Chapter 3
Rosalie told me about the first incident in the breakfast room.
Bianca had bought Livia a new dress.
Pink.
Expensive.
Unnecessary.
Livia preferred an older blue cardigan Sofia—my late wife—had chosen before she died.
I remembered that cardigan.
Bianca apparently did too.
“She took it away,” Rosalie said.
My expression changed.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Rosalie’s eyes filled.
“She said you asked her to help Livia move on.”
I felt disgust move through me.
Bianca had been borrowing my authority.
Again.
“What else?”
“She removed a framed photograph from Livia’s bedroom.”
My head lifted.
“Which photograph?”
Rosalie hesitated.
I already knew.
“Sofia.”
“Yes.”
For a moment, I could not speak.
My daughter slept with one picture of her mother beside her bed.
Nothing ceremonial.
Nothing dramatic.
Sofia laughing in our garden with Livia as a baby against her chest.
Bianca removed it.
“Where is the photograph?”
Rosalie looked toward the bridal suite.
“She kept it.”
I stood.
Bianca was still there when I returned.
Two guards now blocked the door.
I opened the lower vanity drawer.
Perfume.
Jewelry cases.
Wedding stationery.
Then the photograph.
Face down.
I picked it up.
Behind it lay the blue cardigan.
Folded.
Hidden.
I looked at Bianca.
“You took these from my daughter.”
She crossed her arms.
“She needed boundaries.”
“You hid her mother’s photograph.”
“She cries when she sees it.”
“So you decided she should forget.”
Bianca’s face hardened.
“You keep a dead woman alive in every room.”
Silence.
Finally.
There it was.
Sofia.
Not Livia.
Not hair.
Not wedding pictures.
Bianca was fighting someone who had been dead for two years and using my daughter as the battlefield.
I held up the photograph.
“You’re jealous of her mother.”
Bianca laughed bitterly.
“I’m tired of marrying into a mausoleum.”
I stared.
“You’re not marrying into anything now.”
May you like
Her face changed again.
That still frightened her more than what she had done.
