Chapter 10
Bianca’s father denied knowing about the haircut.
I believed him.
Her mother did not.
That surprised everyone.
She arrived the next morning without announcement.
One look at Livia and her face collapsed.
“Bianca.”
My fiancée—former fiancée—looked away.
Her mother asked:
“You actually did it?”
Silence.
I noticed the word.
Actually.
Not what happened.
Actually.
“You knew she wanted to.”
Bianca’s mother closed her eyes.
“I thought she was venting.”
My jaw tightened.
“What did she say?”
“She said she was tired of competing with Sofia.”
Bianca snapped, “Stop.”
Her mother ignored her.
“She said if Livia stopped looking so much like her mother, maybe Alessandro would stop living in the past.”
There.
Confirmed.
Livia’s hair.
Sofia’s hair.
Bianca had not lost control.
She had acted on a thought she had repeated before.
“What did you tell her?”
“That she sounded jealous of a dead woman.”
Bianca laughed bitterly.
“You always liked Sofia.”
Her mother stared.
“I met her twice.”
“That was enough.”
The hatred surprised even me.
Bianca had built an entire rivalry out of fragments.
A photograph.
A child.
Stories other people told.
She looked at me.
“You never looked at me the way you looked at her.”
I felt no guilt.
“That is not Livia’s responsibility.”
“You made it hers.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“You did.”
Her eyes filled.
For one second, she looked genuinely wounded.
Then she said:
“If you had loved me properly, none of this would have happened.”
And there it was.
The most dangerous sentence.
Her cruelty.
My fault.
Livia’s hair on the floor.
Proof that I had failed to love Bianca enough.
I looked at her mother.
She looked ashamed.
May you like
I looked back at Bianca.
“That sentence is why there will never be another wedding.”
