one second to see him. Then I turned away. "No one gets through that door," I told Maya. She nodded once. No questions. No family name. No chance for fear to become somebody else's decision. The old media alcove was three doors down. I reached it just as the footsteps hit the gallery behind me. Gabriel's phone was already in my hand. The camellia route waited dark beneath my thumb. I laid Bianca's strip across the glass. `A-0 / MAY 13 / RETAINED MINUTE.` `AUTO-PURGE: DAWN.` The white flower blinked once. Then the screen tore into static. "Come on," I whispered. The footsteps stopped at the far end of the gallery. "Mrs. Vale," the De Luca agent called. "Mr. De Luca wants the girl returned." I pressed the strip harder against the phone. The paper softened beneath my palm, wax smearing onto the screen. The folder name began to fade, letter by letter, as if the route was eating the road behind it. I could save the strip or keep the minute open. I chose the minute. The paper tore down the middle when I dragged it across the glass. The white flower flared. Rain filled the screen. The old conservatory shook in a hidden camera's frame. Vittoria stood in a black coat beside the service door I remembered from the wedding morning. A man in clinic white faced her with his head lowered. My father was not there. That made it worse. "Gabriel Vale keeps asking questions he has not earned," Vittoria said. She held out a small amber bottle. No label that I could read. No list of names. Only a bottle that fit in her hand while she decided what a life was worth. "Replace his evening medication," she said. "When it stops his heart, let them call it what men his age die from." The man took it. My knees hit the marble. For five years, I had carried my father's death like a room locked from the inside. Heart failure. A bad night. Flowers and forms and people telling me grief was supposed to make sense eventually. Vittoria had understood from the beginning. She had ordered it. The picture buckled. A white sleeve crossed the lens. Vittoria's voice came through the rain one last time. "The girl marries. The father stops asking. Both problems end." The screen went black. I caught the phone before it hit the floor. The torn strip lay in two ruined pieces against my palm. The route was gone. No replay. No clean copy. No neat gift for a courtroom. But I had heard her. I had seen her pass the bottle over. "She killed my father," I said. The agent moved closer. His reflection appeared in the dark phone screen before his body did. "Your father has been dead a long time," he said. "Do not make another woman expensive because you need a story." I stood and put the phone inside my coat. "Get off this floor." He looked past me toward Noah's sealed glass door. Maya was visible inside, one hand near Noah's blanket. Dr. Hall stood beside her. They did not move. Neither did I. "Mr. De Luca is waiting for Miss De Luca," the agent said. "At dawn, waiting ends." Bianca below the chapel. My father under the ground. My son breathing behind glass while two old families measured which body could still be used against me. The video did not name the man in white. It did not tell me who had signed beside Vittoria, who had helped bury Gabriel's death, or how the wedding lie had reached every hand that mattered. It gave me one reason to make them disturb the grave they had counted on staying closed. "Tell Luca I am not bringing him Bianca," I said. "And tell Vittoria I saw the bottle." The agent's face changed. Not fear. Calculation. He backed toward the elevator without taking his eyes off my coat. Maya opened Noah's door only after he was gone. She did not ask for the phone. She looked at the torn strip in my hand, then at my face. "What happens now?" she asked. I looked at my son. I looked at the place where the agent had stood. Dawn pressed pale against the windows. "Now I ask them to open my father's grave," I said. And somewhere below us, Luca had until the sun cleared the city to decide what he would do with Bianca.